Automation of services has picked up its fastest pace by now, giving users the much-needed facility to fulfill their regular tasks. With advanced systems powered by automated solutions, users can now book a restaurant reservation, order a pizza, book a movie ticket, or hotel room, and even make a clinic appointment. The customer service industry is gaining much momentum especially due to the disruption of Artificial Intelligence – a technological breakthrough that has taken almost every business industry by storm.
By transforming customer service interactions, AI-powered digital solutions are prepared to improve every aspect of your business including online customer experience, loyalty, brand reputation, preventive assistance, and even the generation of revenue streams. Digital market moguls project that by 2020 more than 85% of all customer support communications will be conducted without engaging any customer service representatives.
This blog delves into the subject a little more to convey how AI-powered customer service can possibly help customer support agents online.
AI for customer service: what is real?
According to a recent Zendesk study, as much as 42% of B2C customers showed more interest in purchasing after experiencing good customer service. The same study also goes on to claim that 52% of them stopped purchasing due to a single disappointing customer support interaction.
There is no argument that forward thinkers consider AI technology as a solution that will open the doors for real-time self-service for customer service platforms. Also, it is true that the technology has power enough to change the way customer service solutions are designed. However, there is a massive hype floating around about how AI-assisted responses will completely replace the need for human agents.
Though most of the excitement about AI is due to its two major capabilities:
a) Machine learning and
b) Natural language processing (NLP)
Machine learning is attributed to a powerful computing system that churns a large amount of data to learn from it. Facebook Messenger, request suggestions, and spam folders are everyday examples of AI machine learning processcesses.
Natural language processing supports your daily interactions with AI software using its ability to process and interpret spoken/written messages. Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are the best examples of evolved NLP.
Artificial Intelligence mainly revolves around these two innovative capabilities to power the job of customer support agents. Its cognitive computing power enables businesses to offer efficient services to customers.
A recent Gartner report suggests that 55% of established companies either have started making investments in the potential of artificial intelligence or are planning to do so.
Let’s learn more about how much AI can really do for today’s customer service representatives working in a call center and for the businesses they work for.
AI as a brand messenger
In the last 5 years, we have seen social media flooded with people devouring messaging apps. They are generously relying on messaging apps not just to communicate with their close ones, but also to engage with brands they are curious about or familiar with. This is why AI-powered, customized, real-time messaging bot services could provide an incredible opportunity for businesses to connect with new and existing customers and foster a unique revenue stream.
Facebook Messenger leverages powerful chatbots integrated with cognitive capabilities based on this idea. Other leading industries that are now seen galloping toward this space include fashion, tourism, food chains, airline, e-commerce, hotels, etc. Consumers are thrilled to welcome new AI technology for services they avail, and they are happy to interact with their favorite brands to book flights, hotel accommodations, travel tips, or get fashion tips.
AI for well-informed actions'
AI is swiftly disrupting the customer service space with its massive power to multi-task and quick-respond to automated queries. By limiting research time and offering considerable action plans, AI-assisted automation of customer service platforms can generate responses with accuracy and speed that humans can’t deliver.
According to Forrester’s report on customer service trends, we have already stepped into the era of automated, smarter, and more strategic customer service. Individuals will appreciate pre-emptive actions delivered by intelligent agents fuelled with artificial intelligence.
AI for customer service will not only make self-service interfaces more intuitive and economical, but its intelligence will help anticipate specific customer needs by learning from their contexts, previous chat history, and preferences. AI integrated system will capture infinite online data in order to:
· Identify customer issues
· Process and learn from gathered information
· Define customer behavior pattern
· Determine their frequent decisions and preferences
· Respond with solutions and suitable products
· Prompt with proactive alert messages
· Suggest personalized offers and discounts
· Offer real-time support (FAQs, help blogs, reports)
· Resolve issues before they arrive
· Minimize customer abandonment rate and complaints
With such a wide scope of intelligent assistance and pre-emptive recommendations, companies will leave behind a rich customer experience.
AI machine learning for extra support
If not directly, AI functions best even indirectly for customers and service agents alike. Human representatives can take extra assistance they need to serve the B2C customers. It can speed up the resolution process by discovering and delivering solutions on time on behalf of agents. By learning from repeated issues that are frequently resolved, machine learning power enables customer support to be ready for tough challenges that chatbots sometimes fail to address.
Any call center with AI machine learning capabilities can perform well by suggesting accurate solutions to specific issues. AI’s learning potential to sense human behavior patterns can contribute to both agents and customers.
Precise predictions and insight
You must have felt surprised at how the Amazon e-commerce app knows what you would like based on your frequent page visits, cart items selection, and social sharing. That right there is the essence of a machine learning algorithm, and it can be also used to predict the kind of places, entertainment, or, merchandise you prefer. Similarly, AI can make predictions about what customers would want, which ultimately benefits customer service agents. Such insightful predictions can be translated into future actions to be taken by customers based on their choices, likes, and visited content.
AI suggests the next best action for agents by learning about the most suitable responses to the customer-generated ticket. This is quite helpful in a business where product range and the number of actions are high. Agents who are new to the business especially get a great amount of help and direction.
Not only that, once predictive analytics tools are integrated into customer support, it will be easy for agents to grasp their interaction quality by knowing in advance – the customer satisfaction level and overall customer experience.
Conclusion:
AI-powered chatbots for customer support are pushing the envelope of innovation and revolutionizing the way customers are assisted. AI means high-quality customer experience, personalized support, speed & efficiency, and cost saving. Of all business segments, customer service is the one where Artificial Intelligence is hugely embraced and companies are confident about how chatbots can efficiently handle first-level queries and significantly minimize operational costs. We are most likely to experience further innovations in AI-powered applications for improving customer service solutions. Currently, major industries that rely on artificial intelligence in customer support space are food, travel, finance, retail, airline, and clothing.