How AI Can be Used to Improve Customer Service? Guide

Offering and maintaining the quality of support over time is important for businesses. Failing to do so can affect the overall customer experience, leading to several further problems. That’s where AI can bridge the gaps and enhance the overall quality of service.

As businesses strive to make customer service better, the inclusion of AI in different tasks has started to gain prominence. In-house customer support departments and BPO services are adopting technologies like chatbots to offer better customer services. The following are the number of ways AI can improve customer service:

Automated Responses 24/7

When it comes to using AI for customer service, the first thing that many people think about is Chatbots. Chatbots offer automated responses to customer queries. Businesses use such automated responders for answering customer queries during the hours when human support is not available. So, this technology can offer satisfactory customer support other than the shifts covered by human agents. Businesses can, and many do, offer 24/7 customer support by using chatbots.

This technology often directs customers to knowledge base articles, so they can help themselves with the queries. Often companies create a library of articles or YouTube video tutorials to help solve customers’ different problems. Another benefit of this combination is that if for some reason chatbots and customer support are unavailable, customers can explore answers through these articles on their own.

Further, the use of this technology assists both customers and agents by saving their time. So, there are plenty of benefits of using chat support. And thanks to these benefits, chat support is becoming more popular among businesses.

Customer Support Agent Assistance

Tailored responses to customer queries can significantly increase customer satisfaction. With the type of workload customer support agents generally have, offering such responses can get difficult. But AI can cater to and assist customers. Agents can easily see older conversations with the customer and see a customer’s history. AI makes the process of going through older communications faster.

Besides just going through old records, AI can also help agents come up with the best responses to customer queries. Depending on the problem, agents can get suggestions for responses. You can think of it as auto-suggested text Gmail often offers based on machine learning. The same technology can assist customer service representatives as well. Agents can modify those responses and use them to resolve customer issues.

Even simple proofreading applications that support agents often use are based on AI technology. Grammarly and other such apps are the best examples of such editing assistants. Helping agents fix their typos and grammar may not seem a lot, but it does make a difference.

Data for Performance Insights

There is a set of performance metrics contact centers measure to see the quality of their service. They may look for AWT (average waiting time), FCR (first contact resolution), CSAT (customer satisfaction score), and NPS (net promoter score). Since contact centers or customer support departments of companies generally receive hundreds to thousands of calls, going through all this data to see performance can be extremely difficult. But AI can go through all that data quickly and give you clear insights into your performance.

You can easily get the waiting time, percentage of queries resolved in the first interaction, and more. Whether you are offering contact center services or maintaining your company’s customer support, the performance data can be crucial.

Besides seeing how well your customer support team is performing, the data from interactions can be used in many ways as well. For example, you can see what aspects of a product need adjustments. It applies to both physical and digital products. The feedback or complaints you receive about a product can help with future products. Moreover, the data gathered can also help in shaping the marketing strategy for the better.

Decreased Customer Service Costs

The biggest benefit of the inclusion of AI in customer service is that it makes processes cost-effective. For example, hiring employees for 24/7 support can cost you significantly more. Instead, a blend of both AI-based support and human assistance can lower operation costs.

Another benefit of using AI is that it makes different tasks more manageable and increases productivity. More productivity can translate to the need for lesser resources for a particular task. So, that’s another plus for businesses.

Conclusion

AI can improve customer service through automated responses, agent assistance, and gathering data. On top of that, your operation costs can also go down with its inclusion significantly. Therefore, more businesses are willing to adopt these technologies.