What is AI customer support?
AI customer support uses artificial intelligence to solve low-level service issues. AI can answer common customer questions, manage nuanced tickets, and personalize consumer experiences. This leads to shorter wait times, better agent productivity, and higher revenue. Ultimately, AI customer support is one of the best ways to improve your business. 94% of consumers are more likely to buy again after good customer service.
How can AI automate customer support?
Think of AI customer support as your team’s first line of defense. Intelligent support technology can field and resolve any low-level service inquiries. Agents then can use their time to resolve nuanced issues faster and more accurately.
Chatbots are the easiest way to automate low-level questions. They can engage the customer within seconds and do more than answer simple questions. Chatbots can also quote pricing, recommend products, and capture buyer information.
Advanced conversational AI even identifies and responds to buyer intent. Capacity’s chatbot, for example, can select appropriate follow-up questions during a conversation and provide customized welcome messages. Chatbots personalize your support funnel to capture interest when you need it most.
But conversational AI is not the only way to automate customer support.
Robotic process automation (RPA) technology can complete routine tasks such as ticket creation, routing, and escalation. When your AI doesn’t know an answer, RPA is smart enough to send the nuanced issue to the right person at the right time.
AI and RPA can even automate customer feedback surveys, continuously improving your buyer experience. 88% of customers say that their experience at a business is as important as its products. We must get that experience right.
Customer expectations are higher than ever before. Businesses must meet them to keep growing. Beyond providing front-line support, AI tools drive tangible results.
So what are the specific benefits of implementing AI on your helpdesk?
10 benefits of AI customer support
1. Higher customer engagement
Your team can’t work 24/7. AI customer support tools can. Whether you get five questions a day or 5,000, chatbots and automation platforms can answer them whenever they come in. Providing customers with answers and support 24/7 drives their loyalty and increases their likelihood of returning to your business.
2. Streamlined customer journeys
With better engagement comes a better experience. Customers expect companies to understand what they want. AI support tools recognize buyer intent by connecting with customer data, like previous interactions or purchases.
If customers have a slight issue, an AI-powered helpdesk can ensure agents have all they need to solve it. The ticket will contain all relevant information about the customer and their journey, reducing confusion and resolution times.
3. Improved agent satisfaction
It’s not productive to answer the same questions. Over. And over. And over.
AI-powered chatbots take care of the little things, so agents can do the hard stuff—like building customer relationships. With more valuable tasks on their to-do list, agents become more efficient and proud of their work. Agent satisfaction is vital to building a support funnel that helps your business grow.
4. Strengthened brand recognition
What is the best thing about taking care of your customers? They’ll recommend your business to others. An established, consistent experience builds trust and loyalty. Companies who use automation can expect between a 30 to a 200% increase in ROI after the first year—and it’s easy to understand why.
5. Intelligent buyer insights
You can’t grow your business without seeing where it needs to improve. See exactly how your support desk is performing. Many AI customer support solutions have built-in analytics dashboards, so you can track how customers engage with your helpdesk and identify ways to improve.
6. Optimized support teams
Better insights also allow you to redesign your support desk. Make the best use of your resources so that they can drive more value to your business than ever before.
7. Higher accuracy
Support automation platforms like Capacity store all your company knowledge. Since all support channels are connected, you can be sure that your chatbot has the correct answers. Resolutions for nuanced issues are more accurate too. Internal knowledge bases allow agents to collaborate on and reference past solutions, so turnaround times are even faster.
8. Reduced costs
Let’s do the math. Faster resolution times plus higher accuracy, minus unnecessary tasks, multiplied by happier customers, equals…support as an asset, not an expense. AI customer support is the best way to reduce costs while still providing the same quality service—if not better.
9. More opportunities to scale
With lower costs and better insights, scaling up your support process is so much easier. Launch a new product, revamp your website, or acquire a new company with AI as your sidekick. Reach customers in new and better ways than ever before…without straining your wallet or support team.
10. A healthier, stronger business
Be Netflix, not Blockbuster. Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation are here to stay: since 2020, the number of decision-makers using AI at work has increased by 88%.
Support platforms like Capacity design their solutions to help teams do their best work. Use AI customer support to work smarter than you ever have.
Every AI customer support tool should have these things…
There are a lot of customer support AI solutions out there. But not all are created equal. If you are choosing a vendor, here’s a quick list of what you should look for:
- 90%+ answer rates
The higher the accuracy rate, the better. Capacity is the only AI helpdesk that deflects over 9 out of 10 questions from support teams. Natural language processing (NLP) encourages the AI to learn over time, so it gets more accurate the more you use it.
- Complete data compliance
Ensure your privacy is safe by using solutions that strive to protect it. Whatever industry you’re in, look for compliance badges when researching. Adherence to CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA, FERPA, and SOC 2 (Type II) guidelines is the best way to keep you and your customers safe.
- Integration capabilities to your critical systems
Before any technology can transform your business, it needs to work with the tools you already use. Connect your tech stack to make the most of all your AI solutions. Anything from email inboxes to CRMs can connect to a support automation platform like Capacity.
One last thing to remember when researching AI tools for customer support? Don’t reinvent the wheel. Choose a solution that is easy to implement and use.
If you’ve read this far, hello! You might be wondering where to start looking at AI customer support solutions. Luckily, we’ve researched for you.
3 ways Capacity beats the competition
Capacity deflects more questions, provides better insights, and offers more opportunities to scale than any other solution in the market today.
1. The “Omnibot”
Most customer support chatbots sit on your front page. But customers expect support to come to them. You can deploy our conversational AI anywhere customers (and employees) ask questions: email, Slack or Microsoft Teams, and even SMS.
The best part is wherever questions come in, Capacity can answer them: our answer rate is over 90%. For every ten customer questions, less than one will distract your team.
2. We are a platform, not a point solution
We designed Capacity to be an all-in-one AI support automation platform. Whatever’s involved in supporting your customers, Capacity can help. Not only does our platform keep things simple, but it saves you money, too.
3. We drink our own champagne
At Capacity, we know from experience that we can help you do your best work. We love our platform so much that we use it, too. Our Customer Success Managers connect with their clients through Capacity every single day. Session Replay allows CSMs to recreate bugs, which they record in our Knowledge Base for other CSMs to reference later.
But the possibilities are endless! We also use Capacity to request PTO or quickly pull up files.
Our mission goes beyond the AI-powered helpdesk—Capacity is a support automation platform that builds solutions for any support need.
Scale your Business with AI Customer Support
AI tools for customer support are a cheap but effective way to grow. Accurate self-service options build customer loyalty, while optimized workloads promote agent satisfaction. You can optimize your support desk’s resources and reduce costs with analytics to guide you.
Scale today with a free trial of Capacity!
