The Impact Of AI On The Customer Service Industry

It might be a long while before you can migrate to another planet or even take a holiday to it but that doesn’t mean that you haven’t been on holiday to some place on Earth. Busy schedule? Traveled for work at some point?

Either way, we’re sure you’re aware that people face problems while traveling that require them to contact customer support executives. These issues could pertain to flight tickets, confirmations, hotel reservations, general inquiries, special requests or other questions.

Sometimes these issues are resolved and sometimes not. Sometimes people face difficulties in explaining what the problem is and sometimes customer service lines are busy or agents are unavailable. Especially when many people call in, sometimes for the same issues!

This is where AI-powered and automated tools are helpful. They can handle a near-infinite number of customers and answer a variety of questions, based on their training. Ahead of this, they can also carry out a range of functions to enhance the customer service experience for businesses and for customers.

What exactly does AI in customer service mean? Let’s launch ourselves to explore that space!
 

What Does AI In Customer Service Entail?

Ask any businessperson and they’ll tell you how crucial possessing quality customer service is.

In the words of Jerry Gregoire, former SVP and CIO of Dell Computer Corporation, “We have entered the era of the customer. Today, providing customers with outstanding customer service is essential to building loyal customers and a long lasting brand.”

Customer service consists of assisting and supporting customers before, during and after the delivery of services or purchases. Ensuring that customers remain happy is vital to businesses, which is why they look to leverage any technology they can to enhance the processes.

With the progress made in AI in the last few years, including the introduction of GenAI, businesses have turned to the capabilities they offer to better their workflows and increase productivity across business verticals. This includes customer service efforts.

According to Goldman Sachs, AI could replace 300 million full-time jobs in the sector. However, most experts disagree with that assessment and instead say AI will augment and automate processes but not replace people.

Remember, even the futuristic and completely automated Avalon, which was preprogrammed for a 120-year journey, needed human intervention to be corrected.

However, we’re not denying that AI can improve and enhance customer service efforts. It brings various capabilities such as automating tasks, augmenting experiences, providing detailed analysis, predictive analytics, capable chatbots and assisting customer service agents.

All of these result in a range of benefits. Join us, as we explore Planet Benefits!
 

Key Benefits Of AI In Customer Service

AI is disrupting industries on a global scale – but you knew that! From reduced costs to faster processes and everything in between. This includes the customer service industry, which comes as no surprise, considering its myriad of benefits, including:
 

• Quick Delivery Of Services

  Businesses face difficulties in scaling the number of agents based on customer traffic. Every customer is important and their queries must be delivered promptly, proactively and effectively. Incorporating AI helps businesses tend to many customer queries, solving simple ones quickly and freeing up agents to handle tougher requests. More importantly, AI can help detect and solve issues before customers experience them. This is done by referencing previous interactions, identifying customer query patterns, prioritizing cases, delivering alerts proactively, finding root causes of problems and more.

• Providing Quality Support

  It’s not just about quick delivery, it’s about quality! Customer requests vary from simple to complex issues. Here, AI can solve simple problems instantly, without them having to wait for an agent. Alternatively, complex problems can be handled by agents that are kept free thanks to AI. Furthermore, AI helps offer personalized solutions by leveraging their preferences to increase customer satisfaction. AI can also identify opportunities for improvements, as well as monitor and track agent and team performances.

 

• Data Handling

  Businesses amass large amounts of data, all of which come in handy when dealing with customer grievances. It’s important to have the information readily available to be used, whether by an AI assistant or by a human agent. AI helps businesses by analyzing, processing, sorting and pulling up the right data at the right time, to produce efficient, productive and cost-efficient outputs.

• Future Preparation

  AI makes it easier for businesses to adapt to changing situations, like a rise in call volumes, service requests, queries, etc. without having to make rash future decisions. Additionally, it can help businesses understand customers better by detecting changes in customer behavior and interest levels while providing deeper insights, approach methods and priorities. Moreover, it helps in predicting future trends in industries, brands, marketing styles and more.

Ahead of this, the use of AI brings one vital benefit to businesses that quite often is the primary factor in incorporating technology – cost saving. Quick service equals satisfaction, which equals loyalty. It’s not rocket science to understand that AI will impact customer service. How? Scroll on!
 

How Is AI Impacting Customer Service?

AI comes swinging in with real-time processing of large amounts of data and everyone’s happy because of it. It helps businesses deliver quicker services with better quality, agents by taking care of simple and routine tasks and customers by providing creative, innovative, personalized and timely solutions to their problems. It’s crystal-clear AI’s going to have a huge impact on customer service! Here’s how:
 

• Ruling The Game With Data

  Businesses live and breathe data, right? Money can come and go but if data comes, it doesn’t go! The triad of data, AI and analytics helps businesses make smart decisions. By analyzing customer preferences, habits and patterns, AI can set businesses on a path of quality, personalized delivery. Ahead of this, AI enables businesses to use market insights to prepare for potential trends, events and consumer demands. On the performance front, AI shows businesses how they rank among their customers and how effective their teams are using a range of metrics to understand resolution times, success rates, wait time and more.

• Providing High Efficiency

  Coming in at light speed (exaggeration) are the improvements that AI brings in terms of efficiency. Particularly with GenAI, businesses can offer their customers chatbots that can carry quick conversations to resolution or provide automated responses to simple queries. The best part? These chatbots are available 24/7/365 (366 if it’s a leap year) and can reply in human-like language. Customers may not be able to tell the difference at times. This capability also allows customers to choose where they’d like to interact, i.e., phone, text, chat, email or apps, all while delivering personalized support.

• Honing Personalized Experiences

  Speaking about personalization, the inclusion of AI enables businesses to tailor their interactions with customers based on their browsing patterns, personal preferences and other habits. This enables businesses to provide customized suggestions for products and services. Instead of barraging customers with random ads or emails, AI is enabling businesses to create highly targeted campaigns based on their interests, which provides for better conversions and effective campaigns. An emerging trend in this regard is customers using AI tools to shop for them, instead of spending time researching items.

• Enhancing Processes

  The incorporation of AI into customer service processes allows businesses to free up agents to handle more pressing issues, while AI solves the easy ones by automating tasks and completing routine activities. AI also works in tandem with CRM systems to provide insights and details of customers to agents quickly. Now, businesses can even address high call volumes through AI-powered systems, reducing the need for outsourcing. All of this results in cost efficiencies for businesses.

Are the passengers ready to deboard? We’ve reached our destination!

 

Ending The Call

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining industries. This includes customer service. Moving ahead, it’s inevitable that AI will play a bigger role in the industry, as it improves productivity, reduces costs and resolution time and facilitates self-service through automation. On the other hand, it will also provide agents with the right tools and insights to quickly deal with customer grievances, while improving their experience and boosting satisfaction.

We hope you were a happy customer while reading all about the benefits and impact of AI on Customer Service and we hope you recommend us to your friends and colleagues!