The artificial intelligence (AI) market is expected to grow to nearly $2 trillion by 2030. Artificial Intelligence in customer service has become a focus area for many companies. Thanks to modern technology, chatbots are no longer the only way customer support teams can harness artificial Intelligence to improve customer experience.
Here’s how you can harness artificial Intelligence for customer service and why you should.
Artificial Intelligence in customer service
In customer service, artificial intelligence improves the customer experience and creates more pleasant consumer interactions. Technologies like chatbots and sentiment analysis can help your support team streamline workflow, quickly serve customer requests, and proactively anticipate customer needs.
When implemented correctly, using artificial Intelligence in customer service can dramatically influence how your team connects with and serves your customers.
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in customer service
Improved customer support workflows: Artificial intelligence technology can reduce friction at almost any point in the customer journey. Chatbots allow you to answer routine questions from new customers quickly. You can also use conversational AI tools to develop personalized emails and knowledge-base articles for your existing customers. Artificial Intelligence helps you streamline your internal workflows and, in turn, maximize your customer service interactions.
Reduced response and handling times: With improved workflows, AI can give you better customer response metrics. Using chatbots as an example, you can automatically reply to a customer’s live chat message in seconds. This will significantly decrease the first response time from your support team. The result? Your average handle time will decrease because less time will be taken to resolve incoming requests.
Better predictions of customer behavior: Artificial Intelligence uses real-time data to make predictions. That means you can use artificial Intelligence to determine how your customers will likely behave based on their purchase history, shopping habits, and personal preferences. Predictive AI can help you identify patterns and proactively improve the customer experience.
How to use artificial Intelligence in customer service
Here are ten ways your company can use artificial intelligence for customer service.
Chatbots: Chatbots are one of the first artificial intelligence tools to serve customers. They are programmed to interpret a customer’s problem and then provide troubleshooting steps to resolve the problem. This saves your reps and customers time because responses are instant, automated, and available 24/7.
Augmented messaging: While chatbots are great for fixing minor issues, most aren’t ready to tackle complex or sensitive cases. This is where augmented messaging comes into play. This AI tool identifies opportunities for human agents to step in and assist the customer with further personalization. While bots are great for saving your team and users time, they will never produce the same customer satisfaction as a human agent. Augmented messaging tools give you the best of both worlds.
Sentiment analysis: Today, many bots have sentiment analysis tools, such as natural language processing, that help them interpret customer responses. This tells the bot how to respond when a customer behaves in a certain way, so your bot won’t heighten the customer’s emotions when trying to help them.
Request routing and prioritization. In addition to outbound messages, you can use artificial Intelligence to identify keywords and analyze the nature of the request before assigning it to one of your representatives. Artificial intelligence tools allow you to analyze the customer’s problem, perceived urgency, and associated emotions. You can also program your AI model to tag the right agent to handle the case. This is another process that saves time and makes it easier for your support team to troubleshoot and resolve issues. Reserve your most experienced agents to handle the complex cases, and let your newer representatives handle the simpler ones. Also, consider having representatives dedicated exclusively to time-sensitive requests.
Self-service resources: While building a solid knowledge base or FAQ page can be time-consuming, self-service resources are critical for good CX. The good news is that AI writing assistants like Jasper.ai and ChatGPT can help. These tools use artificial Intelligence to synthesize existing information and generate a text based on a desired topic. You can then use this text to create knowledge base articles or generate answers to common questions about your product.
Voice analysis: According to a survey, most consumers (57%) prefer to contact customer service by phone. Voice artificial intelligence has made it easy to automate call center interactions. These tools can be trained on predictive call routing and interactive voice response to serve as the first line of defense for customer inquiries. Use voice AI technology to solve routine customer services tasks—like business hours requests and account access troubleshooting—so your best agents stay available for more complex issues.
Omnichannel service: Artificial Intelligence can support your omnichannel service strategy by helping you direct customers to the proper support channels. If all your chat representatives are busy, artificial Intelligence can tell the customer to use live chat for a faster response. Or, if a customer is typing a lengthy question into the email form, you can suggest that they call for more personalized support.
Data management: Not all AI features are customer-facing. In fact, some of the most valuable tools are the ones that are integrated with your internal software. For example, AI can be combined with your CRM to retrieve customer data for your service agents. Your customer success team can use this feature to serve customers based on AI-generated insights proactively.
Multilingual support: Many artificial intelligence chatbots and conversational tools can generate content in different languages. This is especially useful if your business operates globally. Artificial Intelligence can detect a customer’s language and translate the message before it reaches your support team. Or you can use it to automatically trigger a response that matches the language of the original query. Review your customer profiles or take a survey to learn about your customers’ preferred languages. Then incorporate this insight into your AI strategy.Machine learning and predictive analytics: Machine learning is at the heart of predicting customer behavior through artificial Intelligence. It analyzes large amounts of data and extracts actionable insights to forecast trends, anticipate customer sentiment, and solve future problems. Use predictive analytics to inform your default customer communication responses (for example, via chatbots or over the phone). Machine learning can help improve the expected result based on frequently asked questions and customer history.
