How Machine Learning is Changing Business Communication

A few years ago, artificial intelligence and machine learning sounded like science fiction. Today, we use these technologies in real-world situations. 

You can apply machine learning to most of your business operations. And, business communications are certainly one of them. Sophisticated technologies like machine learning will help you process larger quantities of customer data more efficiently. They improve workplace productivity, streamline your internal and external flow of information, and identify problems in customer and team communications that need to change.

Here is how to use AI Services and machine learning to boost business communication.

Creating Quality Email Marketing Campaigns

According to Statista, spam messages accounted for 57.26% of all email traffic in 2019. Fortunately, email platforms now use machine learning algorithms that help them identify spam. 

For example, Gmail relies on advanced ML algorithms to classify inbound emails before they reach users’ inboxes. For example, with text filtering that uses natural language processing, email platforms can detect phrases that often appear in spam emails. Client filtering uses ML algorithms to analyze email features to determine how trustworthy they are. Additionally, Gmail keeps track of the number of users that marked emails from a particular email address or website domain as spam. This tracking includes not only individual emails but also entire email thread, which can further influence how your future messages are treated.

Google explains that its deep learning algorithms are helping it prevent 99.9% of spam and phishing emails from reaching users’ inboxes. It scans a fascinating 300 billion Gmail attachments weekly.

As email marketing is still one of the most profitable digital marketing practices, businesses need to focus on creating and serving high-quality, authoritative, and relevant content to their target audiences. To avoid sophisticated spam filters, you should:

• Ensure that all recipients have signed up for your email list.
• Send emails from a reliable IP address – the one you did not use to send spam emails before.
• Avoid excessive promotional and spammy words, such as “buy” or “cash,” as they are often recognized as spam.
• Create original and catchy subject lines that encourage users to click.
• Make sure you send emails via verified domains.
• Let users unsubscribe easily.
• Update your lists – remove inactive subscribers and focus on engaged users. Before you remove a subscriber, send a win-back email and try to re-engage them.
• Segment your email list – not everyone on your list has the same expectations and needs. You can segment lists based on users’ location, purchase habits, interests, demographics, etc.

Call Centers are Getting Smarter

To reduce costs and improve inbound and outbound communication, businesses are now implementing virtual call centers that utilize voice over internet protocols (VoIP). By switching to top rated VoIP phone systems for business, such as Nextiva, OnSip, or Dialpad, companies can create wireless customer support that integrates with their CRM software or social networks. 

Given that virtual call centers are collecting and storing vast amounts of customer data, they are a perfect channel to integrate with artificial intelligence. With the help of AI, call centers can:

• Capture data from customer interactions. This way, you can analyze customers’ sentiment and, based on it, provide better service, improve revenue, and encourage brand loyalty.

• Identify the type of a phone call and pass it to the relevant customer support channel. Not only will AI identify the reason for the call, but it will also analyze its complexity and the customer’s lifetime value to connect a customer with the right representative.
• Monitor customer support representatives’ performance. It analyzes their speech to identify stress levels, language clarity, script adherence, etc.
• Automating routine and repetitive tasks, letting customers focus on more complex and creative processes.
• Predicting customers’ needs and requirements to provide them with personalized offers and upsell and cross-sell faster.

Chatbots are Improving Customer Experiences

Customers do not like being held on hold while trying to reach your customer representative. Most customers expect your customer representatives to respond to them in 24 hours. 

That is exactly where AI chatbots step in. No matter how many customers are seeking help on your website or social channels, chatbots will provide them with real-time assistance. Using NLP and ML, they will recognize customers’ needs and provide them with clear and relevant feedback. Stats say that over 60% of users do not even know that they are chatting with a bot.

Another great benefit of chatbots is improved shopping experiences. Complicated checkout processes are one of the major reasons why people leave shopping carts. With chatbots, they do not need to fill out complicated forms or verify their email addresses before they complete the purchase. With chatbots, customers can make purchases via multiple channels. For example, Lyft has bots on Slack, Messenger, and Amazon Echo, letting customers request a ride there.

Finally, chatbots personalize user experiences. They will humanize your brand and keep customer conversations natural and consistent. Most importantly, they will interact with customers, understand their needs, and provide them with the right product recommendations. Sephora’s Messenger bot, for example, lets customers upload their photo and try out different makeup products to find the right one.

Over to You

Even though AI and machine learning are still in their infancy, their capabilities are truly fascinating. Those are just some of the numerous ways you can use these technologies to improve business communication, maximize the performance of your teams, and keep customers satisfied. 

What are your thoughts on implementing ML to boost business communication?