The rapid technological advancements in the past few decades have introduced many solutions to all kinds of problems. However, most technological advancements don't even come close to the value provided by AI.
Artificial intelligence has found an application in most business practices, including improving the customer experience. Over 85% of companies today use AI to handle customer interactions without any humans involved. Machine learning and AI can identify problems, provide a solution, and address many more issues than any human ever could. Let's take a closer look at how AI helps improve the overall customer experience.
The Role of AI in Improving The Customer Experience
You must know by now that high-quality customer support makes all the difference in building trust with customers. While that's more than true, things can get very complicated if you run a business across multiple time zones, languages, or if your company suddenly starts growing.
AI customer support, on the other hand, doesn't know boundaries set by time or area. Moreover, it can handle multiple platforms and help many more customers get the support they need. Chatbots, self-service helpdesks, and other solutions can drastically improve the customer experience and scale it upon demand. Here are the main reasons why AI customer support is the future.
1. Available 24/7
AI is software that never stops working, allowing you to provide full customer support at any day and time. Once your customers know that you're there for them, your reputation and revenue will explode.
2. Efficiency
As mentioned earlier, AI is much faster at finding solutions than any human. In other words, it can provide help to an increasing number of customers without any waiting time. Moreover, the answers it provides are accurate, helpful, and immediate.
3. Improved Resource Management
Chatbots, forums, and other self-service AI customer support solutions can help without putting your call agents under pressure. The best thing about AI is that it keeps learning over time, and with enough training, it can further improve accuracy and the overall customer experience.
4. Happier, Loyal Customers
Once you win over your customer's trust, they will become loyal, happy customers. That means that they will return to buy something else in the future, and will gladly tell their family and friends about your brand. It will also provide other benefits such as lower cart abandonment rates, increased ROI, and higher customer satisfaction in the long run.
Examples of AI Customer Support
As mentioned earlier AI customer support solutions can help improve the customer experience on multiple levels. Wizata's AI customer support software is just what you need to build trust with your customers and build a stronger future for your brand. Here are some of the areas where AI has a direct impact on the customer experience.
1. Social Media Message Response
Social media is a digital asset that's perfect for reaching out to your customers. The best thing about it is that it works both ways. So, if you want to build a strong bond with your customers, you want to use all channels possible. That, of course, includes social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, etc.
Making sure that you answer your customer's questions and issues as soon as possible is key to success. However, with thousands of messages, doing everything manually can be almost impossible. That's where AI jumps into action. It can address many different questions with chatbots on time and without delay.
2. Automated Ticketing
Most customer support systems use ticketing to organize customer inquiries and improve support. They also save logs of every interaction to simplify interactions in the future. AI customer support solutions can handle inquiries from multiple channels, track every conversation and little detail to improve the system in the future. You can use collected data to create a versatile self-service knowledge base to make the entire system even more efficient.
3. Automated Routing
Since most customer support systems offer multiple help options, you will surely need a team of live agents to resolve the most complex problems. AI can help you manage resources and organize customer inquiries based on their complexity. In other words, if the issue is easily resolvable, AI will handle the interaction through chatbots or predefined answers.
That will help take the load off your agents while increasing the volume of inquiries. Your agents will be able to provide higher-quality services, which will go a long way in building a good brand reputation. The focus here is on efficiency.
4. Visual, Voice, and Text Engagement
AI can tell a lot about a person by scanning their facial expressions and voice during a video chat. Advanced voice biometrics can recognize small changes in voice during phone calls to understand the emotion behind the motivation. It can then route customers to the right agents to improve the customer experience. It can also identify sentiments that increase satisfaction and propose solutions that will increase communication quality in the long run.
5. Predictive Personalization
Every customer loves to feel respected and cared for, which is why custom buyer experiences have a drastically positive effect on sales. Most top-quality AI customer support solutions use advanced data analytics to learn customer habits and predict what products or services they might purchase.
Remember the last time you typed something on Google to get bombarded by ads selling the product you wanted to find. That's due to advanced AI that tailors the ads you see based on your interests.
The practice of predictive personalization is especially effective for eCommerce websites and online stores that collect customers data. Knowing how much time a customer spends on your site, which items they searched for, and what they bought can help you increase sales through personalization.
6. Basic Transaction Automation
AI chatbots primarily handle basic questions and provide customer support. However, they can do much more than that. For example, you can program them to place orders, update information, and even help visitors locate the nearest store. They can also handle making calling schedules, reporting, and helping customers make changes to their personal information.
7. Helping Agents with Information
If your AI customer support solution can't find the right answer using a chatbot, it will route the customer to your live agent. But instead of sending a hot potato, AI will assist the agent by providing detailed customer data helping him find the best approach to the issue. In other words, the agent will know what the problem is by simply tapping into the AI database.
8. Real-Time Customer Record Updates
AI can also collect customer information, contacts, and other details. It will add new information to the database to help your agents provide better customer support in the future. Your team members will always have the latest details about every purchase, transaction, and customer history.
ML systems can then find trends in customer data, making the entire process more efficient and accurate. Again, that will result in happier customers, as well as agents. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved.
AI as a service or AIaaS
This kind of approach refers to companies that provide out-of-box AI solutions and refers to off-the-shelf AI tools that enable companies to implement and scale AI techniques at a fraction of the cost of a full, in-house AI.
AIaaS makes AI technology accessible to everyone. Through APIs and intuitive, low-code tools, users can harness the power of AI without writing a single line of code.
The most popular types are Bots, APIs and Machine Learning.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are all industry-leading companies that have brought AIaaS offerings to many companies all around the world.
Final Words
Finding a way to stay ahead of your competitors and increase customer satisfaction isn't that hard. With the right AI customer support solution, you can have it all. AI can help you bring your customer support efforts to the next level, increase customer satisfaction, and build up your brand's reputation.
The best thing about it is that you'll be able to scale up your entire operation, provide full customer support 24/7, and do so in multiple languages. The benefits of AI customer support solutions can help you drive value to your brand and create a strong foothold on the market.
