Did you know that 77% of the devices we own, use AI in one form or another?
Today AI technologies are used in many industries to automate and optimize processes. 54% of executives say artificially intelligent solutions integrated into their businesses have increased productivity.
Artificial intelligence does wonders, especially in the field of customer service. AI-powered customer support systems can understand customer needs, analyze data, and provide timely and accurate responses.
To learn more about how artificial intelligence can be implemented in customer support, lean back and keep reading this article.
How to Improve Customer Service?
To improve customer service, you need to make sure that you are actively listening to your customers' insights on their needs.
Encourage customers to provide feedback on their experience and respond to the feedback to show that their comments hit home.
Considering that you interact with customers as a team, you should also invest in employee training. Each customer representative must be knowledgeable enough to handle different types of customer service issues.
Meanwhile, you should make it easier for your customers to reach out to you and address any possible questions or concerns they may have. Getting a relevant and useful response must be quicker than closing the tab and opening your competitor’s site.
Another important strategy you can adopt is proactiveness. Your customers are going to contact you in case of an emergency. But it’s just as important to reach out to them without having any emergency matters. For example, you can check if they are satisfied with your service or whether they would suggest any changes or improvements.
This will help people feel that you are always there for them. And if they do face an issue, they will be sure that it’s going to be a quick fix.
Last but not least, integrating AI customer service will also greatly improve your relationship with users. AI-powered customer support tools automate processes and help businesses boost brand image, retention rates, and overall customer satisfaction.
How to Use AI in Customer Service?
There are multiple ways that artificial intelligence can be used in customer service.
The technologies that stand behind AI work hand in hand to understand and use human language to communicate with us.
NLP is one of these technologies. What is NLP, you may wonder? It is a subfield of artificial intelligence that interprets human language, predicting the intention and purpose behind what’s been said.
After this, another branch of artificial intelligence kicks in - machine learning. It imitates the use of data and algorithms that have been previously implemented.
The combination of natural language processing and machine learning allows businesses to create and train question-answering models in customer service.
By doing so, AI recognizes patterns in previous customer data and makes realistic predictions on upcoming customer queries. It understands, interprets, and acts on customer requests accordingly.
The process goes as follows: artificial intelligence crawls previous interactions with customers, learns from them, and forms answers and recommendations specific to the current query.
Benefits of AI-Powered Customer Service Automation
Using conversational AI for customer service comes with a number of benefits. With a mission to facilitate smooth and result-driven customer support, conversational AI bot has proved itself to be a trustworthy tool when it comes to answering customer queries.
Let’s find out how exactly the bots work and what the benefits of AI in customer service are:
1. 24/7 Availability
Satisfying your customers is not an easy task. With the latest advancements in technology, the expectations of excellent customer service have gone through the roof. Business owners have to hire large support teams to handle customer queries. It, however, takes a massive amount of resources. Besides, providing high-performance support during non-working hours and days would still be a problem.
The AI bot, on the other hand, doesn’t stop running. It’s a reliable virtual assistant that guarantees around-the-clock availability.
No more waiting hours, no more frustration! AI customer service bots will solve your problems and provide a hassle-free user experience.
2. Cost Efficiency
Implementing an AI bot in customer service can reduce costs associated with hiring, training, and managing staff members. With bots, the need to keep a large in-house team of customer support staff becomes less relevant. Thus, it’s quite a smart move from a financial standpoint.
Of course, conversational AI for customer service cannot completely replace humans, but it can help better prioritize support requests and focus the workforce accordingly. In fact, testing has found that chatbots reduce the average handle time of customer queries by 77%.
3. No Language Barriers
Conversational AI tools can be programmed to understand different languages and dialects, allowing users to communicate in their native tongue. This is a major advantage as it makes your platform more approachable and stress-free for every user.
Supporting customer services in multiple languages will also attract more users. Most importantly, they will not hesitate to ask you a question knowing that it is neither going to be lost on the web nor misunderstood because of a linguistic barrier.
4. Data Collection for Future Improvements
Imagine the scope of data and stats you can get from an AI customer service bot after using it as your main channel of customer support for some time. Such data can be used not only for improving customer support but for business marketing purposes, as well.
For instance, you may see an increasing number of queries about a certain feature or a sub-product that you don’t have. Such data can become a source of inspiration to build new products and services, and better serve your customers’ needs.
Briefly put, the data you collect through an AI bot will serve as a trigger for strategic changes and improvements in your business.
5. Consistency in Customer Service
To build loyalty and promote a positive user experience, you need to base customer support on consistency. What better way to do so than to use an AI bot? While human agents may come and go at a certain turnover rate, AI bots will always be there and provide stable and high-performing customer service.
Firstly, the style and approach of interactions will be the same for all customers. The bot will absorb your brand’s tone of voice and use it while communicating with your customers. It will never have a bad day making customer service mistakes.
Secondly, all messages will be seen and answered in the same timely manner.
Last but not least, your customers will never have to ask the same question and explain details to several agents because of shift changes or a junior specialist’s low level of expertise.
Examples of AI in Customer Service
Customers usually turn to customer support when they are rather frustrated with a malfunction or a mishap with your digital product.
Naturally, in such an annoyed state, they expect to get instant gratification in the form of sufficient and full answers to their questions.
To make sure that the provided support is literally instant and effective, many businesses utilize tools that work with artificial intelligence.
Here you can find the list of the most popular examples of AI implementation in customer service.
1. AI-Powered Virtual Assistants: AI-powered virtual assistants are used to provide customers with personalized assistance and information. By utilizing natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, chatbots can quickly and accurately respond to customer inquiries, route requests to the appropriate department, and even provide product recommendations. A great example of an AI-driven virtual assistant is Hoory, which helps businesses automate customer communication in 100+ languages and turn every user interaction into a perfect customer experience.
2. AI-Based Predictive Analytics: AI-based predictive analytics can be used to anticipate customer needs and provide personalized recommendations. For example, a clothing retailer can implement AI-driven predictive analytics to suggest clothing items likely to interest a customer based on their past purchases and online behavior.
With the help of AI-based predictive analytics, businesses boost sales and increase customer satisfaction.
3. Automated Ticket Routing: AI comes in handy with automating the routing process of customer support tickets. With the help of artificial intelligence, tickets are automatically assigned to customer support agents based on their experience and expertise.
This system allows businesses to track all customer requests in one place and helps better organize labor distribution among customer support teams.
Your agents will no longer have to waste time scanning through piles of customer support tickets. Instead, they will focus on the ones that have been assigned to them, meanwhile reducing ticket resolution time.
Additionally, AI can be used to detect customer sentiment, suggest product recommendations, and identify customer needs and preferences.
To Conclude
AI technology has been used in many industries to automate and optimize processes, including customer support.
AI-powered customer service systems can help businesses save time and money by speeding up response times and reducing the need for manual work. Besides, implementing AI in customer service can uncover and analyze customer pain points and areas of improvement.
If you have not implemented AI in your business, then you are definitely missing out on something big! Scroll up to reconsider!