AI Gives Customers Information; Great CX Gives Them Confidence

This article answers the question: How is AI changing the customer purchase experience?

Answer: AI gives customers more information before they buy, but great customer experience comes from helping customers validate their research, feel confident about their choices and move forward with less anxiety.

Today’s customers are more informed than ever. AI has taken their ability to research to another level. Tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and others let customers have conversations, compare products and prices, ask follow-up questions, and narrow their choices before ever talking to a salesperson.

At first, this may sound like an article about selling with service. It is, but it’s also about the customer experience. Customers don’t just want information. They want reassurance that they are making the right decision. Helping them get that reassurance is part of creating a better experience.

Consider a customer making a major purchase, such as a TV, piece of jewelry, or a car. Before ever walking into a store, they turn to AI for extensive research. By the time they talk to someone, they know, or at least think they know, exactly what they want.

Amazon is a perfect example. Its AI shopping assistant, Alexa for Shopping, lets customers ask questions about products, compare features and choices, and helps them decide. Amazon recognizes that customers want more than information. They want confidence that they are making the right choice.

Armed with that knowledge, a seemingly confident buyer heads to the store or calls a vendor. They ask questions, but not always because they need more information. Often, they are looking to confirm what they already learned. And that is where the opportunity begins.

While the customer may appear confident, they may also be experiencing another emotion: pressure.

I’m not referring to high-pressure sales but to the pressure they put on themselves after doing their research to avoid making a mistake. This is where a good salesperson or customer service professional can make a difference.

Instead of sharing even more information, recognize what customers may really need: more confidence. Ask questions to understand what they learned and how they came to their decision. You can even ask, “What have you learned so far?”

Then listen.

To emphasize, this doesn’t apply only to sales. The same thing can happen when a customer calls support, talks to an account manager, renews a contract, upgrades a product, or is making a decision that requires any type of commitment. Sometimes the best experience comes from simply giving the customer the confidence to move forward.

If the customer’s research led them in the right direction, tell them. Confirm what they already know and fill in any gaps. If they missed or misunderstood something, help them understand it without making them feel like their research was a waste of time.

Customers have always experienced some level of buyer anxiety, especially with larger purchases. AI gives them more information than ever, but that doesn’t necessarily eliminate the anxiety. Sometimes it creates more of it. So recognize the pressure customers may be putting on themselves and help eliminate it. Give them confidence. That’s another important customer experience skill in this new era of AI.