In the early days of HubSpot, we discovered that customers preferred chatting directly with us about purchasing products rather than filling out forms or sending emails. This led to the integration of chat on our website, which became a valuable channel for customer satisfaction and acquisitions. With the advancement of AI technology, we decided to experiment with integrating AI into our chat process.
Our hypothesis was that AI, with its ability to interpret unstructured data in chat interactions, would provide faster and more accurate responses, ultimately improving the customer experience. We also believed that AI could free up human agents to focus on more complex inquiries. However, we were unsure if AI could capture the personal and empathetic tone of our support teams.
To test our hypothesis, we integrated an AI chatbot on high-traffic webpages with lower risk, such as knowledge base pages. Our key performance indicators included conversion rates, value per chat, and customer satisfaction scores. Initially, we saw a decline in CSAT scores, but after manually annotating chat transcripts to improve the AI’s responses, we saw impressive results by the end of the experiment.
The outcomes of the experiment included a 43% increase in conversion rates, over 50% improvement in the value per chat, and CSAT scores matching human-led interactions. These results were promising, leading us to expand the AI chatbot to other pages with different intents, such as the pricing page.
Our ongoing AI chat test on the pricing page aims to help prospective customers understand our packages and pricing, potentially enabling touchless purchases. We are also developing an annotation user interface to speed up AI training and accuracy. Additionally, we shared four tips for using AI to enhance the customer experience, emphasizing the importance of experimentation, aiming for dramatic results, transparency with customers, and starting with chat.
In conclusion, integrating AI into our chat process has shown promising results in improving customer interactions and satisfaction. We believe that AI technology has the potential to revolutionize customer experiences and drive significant improvements in various aspects of marketing. To learn more about our AI experiment and insights, watch the full episode of Marketing Against the Grain.