The use of artificial intelligence becomes more and more common in different industries. Thanks to machine learning technology, computers became able to handle massive amounts of information, analyzing it, and learning from it. As a result, now businesses can use computers when dealing with quite complex tasks that used to be associated with manual labor. Even though machines are still far from replacing skilled professionals, they can serve as assistants, handling the most time-consuming repetitive tasks.
AI increases efficiency, and it also makes emotional intelligence more valuable. Emotional intelligence is something machines have never possessed, and it became extremely valuable during the coronavirus pandemic. Emotional intelligence is especially important in business management. Now employees are constantly stressed out, and they can only interact online. Many of them suffer from anxiety, which is a reason why empathy becomes crucial for the survival of teams during the age of uncertainty.
While emotional intelligence is crucial for the proper functioning of teams and effective customer support, AI enables businesses to automate numerous tasks and provides many other opportunities to save costs. Therefore, it’s important to balance emotional intelligence and technology. To understand, how to do it, let’s figure out what emotional intelligence is.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a term used when talking about the ability to not only work with information and solve problems but also understand the reasons why certain problems happen, as well as their impact on people. Emotional intelligence also refers to the ability to care about the interests of different people, taking them into account when making any important decisions.
Managers with high emotional intelligence make sure to find solutions that work well for everyone involved. Emotional intelligence to a large extent depends on the ability to understand the underlying context and tone of conversations, which is a very difficult task for machines.
But why do we mention emotional intelligence when speaking of AI, in the first place? The reason is that businesses often use automation and AI to interact with their customers and prospects. AI is more and more often used in marketing and customer support. On the one hand, businesses need to provide timely assistance and deliver marketing content with maximum efficiency, which is where AI comes in handy. On the other hand, it’s also important to understand if your customers are stressed out, nervous, or if they have a limited budget. In this case, emotional intelligence is the key.
What Do Your Customers Want?
After social media and messaging apps became an integral part of our everyday lives, customer’s expectations regarding communication with brands also changed. People use messengers all the time to communicate with their friends and colleagues, and 53% of consumers are more likely to purchase from businesses they can message with.
However, it’s not easy to handle countless conversations with customers manually, which is a reason why businesses use AI-powered chatbots. According to statistics, there are more than 300,000 chatbots on Facebook Messenger alone. Chatbots enable businesses to maintain relationships with a larger audience and to make sure that everyone can get the necessary assistance exactly when they need it.
Although many organizations now realize that they would be unable to withstand tough competition without chatbots, they also have to deal with complex queries that require a better understanding of the context than chatbots have. That’s why organizations also use empathy.
Achieving a balance between empathy and technology is not an easy task, but if businesses simply ignore this issue, they won’t be able to provide a great customer experience in each particular case. AI really helps companies facilitate numerous processes that used to take a lot of time and effort, but some tasks still require human empathy.
Customer service isn’t the only area where empathy and deep understanding of the context are crucial. For instance, businesses need relevant and engaging marketing content. On the one hand, AI-based solutions help marketers segment their audiences and use automation to reach out to their potential customers at the right time. On the other hand, machines cannot write the content itself.
Neural networks are already capable of writing simple texts, but they cannot write a compelling copy or interesting blog articles. Therefore, businesses still have to look for talented writers. For instance, they can visit writing services review websites like Best Writers Online and Online Writers Rating, and choose writing services with the best reputation and experience.
How to Marry AI and Emotional Intelligence
Modern businesses know that “hard sell” tactics are no longer as effective as they used to be. Such practices become even less reliable and relevant during the periods of uncertainty when many consumers are stressed out. It becomes especially important for businesses to demonstrate their human side and empathy if they want to appeal to their potential customers.
Businesses need to understand various stress levels, personalize their messages, and make sure that their messages resonate with each customer on the emotional level. At the same time, they should also ensure efficient communication. Therefore, if a chatbot gets a complex request, it should connect the customer with a human employee.
Therefore, balancing AI and emotional intelligence is important. The key to success is to make your customers feel like they’re interacting with a real person. It’s important to consider various scenarios when training chatbots and to make sure that chatbots can respond in a natural manner. Companies should also address these issues when using AI-powered assistants in the workplace.
For instance, an assistant bot called Fred, created by Fireflies.ai, can show up on virtual meetings, and the participants won’t know who it is unless they’ve been informed early. However, they will likely quickly figure out that Fred isn’t a human because of its perfect memory.
Fred can help people remember every word of the meeting and quickly share the necessary information with others. Such tools can help organizations both foster collaboration, improving the overall emotional environment, and reap the benefits of artificial intelligence, at the same time.
Various AI-powered solutions can let you know how many people or companies are interested in your products or services, but only humans can figure out whether some of them need additional information or would appreciate trying a trial version.
Fortunately, AI is a technology that develops at an increasingly rapid pace. AI-based solutions can work with larger amounts of data, and algorithms of machine learning become more and more sophisticated. Therefore, striking a balance between emotional intelligence and AI will certainly become less of a challenge in the future.
Wrapping Up
As artificial intelligence becomes more and more common in various industries, organizations realize that they need to maintain a balance between AI and emotional intelligence. Machines can help businesses facilitate numerous processes, but they still lack understanding of the information they’re working with.
Businesses should be able to use empathy to ensure effective communication with everyone. They need to determine the emotional context of their customers’ questions and be able to not only provide and analyze information but also to give the right emotional response when necessary.
Although computers are still far from understanding human emotions, machine learning algorithms develop quickly. Therefore, maintaining a balance between emotional intelligence and AI will likely be less challenging in the future. As for now, businesses can simply determine tasks that require emotional intelligence and make sure that they are completed by humans.
This is a guest post is by Gregory V. Chapman.
Gregory is passionate about researching on new technologies in both mobile, web and WordPress. Gregory in love with stories and facts, so Gregory always tries to get the best of both worlds.
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