AI for Customer Support: More Meaningful Interactions, Less Costly Resolutions
But customers aren't
the only ones tightening their purse strings in a volatile economy. As
companies reduce headcount and shift spending from (perceived) "cost
centers," such as Customer Support, customer service leaders have to do
more with less. Any investments in customer experience require quick, concrete
benefits to bottom lines.
So, how will companies
provide impressive service to customers while working with leaner support teams
in the coming years?
Artificial
intelligence has been at the heart of many back-office systems in customer
support for years, turning time-consuming manual processes into lightning-fast
automated workflows. But the advent of generative AI, which
interprets human language and mimics human speech, writing, and art (among
other creative outputs) means companies can help customers while also making
them feel understood and appreciated––at scale.
Generative AI tools
have the potential to revolutionize customer support for companies. By
improving agent productivity, reducing resolution times, and creating more
personalized experiences, generative AI tools can help companies save money and
compete better.
Moreover, making
customer support more enjoyable for customers will help create repeat customers
and brand loyalty.
Let's examine six jobs
that AI tools can handle for customer support teams.
1. Automate and improve support ticket routing
Businesses are using
AI to handle the tedious tasks involved in triaging and routing tickets,
freeing up agents to focus on more pressing issues.
In the past few years,
AI-powered support products have been reducing manual work for agents by
automatically tagging support tickets by category. But the release of OpenAI's
ChatGPT means AI capabilities now go beyond picking up keywords and using
decision trees to send a ticket to the right department.
Generative AI tools
can completely change the customer service experience by reading customer
messages and understanding sentiment and intent to determine the customer's
urgency level. They can write tickets for agents, summarizing key information
about the customer inquiry and highlighting any elements that might be of
particular concern. All that allows for a more personalized experience that
will ultimately lead to happier customers.
For common customer
support issues, AI tools can remove the need for ticketing altogether. Solve from Forethought, for example, can deflect customer
inquiries directly to knowledge base articles, or use those articles to
generate unique, personalized responses to customer questions. Customers can
get answers to their questions immediately—without the need for support team
help.
As companies strive to
meet rapidly increasing demand, AI-powered ticketing solutions help deflect
customer inquiries to self-service channels. That allows companies to grow at a
reduced cost, without increasing headcount.
2. Answer customer questions across multiple channels
Unhelpful customer
interactions with pre-scripted chatbots will soon be a thing of the past.
Generative AI tools can extract information from millions of documents to
deliver answers to almost any customer question in a conversational,
personalized way.
Customer support
solution companies such as Forethought and Ada have built support-specific chat tools using ChatGPT that
are designed to mimic the way humans process and understand language. Such chat
solutions are ideal for helping customers with live chat, help lines, and email
support, as well as social media support and chat.
To ensure more
helpful, on-brand answers to customer inquiries, companies can limit their
customer support chat tool's dataset to their knowledge base content.
Using automated
workflows, AI-powered support tools can also connect with CRM or e-commerce
platforms via application programming interfaces (APIs) to carry out simple
customer requests, such as reporting on order status or changing contact
information—thus eliminating wait times for customers.
Although GPT-powered
support chats are text-based for now, we anticipate voice solutions will be
developed in the next year or so.
3. Make customer interactions more personalized
When given access
to first-party customer
data, such as purchase or
website browsing history, generative AI tools can provide support interactions
tailored to the individual needs and preferences of each customer.
An AI tool can turn a
support chat with a customer into a friendly, helpful conversation that
troubleshoots known issues related to recent purchases.
Imagine a support
conversation in which a virtual agent, powered by AI, greets a customer by name
and asks whether the customer is contacting support about a recent purchase.
Once the customer confirms, the virtual agent asks about the issue. In this scenario,
let's say the customer needs a replacement part. The virtual agent arranges for
the part to be sent to the customer's mailing address and offers to have a
support team member contact the customer once the part arrives for a
walkthrough of how to install the part.
Human agents can also
partner with generative AI writing tools to give customers more white-glove
treatment. Support agents can prompt AI tools to compose follow-up emails using
customer service call or chat transcripts. The AI can tailor messaging to each
customer, summarizing the conversation and referencing "human"
moments from it, such as mentions of sports teams or complaints about the
weather. It can even recommend products based on the conversation.
In both scenarios, the
customer leaves the interaction feeling seen, valued, and supported. When
customers have that kind of experience at scale, customer satisfaction scores
and retention rates soar.
4. Assist and train customer support agents
At the handoff to
support agents, AI chatbots can help agents resolve tickets faster by providing
recommended resolutions derived from the knowledge base, previous responses,
and known bugs. Based on past interactions and similar cases. an AI solution
could suggest the best course of action for each customer interaction.
To boost productivity,
agents can use AI to automate simple or complex processes, such as processing
refunds and checking order status.
AI can also run
simulated situations for agents to respond to, providing feedback on areas
where they can improve.
With the assistance of
AI, supervisors won't need to constantly monitor calls and chats for training
purposes, freeing them up to do higher-level work.
5. Develop more effective content for help centers and knowledge
bases
Help center articles are a necessary part of providing
excellent customer service, but they can be time-consuming to create.
Generative AI tools such as Writer, Jasper, and Copy.ai can help save time by automating some of
the processes*.
AI writing tools are
trained on your company's documentation and marketing content. They can walk
writers through creating FAQs and help center articles, instantly generating
language based on information gathered from your company's materials; help keep
terminology and messaging consistent across all articles—no matter who's
writing them—by enforcing brand guidelines; and detect readability issues to
make sure the language used is accessible to all readers.
*At least
four hours were saved by using Writer to help outline and edit this article.
6. Analyze customer data to pre-empt issues
AI solutions can use
customer data to address issues before they become costly problems. By gaining
insights on customer purchase history and support interactions, businesses can
understand their customers' needs and preferences. That data can be used to improve
self-service options, find gaps in knowledge base and help center content, and
provide more personalized agent interactions.
Tools such as IrisAgent can
predict escalation and churn risk by discovering trending product and customer
experience issues detected from anomalies in support and product data and alert
CS teams.
There's no denying that generative AI will change the landscape for customer support. Even in the face of tighter operating budgets, companies already dedicated to providing more engaging and efficient support experiences can continue to do so with the help of AI tools.
AI isn't about
removing humans from Customer Support. It's about offering high-quality
interactions, empowering human support agents to do their jobs, and making
customer relationships last.
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Until next month. . . .remember. "you don't get a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression." Always make it a good one!!
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