What Is Customer Experience Automation (CXA)? Benefits + Use Cases

The key to attracting and retaining loyal customers boils down to the overall customer experience. In today’s competitive market, customers want more than quality products — they want personalized, meaningful interactions at every stage of their journey. Research shows 80% of customers are more likely to buy if you offer a personalized experience. 

But that doesn’t mean you need human agents behind every micro-interaction your customers have with your brand — you can curate personalized interactions without human involvement. That’s where customer experience automation (CXA) comes in. 

Whether you’re using an AI chatbot to help answer frequently asked questions or automated email campaigns to convert leads to customers, CXA can deliver a consistent and personalized customer experience during every interaction. 

Ready to learn how CXA can support your sales or support teams and enhance customer interactions? Our guide covers what CXA is, reasons to automate customer experience tasks, and ways your business can use it to its advantage. 

What is customer experience automation? 

Customer experience automation is the application of AI and automation tools to automate tasks at different points in the customer journey — creating consistent, personalized interactions. Rather than having agents manage every customer interaction, you can utilize automation software to handle the less complex interactions. 

CXA doesn’t remove human interaction altogether. Instead, it automates routine and straightforward tasks throughout the entire customer experience — like basic troubleshooting, order processing, or email follow-ups. This improves efficiency and frees up resources, giving staff or agents time to handle more complex or higher-value tasks where human intervention is needed.   

Ultimately, combining automation and human agents can provide a well-rounded customer experience — improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

4 components of CXA

For CXA to work, there are four main components you need to implement: 

• Orchestration: Use customer data and technology to coordinate different aspects of the customer journey for a seamless and enjoyable experience. Essentially, orchestration works by understanding customer actions and automating the right steps at the right time. 

• Segmentation: Segment your customers into smaller groups based on similarities such as preferences, location, purchase history, or behavior. This enables tailored communication specific to these groups.  

• Personalization: Create a tailored experience and a truly personalized customer journey by leveraging customer data. Even simple personalization, like using a customer’s name in an email or suggesting products based on past purchases, can make the experience more engaging. 

• Automation: Automate the customer experience by using software to streamline tasks at various points in the customer journey.  

5 reasons to automate customer experience 

Let’s dive into a few key reasons you might consider automating customer experience tasks. 

24/7 customer support 

Nobody likes waiting on the phone for hours to speak to a customer service rep — not even the hold music can make the experience enjoyable. CXA can offer around-the-clock customer support so customers no longer have to wait for a human agent to become available.

One way to do this is by using chatbot technology. Chatbots are equipped to deliver accurate responses to customer inquiries without human involvement. This means they can engage and respond to customers outside normal hours of operation — ensuring 24/7 accessibility and instant support. 

Automation can also be used to support agents who are on duty. For example, Smith.ai’s AI Voice Assistant supports live agents by gathering key information on customer inquiries first, so they can provide them with the best support possible.

Personalized interactions 

CXA tools harness customer data to create tailored experiences — pulling data from various sources such as records of past customer interactions or purchase history. 

With the data it gathers, CXA software can build customer profiles and create personalized, memorable experiences. For example, an automated email can be sent to customers on their birthday, providing them with a discount code to use on their next purchase.  

Consistent experiences 

Have you ever experienced a situation where one customer service representative provided you with information, but then you received conflicting information when you were transferred to a different representative? 

CXA can solve this issue and reduce human error, ensuring every customer receives consistent information and support no matter where they are in the customer journey. This is huge when it comes to establishing trust with your customers.  

Increased efficiency 

One obvious benefit of CXA is reducing manual labor by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. This can significantly increase efficiency among your team so they can focus on higher-priority customer interactions that require human-to-human connection, empathy, or the handling of sensitive matters. 

Automation can also make it easier for agents to access the information they need — like specific responses to customer inquiries — enabling quick and informed decision-making and faster response times. 

Improved customer loyalty 

Customers want to engage with brands that can understand and help solve their unique needs. Because CXA offers personalized experiences across the board, it can greatly increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In addition, quick response times and consistent communications at various touchpoints result in positive experiences that can help retain customers. 

6 ways your team can utilize customer experience automation 

Automation is on the rise, with 77% of marketing leaders saying they’re using CXA to improve the customer experience. Below, we’ll highlight the different ways your team can utilize CXA to transform and enhance the customer experience. 

Automated email campaigns 

Automated email campaigns work through predefined triggers that send emails automatically based on user actions. They’re an easy way to engage with your audience and deliver targeted messages without doing it all by hand. 

Think back to your most recent online shopping experience. You browsed, added items to your cart, then left. Later, you got an email with an abandoned cart reminder and maybe a discount code for an item in your cart. This is just one way CXA email campaigns work — it sent an automated email because you left your cart before checking out. 

There are many different types of automated email campaigns you can set up throughout the customer journey. Here are a few examples: 

• Lead nurturing: These campaigns help move leads further down the sales funnel. Smith.ai’s email follow-up feature can send personalized emails to leads after calls to keep them engaged. 

• Automated drip campaigns: This type of campaign sends a sequence of emails at set timeframes and can be used to send relevant content to customers over time.  

• Product recommendations: These emails can be sent out based on a user’s browsing or purchase history, making it easy to encourage additional purchases, including cross-selling opportunities. 

• Abandoned cart: An automated email can be triggered when a customer adds items to their cart without completing the purchase. The email reminds them of the items they left behind and can be customized with a discount code to encourage a purchase.

• Win-back emails: These campaigns are designed to engage with customers who have been inactive and usually include incentives like discounts to encourage them to return and make a purchase. 

AI-powered website chat 

Chatbots are quickly becoming an invaluable tool businesses can utilize to streamline their customer support processes. 

These machines — like Smith.ai’s 24/7 AI-powered Web Chat — use AI and machine learning to answer routine customer inquiries without changing the quality of the customer experience. They can leverage website material or other brand-related data and use natural language processing to output fast, accurate, and human-like responses — giving customers the information they need and only looping in agents when needed. 

One of the best benefits of chatbots is that they can handle multiple customer inquiries at once. This significantly reduces wait times, leaving you with satisfied customers. 

Automated voice conversations 

With so many technological advancements, entire phone conversations can now be automated using large language models and natural language processing. Similar to chatbots, these machines can be trained on business information and customer data and can answer phone calls and respond to customer inquiries in a human-like way. 

Our AI Voice Assistant can automatically answer customer calls, collect information, qualify leads, and guide customers to the appropriate human agent if needed. 

Customer feedback 

Automated feedback collection is a quick and easy way to gain insight into customer satisfaction. One way to gather this information is through automated surveys. After a customer engages with your service or makes a purchase, an automatic survey can be sent via email with a link to a simple feedback form. You can also include a pop-up after they’ve made a purchase, prompting them to rate their experience.  

Conversation analytics software can also pull data from real customer interactions, like agent-to-customer phone calls, chatbot conversations, or survey results, and automatically provide insights based on this data. These insights can help you get a pulse on customer sentiment, identify trends in user pain points, or provide a closer look into what sales strategies yield the highest conversions. 

Ultimately, this feedback can help you understand what’s fueling customer satisfaction and what areas of the buyer’s journey could use improvement.  

Automated ticketing and routing 

Automated ticketing and routing make it easy to send customers to the right department or agent based on the inquiry. What was once a time-consuming manual process can now be streamlined with automation. CXA software can automatically categorize and prioritize customer inquiries, assign the ticket to the appropriate agent, and route the customer accordingly. 

Another way to utilize automated routing is via interactive voice response (IVR). IVR is an automated phone system that allows callers to access information or reach the appropriate agent without human assistance. These systems use pre-recorded prompts and questions to ask the caller where they want to be directed, then use that information to route them to a live support agent.  

Customer segmentation 

You can utilize CXA software for customer segmentation, grouping your customers into segments based on predefined criteria. For example, you may have a rule in place that automatically segments customers who have purchased a specific product, are located in a certain area, or have visited certain pages on your website.  

Segmenting your customers makes it easier to create personalized and targeted email campaigns and helps you understand your customer base so you can provide a better customer experience. 

Enhance your customer experience with Smith.ai

As your company scales, maintaining a consistent and memorable customer experience is key to retaining customers and driving business success. At Smith.ai, we believe AI and humans can work together to provide a best-in-class customer experience. Using CXA, we offer 24/7 customer engagement and gain insight into your audience to help you make continuous improvements to the customer journey. 

For more information on how we can help with customer experience automation, schedule a free consultation with our team today.