You’re not alone if it seems like there’s a new AI-powered gadget popping up wherever you look these days.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become ubiquitous, much like Furbies in the late 1990s and Uggs in the 2000s. In their most recent study on the state of AI, McKinsey called 2023 “generative AI’s breakout year” since it has progressed to such an extent.
Many online business owners and customer service executives are wondering how AI solutions like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which are becoming more sophisticated, may benefit their support staff, improve customer experiences, and provide them a competitive edge.
Leaders are also questioning how to steer clear of frequent AI usage errors in order to save money on gaudy but unproductive solutions.
Our Changing Perspective On The Use Of AI In Customer Service
At Help Scout, the development and introduction of generative AI has spurred a similar change in us.
It’s an exciting moment, and it’s given us the chance to experiment and develop capabilities like AI assist and summarize, which help your support personnel save time and effort while also fostering stronger client relationships.
However, we also understand that AI isn’t a universally applicable option for customer support staff.
Just as a custom-fit garment fits you better than a store-bought one, the effectiveness of AI for your company hinges on how well you comprehend the demands of both your support staff and your customers.
Generally speaking, obtaining the advantages of AI mostly depends on how well you incorporate AI into your customer service procedures and tools.
In the long run, the comfort and improved fit of a tailored shirt will more than make up for the extra time, effort, and money it requires up front.
What AI Is And Isn’t In Customer Service?
The vast category of machine learning (ML) includes the majority of AI techniques utilized in customer service. Additionally, they typically come under the somewhat narrower category of using large language models (LLMs) that produce text that appears human through the application of natural language processing (NLP).
To put it simply, these are devices that can process enormous amounts of data and utilize it to produce dialogue that sounds human in response to prompts and questions.
Even while we refer to these technologies as artificial intelligence when discussing them, it’s crucial to realize that this is more of a word shorthand than a precise description of what’s going on within.
Not even Open AI’s ChatGPT, the most potent large language model currently accessible to the general public, qualifies as artificial intelligence. It is limited to predicting the word that is most likely to appear next in a sequence using the information that has been provided.
Furthermore, despite ChatGPT’s human-like speech, it is not capable of processing or utilizing information in the same manner as people.
It can occasionally piece together information in ways that are false or illogical since it doesn’t truly comprehend the information that it has been given. Sound judgment and meaningful critical thinking are beyond the capabilities of generative AI.
Sadly, it is also incapable of realizing when it has erred. “A confident response by an AI that does not seem to be justified by its training data” is what’s known as a hallucination.
We’re outlining this not to dissuade your customer service company from utilizing AI, but rather to be transparent about what AI can and cannot accomplish.
When applied and utilized properly, generative AI has the potential to be a very potent tool, but ultimately, it’s simply another tool. It is difficult to utilize a tool correctly when you are unaware of its capabilities.
This is another reason why AI is typically unable to fully substitute human agents, particularly in scenarios requiring a high level of customer trust or in which contextual complexity exists.
How Artificial Intelligence Can Support Customer Care Staff And Enhance The Client Experience?
After learning what artificial intelligence (AI) is and isn’t capable of, let’s discuss some of its amazing capabilities.
Depending on where you require customer service, you can use AI tools in multiple locations:
Helping your agents prepare responses and exchange information throughout consumer engagements.
Assist your agents in capturing images and drafting papers for documentation.
By using chatbots driven by AI on your website or support center, you may offer round-the-clock, real-time assistance for common questions and problems.
Finding patterns and trends in product problems or consumer behavior using your analytics tools.
- Using AI To Enhance Communication With Customers
Everybody has been there. You need to escalate your customer’s issue to another team because they are dealing with a really annoying bug.
You understand how important it is to have a well-written description of the issue, but creating a superior bug report requires time, which is not always available in a hectic inbox.
More than 70% of clients believe that customer service representatives ought to collaborate so clients won’t have to repeat information. And who is to blame for them? We’ve all experienced the frustration of having to keep explaining a situation to someone until they can finally help.
This is the sweet spot for generative AI technologies, such as Help Scout’s AI summary. An intricate conversation can be quickly summarized using AI summarize, which creates a clear bullet point summary that makes it simple for a new agent or team to catch up.
It entails spending more time solving client problems rather than summarizing.
Additionally, you can use AI tools to improve and even automate the caliber of your client interactions.
In email exchanges, for example, Help Scout’s AI support functions as a personal writing assistant, assisting agents in maintaining the support voice and style of your business. It functions in tandem with your agent to support them in promptly modifying the duration or tone of a communication.
Another method to increase customer conversations and save time is to use AI to automate your quality assurance (QA) program. Numerous AI-powered quality assurance technologies, such as Klaus or MaestroQA, may automatically analyze client sentiment, do root cause analysis, and review conversations.
Tools like this might be quite helpful if your customer care team is tiny or if your QA program is just getting started.
- Artificial Intelligence In Help Desks And Documentation
Customers favor help centers over all other self-service choices, and about 70% of them will attempt to fix a problem on their own initially.
Generative AI is now being used by several documentation tools to support your team. Some, like Scribe, can automatically take screenshots of your work while you work with the product, step by step.
ChatGPT may compose preliminary drafts or assist with editing your guides and how-to articles.
Similar to consumer interactions, these resources are excellent for providing your agents with a base of operations. Your team members only need to fill in the blanks and double-check outputs to make sure they’re accurate and consistent with the rest of your knowledge base because they reduce the need for manual labor.
- Using AI For Conversation Assistance
Leaders in customer service have long realized that offering chat assistance is typically a more cost-effective and efficient approach to assist customers. Better still, a lot of clients like live chat over email or phone assistance.
A chatbot driven by AI may be the best way to provide quick, individualized assistance. When AI chatbots are integrated with your other support systems, they facilitate automation and customisation at scale, in addition to enabling you to offer basic customer care around-the-clock.
Customers can quickly and simply manage things like orders, subscriptions, and refunds at their convenience thanks to their easy-to-use platform.
However, there’s a catch: while chatbots have been around for a while, generative AI is a more recent development.
The majority of these so-called chatbots weren’t truly artificial intelligence until 2023. They frequently needed a lot of labor to set up and manage, and they weren’t producing responses for clients.
Numerous chatbot tools have begun incorporating generative AI into their solutions since its inception. True chat “bots” are evolving into software that can comprehend text inputs and, using the data it has absorbed, produce responses that resemble those of a human.
The lesson learned is to confirm that a chatbot your customer support team is considering is genuinely driven by generative AI. This should improve the user experience for your consumers and lessen the work required to maintain and apply your tool.
- AI-Driven Customer Insights And Analytics
Massive volumes of data can be analyzed by AI systems. It is essential to their operation. These customer insight solutions can now provide actionable summaries of trends, highlights, and issues from your customer data thanks to the development of generative AI.
As an illustration, consider this: Every day, your staff has thousands of conversations with customers, yet it can be challenging to discern the topic of those exchanges. It’s possible that you’ll feel reactive, like you’re constantly rushing to put out fires.
Your reaction time can be sped up by an AI-powered analytics tool, which can summarize the topics of your talks significantly more quickly than a human could. For instance, it might detect a fault with a product before your agents do, or it might identify that products coming from a particular facility are more likely to have manufacturing flaws.
Things To Watch Out For When Using AI In Customer Support
Although it’s a rapidly developing topic, artificial intelligence has the potential to be a very strong tool for customer support teams. In the end, thoroughly screening products and making sure they work well with your team will determine a large portion of your success with AI.
Stated differently, don’t fall into the AI fallacy.
When beginning your AI journey, keep the following factors in mind:
Data security: Any AI provider you are considering should be able to describe how they plan to use and safeguard the data that their tool collects, whether that data comes from clients or your own organization. Although HIPAA certification, SOC 2 compliance, and other measures might provide comfort, you should never be afraid to inquire directly about the use of your data.
Integration: It will always take time to fully incorporate AI into your workflows and teach your agents on how to use it efficiently. You shouldn’t cut corners on this one because, as they say, AI is only as good as its training. This entails routine optimization and monitoring to make sure it’s operating as it should.
Customer expectations: It’s important to control what your customers anticipate from your AI products. Don’t, for example, guarantee a deep chatbot experience if all it can do is provide articles from your help center. Additionally, it is a good idea to be upfront with clients about when they can expect to speak with a human and when they will be speaking with a bot (pro tip: always make it easy for them to talk to a human).
This brings us to the final and most crucial point to watch out for: depending too much on AI.
The overwhelming majority of consumers still prefer to speak with a human, both domestically (82%) and internationally (74%). We advise you to place a high value on interpersonal relationships. When it comes time for them to make another purchase, your consumers and the friends and family they recommended your product to will recall that interaction.
Venture Fearlessly (And Responsibly) Into The Uncharted Territory Of AI
Because so many of the possible uses for AI are yet unknown, it’s an intriguing new field. Nevertheless, the advantages of artificial intelligence (AI) in customer service today cannot be disputed: happier workers with more time to devote to problem-solving and skill-building, as well as more delighted clients who receive prompt, efficient service.
We’re excited to travel with you, which is why we’re developing intelligent AI-powered features that will further enhance your interactions with customers.