8 Ways to Use AI in Customer Service
Providing a positive customer experience is the best way to close more sales and ensure customers are satisfied after their purchase. However, offering your customers advice and assistance on the purchase and use of your products is challenging. Thankfully, there are effective ways to use AI in customer service to speed up and automate the process. Improving your customer experience is essential since the increased popularity of online shopping has also brought higher user expectations. Putting your customers first is easy and effective with the aid of AI, and you can also gain valuable insights while doing so. Therefore, here are 8 ways to use AI in customer service.
Using AI in Customer Service
Before we dive deeper into the different methods for improving your customer service, we would like to dispel a few myths regarding AI and automation. Machine learning and AI algorithms have become much more efficient and widespread over the past few years. Automatization isn’t reserved for large companies and industry giants. Nowadays, even small and medium-sized businesses can afford AI-powered tools. AI can help you streamline and improve everyday operations and entirely take over mundane tasks such as data entry. This can free up valuable time for your customer service representatives to do what they do best – interact with customers. Here are the best ways to make that happen:
Caption: Reducing the workload for your employees with AI automation is one of the 8 ways to use AI in customer service.
1. Chatbots
Chatbots are one of the most recognizable and widespread forms of AI integration for customer service. You can train chatbots to offer solutions for the most common problems customers face when navigating your website or completing purchases. Having your FAQ in the form of a chatbot can be particularly effective for businesses offering services since customers typically have more questions than they do for products. For example, the travel industry relies on chatbots to help inform users about baggage allowance on their selected flights. Instead of asking a sales representative about all the details regarding their travel, chatbots can offer relevant information with just a few clicks.
2. Personalized Customer Service
Even if your website and online shopping forms are streamlined and simple to use, it doesn’t mean users will find the experience engaging. No one gets excited sifting through a boring product catalog. Fortunately, you can use AI to personalize the experience and offer customers products based on their preferences. Your website can immediately offer products that naturally fit together or are frequently combined in the same order. Most customers will expect customization or upgrade options for the products they purchase. AI can help you recommend the best options based on their purchase information and product usage.
Caption: Users form their inputs differently based on the device they are using.
3. Machine Learning
Tracking customer purchase information will leave you with vast amounts of data. You can use machine learning for data analysis to gain insights into customer behavior patterns and shopping habits. This information can tell you where users typically experience problems in their customer journey. Furthermore, machine learning can give a predictive analysis that is incredibly useful for sales agents and representatives. Through machine learning, chatbots can improve over time based on previous customer interactions.
4. Robotic Process Automation
Automating mundane tasks is one of the best ways to use AI in customer service. Why require your sales reps to fill out customer data sheets or update records when you can offload these jobs to robotic process automation (RPA)? Using AI to handle repetitive or simple interactions can improve the efficiency of your customer service department. Besides saving you time and money, automation can allow your sales agents to dedicate themselves to direct customer interactions. This sort of resource allocation will naturally improve employee morale since no one likes spending time on mundane, repetitive tasks.
5. Natural Language Processing
When users fill up queries, they don’t always use semantics suitable for database searching. Thankfully, AI algorithms have gotten much better at deciphering the intent behind user inputs. Customers can now use a relaxed syntax (often the case with voice inputs) and still find the results they were looking for. Additionally, real-time analysis of customer calls, chat inputs, or emails can give us a better understanding of customer needs and expectations. AI can detect which customer interactions require expedited resolution based on the customer’s detected levels of frustration.
Caption: Don’t frustrate your users with slow response times.Caption: Don’t frustrate your users with slow response times.
6. Speed Up Response Time
When customers need assistance with completing their purchase or getting additional product information, they usually need to wait until a sales representative is available. AI can measure customer wait times and help reps prioritize specific customers. Furthermore, agents will have all the relevant information handy even before they contact the customer in need of assistance. This can save prep time and speed up the resolution of customer issues. However, web design experts from Digital Dot recommend streamlining the process through which customers can ask for assistance. This can include an intuitive website design and implementing visible click-to-call buttons.
7. Recommend Action for Service Representatives
How often did a service representative contact you without knowing what issue you needed help with? Even when you explain where you require assistance, they might not have an effective solution handy. Most customer service reps stick to a simple flowchart, and deviating from that can cause delays. In these situations, you’ll probably have to wait until they find a workable resolution for your problem. However, if you use AI in customer service calls, your representatives will always have the best-recommended action available. AI can perform complex troubleshooting in real-time, eliminating the need for further follow-ups.
8. Automated Query Management
If your business deals with a large volume of orders and customer queries, you can implement AI bots to help you manage the workload. Responding to customer questions and emails can take a lot of time. However, once you set up your system, you will have a much easier time responding to customers. Automated responses are also a huge time saver that can lead to significant savings from week to week.
Final Thoughts on How to Use AI in Customer Service
Any system you implement to streamline customer interactions can allow you to handle more cases, resolve issues faster, and offer an improved customer experience. We’ve covered 8 ways to use AI in customer service; however, as algorithms are constantly evolving, we can expect to see further implementation in the future.