9 Benefits of Using AI in Customer Support

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Feb 15, 2024 12:16 PM

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What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Customer Support?

Customer inquiries and feedback are a regular part of business operations. Usually, human agents handle these concerns. However, this “traditional” customer support approach has drawbacks. For instance, recruiting and training agents is costly, they can’t work 24/7, and are prone to mistakes.

So, for a more cost-effective, ‘round-the-clock help desk, some businesses integrate artificial intelligence into customer support. These AI customer support tools are trained through machine learning (ML) by providing them with massive amounts of information about client issues and solutions. Then, by natural language processing (NLP), AI can “understand” customer concerns and generate responses based on its training data.

Simply put, customers can ask for help from the AI customer support bot anytime, and it will respond instantly. For example, if a customer desires to change his subscription payment method, he can ask the AI chatbot for assistance, and it will provide a comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to do it.

What are the Benefits of AI in Customer Support?

With AI, your customer support team can provide faster, cost-effective, more efficient, and more personalized assistance to people’s queries 24/7. Here are some positive impacts of AI on customer support.

1. Analyzes Massive Volume of Customer Data and Insights

You might receive hundreds of client concerns daily, and it’s difficult to keep track of what these issues are. However, addressing these problems is essential to significantly improve your services. Yet, checking every data in call logs, email correspondence, and SMS messages to identify these issues is time-consuming.

But AI can rapidly summarize these large chunks of customer complaints you receive. It will help you discover the most frequently raised issues so you can immediately find a solution. For example, AI can pinpoint specific products (or parts) that often experience manufacturing defects.

Furthermore, AI can help you identify the trends and sentiments of your customers based on conversation data. It can infer if your customers feel positive or negative about your services. Afterward, you can craft your business strategy based on AI’s sentiment analysis.

2. Improves Customer Support’s Efficiency and Speed

Usually, sluggish customer support is due to limited CS agents and massive customer traffic. But through AI integrations, you can make everything more efficient. AI chatbots can answer simple queries and automate basic tasks so human agents can work with complex customer issues.

There are also AI-powered voice recognition tools equipped with sophisticated algorithms that can discern customers’ tone and speech. If a person sounds irritated, impatient, or angry, the AI can automatically ticket the customer to a human agent to quickly provide solutions.

Advanced AI customer support tools called “voice biometrics” can also swiftly recognize a customer’s identity based on previous conversations. With this tool, there's no need for an agent to ask for the client’s details and proceed immediately to troubleshoot the problem.

3. Supports Around the Clock, Real-time Customer Support

24/7 customer support is important, especially for businesses across countries and time zones. For example, a US-based startup can set up a 24/7 chatbot so customers from Europe or Asia can reach out to them, even at 1:00 AM PST.

4. Provides Multilingual Customer Support Experience

Many AI chatbots can converse in multiple languages. These bots usually let customers pick their preferred language before the chat commences. This feature enhances the customer experience for non-English speakers, allowing them to convey their concerns using a language they are comfortable with.

5. Creates Personalized Conversations with Customers

A 2023 study found that personalized services positively impact customer satisfaction. People are more appreciative and responsive to messages tailored to their interests, habits, and values.

AI chatbots can generate responses tailored to each customer’s needs. Within milliseconds, the bot can review customers’ previous purchases and interactions with the company so it can create a personalized solution to the problem.

Suppose that your business uses a project management SaaS product. You contact customer support to find ways to enhance your team’s collaboration. AI can quickly review your business’s usage patterns and refer to them to suggest features (e.g., trackers, visual boards, app integrations) tailored to your business’s needs.

6. Enhances Customer Communication

AI can assist in crafting text responses that are not only informative but also sincere. For instance, if a customer is stressed due to a delayed package, AI can help you compose a message with the appropriate tone to assure them that your team is actively addressing their concern.

7. Accurately Anticipates Recurring Problems

AI can pave the way to proactive customer support, enabling you to anticipate and address issues even before they’re raised.

By analyzing previous conversations and interactions with customers, AI can identify recurring problems and common issues. From here, your team can work on addressing the root causes of these concerns or create detailed FAQ articles to provide customers with self-help resources.

8. Determines Points of Improvement

AI analytics tools can help you gauge your CS team’s performance. For example, these tools can determine whether employees have high average handling time, low resolution rates, or dismal customer feedback.

From here, you can set up enrichment training for these employees or team restructuring to improve productivity.

9. Lowers Expenses

Employing customer support software allows fewer agents to work with problems. No need to hire additional employees to perform other tasks as AI can do them quickly. This strategy is cost-effective and saves the company from potential human errors and inaccuracies.

Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Support

Here are some examples of how you can integrate AI into customer support.

Chatbots: An AI-powered program that can engage in human-like conversations with customers. They can understand customer concerns and automatically respond.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems: A phone system technology that automatically responds to customer calls. AI enables the system to understand the client’s vocal prompts and then provide an answer to the query or route the caller to a human agent.

Customer Sentiment Analysis: These tools are trained to determine customers’ perceptions about a product or service. When this AI-powered tool detects that the person is furious or upset, it can automatically connect him to a human agent.

Face and Voice Recognition: Powered by sophisticated algorithms, this tool can recognize and verify one’s identity using facial features or voice. With this, agents can skip asking for the customer’s details and proceed directly to providing solutions.

Implementing AI-Powered Customer Support Solutions

Follow this strategy to enjoy the benefits of AI in customer support:

Determine Your Objectives

To identify your objectives, ask yourself why AI should be integrated into your customer support. Do you want to reduce agent workload? Improve support efficiency? Or switch to a cost-effective customer support option?

Next, determine the relevant KPIs that will gauge your progress toward achieving your goals.

Select AI Customer Support Tools To Employ

Your AI-powered tools must be capable of achieving your objectives. For instance, you can adopt chatbots if you’re aiming to streamline your customer assistance process. If you want to better gauge people’s perception of your products, you can use a sentiment analysis.

Monitor Performance

Check if your AI helped in achieving your target KPIs. Do they help reduce average handling time? Do they improve your overall resolution rates? It’s great to see if things are working. Otherwise, consider reviewing your roster of AI tools and check if they need replacement.

Ask For Feedback

Don’t be too KPI-focused. Check also the pulse of your customers. Do they find your chatbots helpful or an awful waste of time? You can give surveys after their chat or call sessions to gauge their perception of AI’s helpfulness.

Moving Towards The Future of Customer Support

We’re still far from an age where AI will completely replace human agents. However, we’re certain that AI will gradually take center stage in customer support.

According to IBM, CEOs are now investing more in AI-powered bots for customer support in hopes of minimizing customer turnover. It’s also posited that chatbots will be more personalized and conversational in the future, improving overall customer experience.

Markets are now more competitive, and to stay ahead of your competitors, you must adopt cutting-edge technologies. With its AI-powered support tools,

MyAskAI can help you enhance your customer support and get actionable insights today.

9 Benefits of Using AI in Customer Support

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Customer Support?