AI for customer service can help you do all this and more. Organizations that adopt AI tools for customer service can also significantly improve productivity rates, increase first contact resolution, and cut onboarding times.
In a world of fickle customer loyalties where brands must find innovative ways to provide exceptional CX, AI customer service solutions can be vital in helping them connect with users while increasing profitability.
What is AI for Customer Service?
AI-powered customer support comes in different shapes and sizes, but its goal is the same across the board: to drive efficiency and cost reduction throughout the customer journey. Examples of AI-enhanced customer service tools include everything from speech and voice recognition systems like Alexa and Siri to natural language processing (NLP) systems that learn to perform tasks humans typically do.
- Chatbots imitate human conversations to help customers solve common issues.
- Self-service software solutions help customers complete purchases, navigate websites, and solve problems without human help.
- NLP systems transcribe multi-channel communications and analyze collected data to improve the overall CX.
- AI training software simulates hundred or thousands of situations that might arise during customer support calls.
- Machine learning analyzes big data flows and generates insights companies can use to improve services.
A customer service knowledge base can have positively affect on the quality and efficiency of your customer service. That’s because using an AI knowledge base to deliver the right answers to customers increases customer satisfaction and improves agent productivity.
AI Is Revolutionizing the Face of Customer Service
With customers saying they rely on satisfying experiences over product and pricing, more and more companies are discovering how AI can support their customer service efforts. Gartner reports that from 2015 to 2019, enterprise use of AI grew 270 percent, making it clear AI isn’t a future trend but a current tool organizations must invest in.
Unfortunately, adopting AI-driven solutions is a struggle for many businesses. Investing in software, hiring and training support agents, and changing corporate mindsets are just a few challenges they face. Luckily, using AI in customer service easily solves all of these concerns and can be an incredible helper in improving your support efforts without sacrificing resources.
Chatbots
As AI technology advances, customer service bots have become speedy learners. They collect relevant customer data that enterprises can use to improve customer satisfaction and can be used to personalize and target support without live agent intervention.
Resource optimization
It’s estimated that globally businesses spend upwards of a trillion dollars on nearly three billion customer service calls yearly. AI-assisted support systems help organizations reduce their costs by:
- Speeding up response times.
- Freeing agents for more challenging work.
- Answering up to 80% of routine questions.
Systems that combine machine learning and advanced speech recognition to improve conventional interactive voice response systems have been shown to deliver anywhere from 60 to 80 percent in cost savings over human-powered services.
24/7 support
Modern customers want service and support on their terms, and they want it every day of the year, morning or night. AI-backed customer service makes it possible, allowing you to provide always-on customer service that resolves customer issues as soon as they arise.
Improved agent/customer interactions
Two of the most significant ways AI augments customer support are messaging and email tagging, which enable customer service agents to save time by not reading every customer email and handling customer queries with assistance from chatbot assistants.
Personalized customer experiences
Multiple studies and surveys show that the vast majority of customers prefer to solve issues by themselves. AI can play a significant role in helping them find helpful information more efficiently and even recommend additional products or services based on their browsing or buying history. By creating customer personas, you can focus on individual purchasing patterns and better understand every customer. This enables you to send relevant content to customers at the right time and through the right channels.
Data gathering
AI simplifies the data gathering process so businesses can more quickly and easily analyze behavioral patterns to instantly respond to a customer’s needs. Organizations that invest in an AI knowledge base can benefit from data collection, storage, and sharing, reducing the time spent handling customer queries by eliminating human intervention.
Predictive insights
Brands need to create experiences that become a part of their customers’ lives. Predictive personalization makes each customer feel your product or service is specifically tailored for them. AI also simplifies the process of scanning through previous products, inventory, or services to find relevant customer recommendations.
Refined customer data insights
Brands can now use AI customer analytics to uncover nuanced insights into their customers. Because AI-driven systems can process and analyze vast amounts of data and gather insights, businesses can study every customer action, discover their interests, and use these and other insights to drive targeted marketing campaigns.
Help customers make decisions
Most customers now have regular interactions with chatbots and generally have positive feelings about them. They like how they help them make better purchasing decisions compared to humans and, since they engage with brands across devices, get personalized touchpoints to help them in their buying journey. AI-powered assistants can answer queries instantly and gather a product or service’s details to advise customers and help them make the right decisions.
How AI Assistants Deliver Customer Service Differently From Humans
When Philippines-based Globe Telecom wanted a way to reduce contact center costs and increase CSAT scores, it looked to KMS Lighthouse to provide the solutions it needed. A combination of technology improvements and company cultural changes helped the telecommunications services provider unlock and share the wealth of knowledge held by thousands of its contact center agents. The result? Customer satisfaction scores rose 150%, and agents now spend 15% less time on support calls.
When businesses integrate AI into their existing customer support systems they gain new customers, retain them, and make them loyal to their brands. Making the customer experience more engaging helps you stay ahead of the competition and makes the customer service experience easier for agents and customers alike.
KMS Lighthouse is an AI-based customer service solution that can help you transform how your business provides customer support while assisting agents in focusing on delivering exceptional customer experiences.
