February 5, 2025
How Emotional AI Can Transform Customer Experiences through the real-world examples and case studies of emotional AI implementations in CPaaS that have led to improved customer engagement and satisfaction
Let’s say you have a business that sells soaps and shampoo to your customers and you sell them in a mall with guaranteed high foot traffic. But alongside your store are other stores that sell similar products – different packaging, branding, etc. Besides the price and quality of your products, one of the most impactful things you can leave your customers is whatever emotion they felt during their shopping experience and when they leave your store.
Emotion leaves a longer lasting impression. Think about it – do you remember the last time you had a horrible experience and it left you feeling frustrated and/or angry? How about when you had such a joyful purchase experience and you were so happy with it that you told your friends about it? I’m certain that experiences with extreme emotions like anger or joy will be more memorable than those that got you from point A to B with no highlighted emotions involved, just a purely transactional experience.
Any service or product that will be used or purchased by an end-customer aims to address four kinds of needs, as illustrated in The Elements of Value Pyramid from Bain & Company, Inc. The higher the value provided to the customer, the more memorable the experience. Simply providing at least one positive emotional value to the customer as part of their experience will ensure your services or product will stick and may bring them back to repurchase.
Which is why incorporating a very human element, like emotions, in Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes a striking difference from the typical chatbots that just respond with a ‘yes’, ‘no’, or canned spiels. AI could be used for many possible needs but most businesses take advantage of AI to address gaps in efficiency, making AI do repetitive tasks that used to be handled by dedicated personnel.
As emotions have a huge influence on how we behave and make decisions, it is only natural that any business that deals with customers would want to be able to understand emotions and include them in the life cycle of their customers. Emotional AI focuses on just that – it allows the measuring, understanding, and analysis of human emotion. Businesses and service providers that take advantage of Emotional AI in their customer experience are able to swiftly understand how they could empathize with their customers.
We’ve seen multiple industries that have achieved success in integration of Emotional AI as part of their end-to-end customer experience.
AI for Diagnosis in Healthcare
The last 4 years have changed the Healthcare industry drastically. As people were forced to stay in the comfort of their own homes, consultations with our doctors transitioned from going to a physical clinic or hospital to a conference/video call on one’s phone. Emotional AI can be a great tool to support tech solutions in healthcare to aid in more accurate and efficient diagnosis. Healthcare providers could use Emotional AI to gain deeper insights into
AI for Urgency Recognition for Call Centers and Customer Support
Most customer support calls are urgent in nature, making recognition of emotion in the callers’ voice a critical element in deciding how urgent the concern should be. Emotion analysis of the caller can be integrated with intelligent routing of calls, providing agents with not just why the customer is in need of support but also how the customer is feeling at the moment so the live customer support representative can address the issues of the customer with compassion and the correct tone of voice.
AI for Effective Recommendations in Retail and eCommerce
It’s not enough for eCommerce merchants to just provide a product to their customers, they have to understand their customers’ shopping behavior, what motivates them, and even what makes them feel excited in order to encourage them to keep on coming back to their store.
One of the ways eCommerce merchants are able to engage directly with their customers is through chats and chatbots. While eCommerce chatbots have been primarily used to connect customers directly with the store owner/merchant or customer support, chatbots have also become a way for merchants to automatically sell and recommend products to their customers. Using Emotional AI in eCommerce Chatbots allows the system to adjust its recommendations to the customer depending on their response to the previously recommended product. In the competitive retail landscape, it’s not enough for customers to just be satisfied with a product.
Using AI to help recognize emotions and urgency of the situation of the customer is always welcome especially when teams are handling multiple calls and customers, wherein decision making may be impacted by the quantity of calls and concerns that need to be addressed. Assessment and complex understanding of a human is still needed in order to fully understand the full context and situation of the customer, AI at its current state and its assessments and insights should be taken with a grain of salt as it is not perfect.
Consent is also an important element to consider as every conversation held with a customer and an agent could be considered as a learning reference of AI to improve its accuracy in detecting and analyzing human emotions. Another critical element to consider is privacy, especially in the healthcare industry where patient information should be kept confidential.
As long as there will be any pain points in the customer experience in any industry, new solutions and technologies will come up to try to solve them. Emotional AI is and will only be one of the many solutions that would try to solve bumps in customer service and experience. But what matters the most, at its core, is the business’ drive to provide the smoothest and happiest experience possible for their customer and not what latest technology the business adopts.
Matched with m360’s best in the business connectivity through a wide roster of messaging channels, enterprises in any industry would benefit in exploring incorporating AI into how they directly engage with their customers. m360’s OneAPI allows businesses access to all of m360’s messaging channels through one integration, giving businesses more capacity to explore how AI could potentially boost their customer happiness and engagement. AI could ease customer service by adding insights and sentiment analysis or even recommended replies for more efficient response times and happier customers.
Elora is a Product Manager with expertise in growth marketing and visual design, focusing on customer acquisition and engagement through in-app experiences and digital touchpoints. She has a strong background in crafting campaigns and marketing materials that enhance the customer journey.
At m360, Elora manages product roadmaps, features, and backlog for the Acceleration & Innovations Group, ensuring the team delivers valuable products and experiences that meet business goals.
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