Intelligent chat analytics help brands create powerful customer experiences while staying compliant with changing privacy regulations.
In a world without third-party cookies, brands will need to extract maximum value from their first-party data in order to drive business and build satisfying customer experiences. Intelligent chat has emerged as a powerful tool for collecting that first-party data; people volunteer valuable information about themselves when interacting with a virtual assistant that marketers can put to use toward converting, retaining, and supporting them over the course of their customer lifecycle.
But the ability to collect information is just one element of an intelligent chat experience. On the backend, brands can unlock a whole world of functionality by diving into intelligent chat analytics. The insights that analytics provide can support everything from operational efficiency to sales effectiveness and enhanced experiences to regulatory compliance.
Here are five of the top ways intelligent chat analytics can help businesses succeed in light of the privacy rules being handed down by tech giants like Apple and Google.
See also: Credible Chatbots Outperform Humans
Gain in-depth ROI visibility for high conversion channels
When it comes to implementing intelligent chat, businesses in virtually every industry prioritize impacting their point of conversion. The ability to generate and qualify leads within the chat experience is top of mind, regardless of whether that means filling beds for a behavioral healthcare center or moving units for a product-driven company. That’s why the primary focus of intelligent chat analytics is providing visibility into ROI by tracking the number of new leads generated, charting their qualification status, or mapping out other KPIs.
Understand customer intentions and journeys
Brands typically set out to build chat experiences that complement the customer journey. But often, once a virtual assistant has launched, analytics show that the journey takes a few unexpected turns. Intelligent chat analytics provide businesses with real-time feedback about what customers are looking for when they visit a website.
These conversational insights provide deeper and more valuable information than brands could access by analyzing page visits, for example. Where website tracking software may allow you to see customers digging for information, it doesn’t illuminate what they’re looking for or resolve whether or not they’ve found it before leaving the site. Intelligent chat analytics automate the process of combing through hundreds of thousands of chat transcripts and interaction data so businesses can use their insights at scale.
Listen to customers and innovate based on their feedback
Intelligent chat analytics also support the iterative process that is inherent to any virtual assistant. Beyond that initial understanding of what customers are looking for, intelligent chat analytics can also determine whether or not customers are able to successfully find the resources they need or get their questions answered. If customers leave a chat experience unsatisfied, analytics can pinpoint precisely where they dropped off and reveal opportunities to improve the virtual assistant — and the site — anywhere it underperforms.
Identifying patterns in customer behavior using chat analytics can also lead to entirely new lines of business. Massage Envy, one of the largest franchise companies in the US, has found that intelligent chat is one of their highest converting channels. While they already understood that their customer base is interested in and comfortable with automated chat experiences, the content of those intelligent chat interactions has revealed opportunities the company hadn’t considered before.
For example, chat analytics showed that customers were asking questions about acne interactions with increasing frequency. At the time, Massage Envy didn’t yet offer any acne-related services. But based on the interest indicated by customers and prospects in chat and proven by analytics, they quickly set out to develop a service line specifically to cater to that demand.
Enhance both automated and live agent chat experiences
Sentiment analysis is another multi-faceted feature of intelligent chat analytics. A detailed understanding of whether customers felt positive, negative, or neutral emotions attached to their chat conversations could be used to measure a virtual assistant’s success, first of all. That understanding can also lead to further tweaks and iterations. If overall sentiment analysis shows overwhelming negativity, for example, that might point to a problem in the chat assistant’s resource library. It may also indicate the need for a tone adjustment or a change in its expression of personality.
At the same time, intelligent chat analytics like sentiment analysis can also help live agents be more effective at their jobs. When a live agent picks up a customer conversation where an automated assistant left off, chat analytics help tee them up for success. Instead of having to start from scratch — wasting live agents’ time and frustrating customers who are forced to repeat themselves — those human representatives have all the customers’ details ready at their fingertips, from chat transcripts and analyzed intentions to how the customer is feeling emotionally in the experience so far.
Achieve and maintain regulatory compliance across the board
Both the rules that tech companies have created and legislation that governments have passed in recent years are designed to safeguard consumers’ privacy. Staying compliant as those changes take hold is a complicated process that requires businesses to rely more on their first-party data than the third-party resources they once prioritized.
Intelligent chat analytics enable businesses not just to collect and store that volunteered data but also to actively seek it out from customers and to analyze it at scale. Companies can then use that first-party data to personalize customer experiences, increase advertising budget ROI, and optimize operational and sales efficiencies.
In addition to those changing data privacy rules, public health information and medical data are also protected by a complex system of regulations. Sensitivity to HIPAA rules and information about medical history and immunizations has become increasingly important since the onset of COVID-19. For example, STCHealth created a chat experience that allows patients to check immunization records for themselves and their families.
STChealth also used intelligent chat analytics to establish a Return-to-Work program to manage contact tracing, employee testing, and health education post-COVID. Chat analytics can help companies monitor and support the wellbeing of every individual employee in order to create safer, healthier in-person work environments. In these ways, intelligent chat analytics address privacy concerns while collecting the most sensitive types of data for both internal and customer-facing channels.
From Big Tech’s changing privacy rules to government data regulations and the COVID-19 pandemic to the pressure toward total digital transformation, organizations across the US and around the world are facing monumental challenges today. While intelligent chat can solve many business problems, the deep and detailed analytics that virtual assistants make available provide a true powerhouse of value for companies in virtually every industry.
