Artificial intelligence is gaining traction in different sectors, including customer service. Call centers alone spent over $3.4 billion on AI in 2019, but the market for AI in customer service sector as a whole is much greater.
AI technology offers an opportunity for businesses to enhance their services while learning more about their customers. Interestingly, AI can enhance customer service in almost all elements, including improving response time and providing predictable insights.
Some people might be aware of the potential benefits of AI in customer service on a rational level, but don’t appreciate it from a visceral perspective. They are more amenable to the idea after hearing that 91% of top companies use AI to boost their customer service strategies.
Below is how AI supercharging your customer service.
Multichannel Support
Customers prefer different channels when engaging with a business. However, some businesses find it challenging to maintain multiple channels at once. AI offers an intelligent support system that encompasses parallel support channels. Overall, AI in customer support ensures a total balance in the support system. This is actually one of the biggest customer service challenges that can be solved with AI. Besides meeting customer needs, AI also enables agents to fulfill their service commitments and relieve loaded support channels.
Most businesses can be overwhelmed with a high volume of customer queries, which can be impossible for agents to handle. However, with AI, bots provide an effective way to manage a high volume of customer inquiries. AI can also collect actionable insights on each interaction and estimate the time the next customer will wait before interacting with a live agent.
CRM Compatibility
AI can easily complement the role of CRM in your business. CRM assists in using customer data to understand their needs, but AI can step in and unveil means to offer a more personalized experience. AI uses customer data like age, gender, region, and sales history to understand their needs quickly. Additionally, AI integrated with CRM systems can assist in automating tasks in return saving time. You can engage entities like Goodway to understand how your CRM can be integrated with AI.
Improved Response Time
Most customers appreciate businesses that respond to their queries promptly. Relying on human input can result in unnecessary delays. However, leveraging AI to build a customer engagement platform can automatically deploy behavioral data from the customer to determine the right message. Additionally, using AI can monitor how different customer messages perform and then suggest the correct response in real-time.
Data Gathering
With AI, data collection is simplified significantly and unified to create a single customer view. The data is collected based on factors like the customers’ behavioral patterns. With advances, AI can quickly request the correct data without human interference. The data is analyzed and instantly responds to the needs and sentiments of the customer. Most importantly, eliminating human intervention guarantees the accuracy of the data collected.
Prediction and Insights
Insightful predictions on customer behavior can be used for future policies impacting customers based on their choices. Additionally, AI can suggest the best action for agents through understanding the proper responses to the customer-generated ticket.
Chatbot Customer Support
Customer support staff are tasked to handle multiple calls every day. They also face the challenge of reducing the time it takes to resolve customer inquiries per hour. Chatbots play a critical role in answering customer queries promptly and accurately in real-time.
AI is Invaluable to Customer Service Strategies for Most Brands
Artificial intelligence is changing many aspects of modern business. One of the overlooked departments that is evolving in response to advances in AI is customer service.
Customer service is the backbone of any industry. Based on the highlighted benefits, businesses need to leverage emerging technologies like AI to improve the customer experience to sustain growth. It is important to utilize the best AI tools to get the most of your customer service strategy.