Studies show that the most common way for companies to use artificial intelligence (AI) is in customer service, with 56% of businesses doing so. If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, how can you benefit from AI-powered customer service?
Uncover the advantages of AI in contact centers and the features you should be using.
Key Takeaways:
- Using AI-powered customer service saves time and money.
- AI also helps you offer consistent, personalized service while reducing agent burnout.
- Bring AI into your contact center to automate workflows and enhance agent training.
- AI also lets you offer 24/7 multilingual service.
Why You Need AI-Powered Customer Service
Maybe your contact center is already running relatively smoothly. If that’s the case, why should you still consider enhancing it with AI-powered customer service?
In business, there’s always room for improvement and ways to get further ahead. With AI, you can:
- Lower your costs
- Present a consistent and reliable brand
- Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Reduce agent burnout
Like whipped cream on a shake or sprinkles on donuts, the power of AI can take a great thing and make it even better. Remember, automated solutions let you do more with less.
5 Ways To Implement AI-Powered Customer Service
Try to employ at least a few of these methods for AI-powered customer service — if not all of them!
1. Automate Workflows
A primary purpose of AI is to automate time-consuming tasks. Machines handle routine actions so employees can go to work on value-adding assignments that computers can’t handle.
For example, a high-volume customer may have a standard product return. In the past, they may have had to call your company, wait for the appropriate agent to become available, and talk through the process. This method eats up everyone’s time.
With AI-powered customer service, a virtual agent responds instantly. It can guide the customer through accessing the form and tracking the return without a human’s help. AI receptionists handle routing calls to the appropriate individuals if a request needs human interaction.
AI assistants also serve as easy access to your company’s knowledge base. Human agents can locate information much more quickly by simply making a request to your AI. Because you’re using an internal system that does not train itself on your data, you don’t have to worry about security or compliance.
During a call, a human employee may even realize that AI can do the bulk of the work with a little guidance. With prompts, the AI assistant can generate content and even write code to handle an issue.
2. Personalize Your Service and Support
Wouldn’t you like customers to view your brand like the friendly local establishment “where everybody knows their names”? Customers expect personalized interactions more than ever, especially when getting service and support.
Your AI-powered customer service never rests and constantly collects data to provide tailored interactions. One example of this is reminding a customer about an abandoned cart.
The bot may be able to determine that the customer has a concern. It can then offer to answer any questions.
AI could also address any issues with the checkout procedure. If it seems the customer is looking for a better price, your automated system can offer an appropriate discount or special promotion to complete the sale.
Of course, you can’t leave personalizing service and support completely in the hands of computers. AI-powered customer service also shares relevant information with agents and supervisors.
With sentiment analysis, AI can provide key information about the caller’s query and level of frustration before forwarding the call. By providing caller details at the start of the interaction, agents don’t enter a conversation blindly. They can be ready to serve the exact issue at hand.
If the agent can’t handle the situation on the first call, AI preserves all details conveniently in the system for the next interaction. As a result, your contact center functions as a fluid and organized unit that your customers will love to deal with.
3. Be Available 24/7
It’s good to be able to serve customers around the clock. However, it isn’t always practical to pay human agents to do so.
AI-powered customer service is available at all hours of the day. At a minimum, your virtual agents can handle basic requests and reassure clients that a human will contact them during business hours.
4. Reach a Multilingual Audience
As conversational AI advances, it is able to detect and translate more languages in real time. Multilingual support allows you to expand your market and customer base.
5. Enhance Your Onboarding and Training
The backbone of your customer service is still your staff. In fact, that’s who you’re ultimately empowering the most with your AI-powered customer service.
AI automates evaluations and quality control on a large scale. This gives managers and supervisors practical insights to improve training and onboarding.
Agents are able to review their performance more frequently in their own dashboards. This information lets them adjust to feedback more rapidly.
Harness AI-Powered Customer Service With Intermedia’s World-Class Cloud Communications Platform
You might be wondering how to get started with AI-powered customer service. Intermedia’s crack support team is ready to help.
Contact our agents to take a closer look at how our cloud communications platform helps you take full advantage of AI-powered customer service.
Mark Sher
Mark Sher, a 30-year telecom and cloud communications executive, is the SVP of Product Marketing for Intermedia Cloud Communications, a leading provider of UCaaS, CCaaS, and business cloud application solutions to partners and the businesses they serve. In his role, Mark has global responsibility for all direct and indirect product marketing at Intermedia including product launches, product messaging and positioning, competitive intelligence, analyst relations, and cross-channel pricing.
June 7, 2024
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