When you’re in the customer service business, customer delight is everything. If your customers are grumpy, they’re not going to stick around. It’s plain and simple. As many as 76% of consumers will abandon your brand after lousy service. And honestly, any new business is irrelevant if customers are ditching after a couple of bad experiences. That’s why companies are leaning into AI powered customer service solutions like AI chatbots to delight their customers.
One report notes that by 2035, AI technology will boost productivity by up to 40%. In the service world, productivity matters. Customers want to avoid having to reach out to you, preferring self-service over everything else. And no one wants their day hijacked by a long phone call where they have to sit on hold just to get a question answered.
Customers today want speedy service. In a recent survey, 70% of respondents indicated that they expected a response from a brand on the same day. When your call center is slammed with calls, and you’ve got an enormous backlog in the email inbox, how do you even begin to meet those expectations?
That’s where AI powered customer service comes in. Let’s dive into what AI can do for your customer service strategy, how to use it best, and what platforms are available.
What is AI powered customer service?
Simply put, AI powered customer service uses artificial intelligence features like machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to improve customer service interactions by answering customer questions and automating tasks. With AI chatbots, service teams can engage with customers and respond to their queries without human intervention, providing immediate assistance 24/7.
But hold on. How does it work exactly? Two capabilities of AI are most helpful in customer service:
- Machine learning: A powerful computing system that churns a large amount of data to learn from it. This feature allows a chatbot to suggest responses, automate workflows, and improve responses over time.
- Natural language processing (NLP): A feature of AI that means it can understand and interpret human language, respond to questions, provide info, or even complete tasks for you.
Your brain is probably running wild with ideas for how this tech could be a game-changer for your team. But let’s talk benefits first.
Top 3 benefits of AI powered customer service
There are three benefits of AI powered customer service that rise to the top.
1. Immediate service and fast resolution
Customers want fast service. AI chatbots make that possible. When your team is overwhelmed with a high volume of requests, AI powered customer service can step in to handle simple customer queries. It can also serve up useful tools, articles, and answers direct from your knowledge base to give customers help fast, without any human intervention.
AI chatbots can also access customer data to quickly provide personalized responses and relevant solutions. With AI, deliver faster service to boost your customer satisfaction rates.
2. Reduced costs
AI powered customer service can reduce costs for your business. How can you possibly meet the demands of your customers without adding more employees? But, of course, personnel are expensive. With every new employee, you’re adding recruiting and hiring costs, new costs of wages and benefits, and a massive investment of time and resources to train and onboard your new hire.
Now, don’t get me wrong. You can’t replace your whole workforce with bots, but AI can significantly reduce the number of human agents necessary.
3. Scalability
AI powered customer service also allows for scalability within the org. As you grow and your customer base increases, AI chatbots can seamlessly handle more requests without additional staff. With a scalable solution, you can adapt and grow as a team without interrupting your operational efficiency or experiencing any dip in customer satisfaction.
Challenges with AI powered customer service
Of course, no technology is perfect. There are always challenges. So we want to be transparent with you about what can be challenging with AI powered customer service.
Limited responses
AI chatbots can only provide the responses and solutions you have programmed them with. Today, 47% of customers note that they can only sometimes get accurate or helpful answers from a chatbot. That kind of defeats the point of them, right?
If your team goes in unprepared, your customers will get little help from a chatbot. It takes a fair amount of preparation to build out your conversational AI and your internal knowledge base so your bot can learn what to tell customers. Devote time to do so and prepare a strategy to get the most from your AI powered customer service.
Lack of human interaction
Up to 46% of customers get frustrated that they don’t have a choice in human vs. bot at the start of service. I’ll tell you myself — sometimes I want to talk to a person, especially if I have a more complex issue to talk through.
While AI powered customer service can automate many tasks quickly and get simple questions answered, it can’t replace the need for human interaction. Customers may still prefer more personalized interactions with humans over machines at times. It’s essential to maintain some level of human customer service. Ensure your team can take over customer interactions from bots at any point. You don’t want your AI to cost you a happy customer.
Maintenance of AI
Maintainance for complex AI systems is undoubtedly a challenge. With AI powered customer service, there’s a need for human oversight. No tech will be perfect. So someone needs to be in place to monitor the AI and ensure that customers are receiving the best possible service. This upkeep can be time-consuming and costly, keeping you from all your other management tasks.
Be sure you have someone — an IT director, a customer service manager, a tech-savvy representative — who owns the maintenance of your AI chatbots to have scalable success with the technology.
Automate Your Work
Capacity’s enterprise AI chatbot can help:
- Answer FAQs anytime, anywhere
- Find relevant documents within seconds
- Give surveys and collect feedback
Top 5 platforms for AI powered customer service
1. Happy Fox
HappyFox is a software that provides a centralized platform for managing customer queries from various sources, including email, chat, phone, and social media. Its smart rules engine enables businesses to automate complex and repetitive workflows, making it possible to handle even tricky queries without manual intervention.
2. Freshdesk
Freshdesk’s Freddy AI tool uses advanced NLP models and 30,000 machine learning models trained on big data to personalize enterprise-grade services. You can employ Freshdesk’s Freddy AI bots to instantly automate resolutions, saving time for support agents and customers alike. By digitizing IVRs, you can gather all the information and direct your conversations to the appropriate agent groups.
3. Balto
Balto is an AI customer service and sales app that assists call center agents with resources and prompts. Balto’s platform uses ML models to fetch carefully worded phrases and questions at the right time, exactly when your agent needs them. With Balto, reduce the time required to search for information so you can give faster customer support.
4. JitBit
Jitbit offers automation rules that use the “if this, do that” model. This platform helps you automate monotonous tasks and send SLA alerts, resulting in faster resolution times. Jitbit’s ticketing system also provides information on the query’s priority, category, and source (web app, messaging platform, etc.) so you can gather full context on the request. Additionally, Jitbit provides multilingual support for more than 25 languages.
5. Capacity
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Capacity. Capacity is an AI powered customer service platform that helps businesses provide personalized customer service and support. With its advanced NLP (Natural Language Processing) technology, Capacity’s AI chatbots can interpret complex questions from customers and respond accurately within seconds. It also offers a range of customization options, allowing customers to tailor their chatbot experience based on their preferences.
Want to try out Capacity firsthand? Sign up for a free trial or request a personalized demo today!
