Customer experience tools, when used effectively, can greatly enhance your customer interactions—providing insights and new opportunities for engagement. For a small business, they can help personalize customer service, offering a competitive advantage.

 

We asked business owners what tech tool has improved their customer experience the most. Here’s how they responded:

 

Customer support software

Help Scout is a wonderful customer support platform that’s improved our customer service for our agents and customers alike. It’s an all-in-one service that helps our teams work faster and stay organized. The system saves our previous responses to customer inquiries, allowing the team to answer frequently asked questions faster, and lets them handle emails and live chat from the same platform. Our customers have told us in surveys how helpful and quick customer service is with us, and that’s thanks to Help Scout.

—Dustin Lemick, CEO, BriteCo, Evanston, Illinois

 

Generative AI

One of the most effective ways artificial intelligence has changed our customer service department has been around answering questions from customers when you don’t have answers. We were always running into issues with some of our new staff not knowing the answers to questions. To solve this, we wrote up an in-depth guide (20-plus pages) to help. While good, it wasn’t effective enough. We decided to feed our guide into ChatGPT to make pulling up answers from it fast and easy. The results have been extraordinary. Our customer service team can now enter in a customer’s question, and ChatGPT will display the correct answer based on the information and data we fed it from the guide. It has allowed us to answer questions in record time, which is perfect for live chat conversations on our ecommerce website.

—Jeff Moriarty, co-owner, Moriarty’s Gem Art, Crown Point, Indiana

 

Personalization tools

We have a business that helps homeowners and renters lower their electricity bills by switching to cheaper and cleaner energy sources. AI-powered personalization tools have impacted our customer experience for the better. They’re able to analyze our customer preferences and location to deliver personalized recommendations tailored to them. For instance, we constantly update data on the current best electric rates we can get customers in their area. We display this data on ads and landing pages, which makes the decision to use our company more appealing. We wouldn’t be able to do that without cutting-edge data and machine-learning technology.

—Andrew Meyer, founder and CEO, Arbor, Austin, Texas

 

Language translation and interpretation software

We provide a caregiver support platform that assists parents of children with disabilities and learning differences. We have found that using AI-powered language translation and interpretation tools in our customer service interactions has greatly improved our customers’ experience. In the past, it was sometimes challenging to communicate with customers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. But now, our support agents can easily and seamlessly communicate with them in their preferred languages. We use Stream Chat, which automatically translates messages from our clients when needed. By breaking down language barriers and promoting inclusivity and understanding, these tools enable our team to provide efficient and accurate support.

—Seth Besse, CEO, Undivided.io, Mill Valley, California

 

Chatbot

As a cleaning service, offering a chatbot that can answer questions on our website has been a game-changer in terms of improving the client experience. The capacity to provide 24/7, fast and customized assistance has the biggest impact. Even after hours, customers can easily make inquiries about our services, obtain quotations and make appointments. In addition to accommodating their hectic schedules, this convenience demonstrates our dedication to accessibility and response. Additionally, the chatbot can offer speedy responses to frequently requested concerns, freeing up our human customer support team to handle more difficult queries. 

—Hashi Mohamed, president, IvyCleans, Minneapolis

 

Online appointment scheduling

As a partner in a financial planning firm, I would say one piece of tech that has been huge for us over the years is Calendly, the online booking tool. It saves us so much time on going back and forth with clients and prospective clients to schedule appointments. The tool is very easy for clients to use, and many of them save the link so that they can schedule future meetings 24/7 with us. It saves us time, but most importantly, saves our clients time.

—Todd Bryant, partner, Signature Wealth Partners, Orlando, Florida

 

What tech solution has enhanced your customer experience the most? Share your insights in the comments section below!

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