8 Ways To Use AI in Customer Support (in 2024)

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Feb 16, 2024 06:44 AM

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Exploring the Benefits of AI in Customer Support

Customers expect prompt responses when they get in touch with the support service. However, many businesses have limited human resources to handle a great deal of customer queries and complaints. This results in delays in responding, even for simple customer problems.

Enhancing customer support with AI can positively improve customer experience. For instance, AI chatbots trained through machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) can comprehend people’s basic inquiries and provide them with first-level support.

Hence, customers with simple concerns can immediately get solutions from the chatbot, while those with complex issues can promptly connect with human agents.

Aside from having speedy, efficient customer support, AI can help your business in different ways:

Prevents agent burnout: Some businesses now use AI to respond to repetitive questions and automate menial tasks so agents don’t have to do them. This gives the staff more time and energy to focus on complicated tasks requiring creativity, analysis, and critical thinking.

Provides 24/7 customer support: Unlike human agents, AI doesn’t need to rest. It can provide instant responses even if customers get in touch past midnight.

Gives personalized response: AI can analyze previous conversations, interactions, and transactions of customers to the business. The data can provide sufficient insights to craft personalized responses tailored to customers’ interests and personalities.

Low-cost support service solution: No need to hire additional staff to accomplish basic CS tasks as AI assistants can automate workflows like email management.

Reduces Service Errors: With its astounding computing power, AI can analyze and verify customer information with minimal errors. Humans are more prone to overlook things, but AI is designed to follow algorithms that can mitigate potential inaccuracies.

How To Use AI in Customer Support: 8 Ways

Are you aiming to start an AI-integrated customer support? Get some inspiration from these effective ways to utilize AI in customer support.

1. Chatbots

A chatbot is an AI-powered program that can communicate with customers via chat messaging. By natural language processing (NLP), chatbots can understand customers’ queries and respond to them instantly.

Chatbots are now used to perform basic customer support tasks such as:

Respond to Customers’ Frequently Asked Questions: Chatbots are programmed to answer recurring questions from different customers instantly and simultaneously. You must update your FAQ database regularly so that the chatbot can always give accurate and relevant responses.

Obtain Feedback: Chatbots can automatically collect feedback from customers after they avail of your product via your web platform.

Provide Customer Insights: AI customer support assistants can collect and store customer data such as purchase history, location, language, web pages visited, and more. Based on these data, you can get a glimpse of customer insights on which you can base your targeted marketing strategy.

Order tracking: Customers can ask for the real-time tracking information of their package from chatbots. In case of delay, a chatbot can send apologies to the customer and provide the freight details.

2. Sentiment Analysis

Using computational linguistics and natural language processing, AI can analyze customers’ subjective perceptions of the company’s products or services. AI can “mine” customer interactions via calls, email, social media, or web platforms and infer their sentiment.

Simply put, sentiment analysis “detects” your customers’ emotions, enabling you to see if customers have positive, negative, or neutral sentiments toward your business. This can help you identify stuff that needs improvement and respond to customers’ concerns with an appropriate tone.

3. Advanced Routing and Tagging System

AI-powered tools can automatically route customers to assigned support representatives based on some keywords in their inquiries. For instance, if the customer mentions “account compromise,” the AI can route him to a rep that will handle his account access issues.

AI is also helpful in prioritizing queries. If it detects that the customer is upset, the AI can tag the concern as “urgent” so staff can immediately de-escalate and address the issue.

4. Self-Service Options

AI can assist in writing FAQs articles or making a “Help” section for your website. Self-service programs can also respond to customers without the need for human interaction. These programs can direct customers to knowledge bases such as video tutorials or article guides to help them solve their problems by themselves.

5. Automatic Call Transcription

AI can precisely jot down customer call conversations down to the smallest detail. Businesses can refer to the transcriptions to see which response approach results in higher resolution rates. You can also use this tool to summarize crucial points of conversations to improve your team’s response speed.

6. Customer Trend Forecasting

The advanced computing abilities of AI allow it to perform data-driven predictive analysis. AI-powered analytic tools can analyze customer data from chat logs, call conversations, and email correspondence to forecast trends in customers’ demand, behavior, and concerns. The forecasts can give you insights to create proactive solutions for anticipated future problems

7. Multilingual Customer Support

If your business operates across countries, AI can help you craft FAQ articles and troubleshooting guides in various languages to improve your customer support to non-English speakers.

There are also AI-programmed tools that can automatically translate non-English customer inquiries, helping your staff to address them promptly.

8. AI Virtual Assistants for Customer Support

Virtual assistants are like chatbots that can understand customer inquiries and provide immediate responses. However, AI-powered VAs can converse in a more personalized fashion by comprehending the intent, context, and tone of the query. Some VAs can even provide personalized product recommendations to the customer based on their client information and previous interactions.

Step-by-Step Tutorial on Using AI in Customer Support

Implementing AI in customer support must be well-planned to successfully improve your team’s operations and overall customer experience.

1. Assessing Your Customer Support Needs

Determine the current challenges and limitations of your customer support team. These are the pain points that you must solve with the help of AI.

Here are some ways to determine your customer support needs:

Customer feedback: If slow response time is a recurring feedback among your customers, you need to automate some basic CS tasks to provide prompt responses.

Cost Analysis: Look at your financial sheets. Are you incurring high expenses to operate your customer support? Perhaps AI is a cost-effective solution.

KPIs: Your performance indicators can give insights into your team’s shortcomings. For instance, if you notice that your average handling time is higher than your competitors, AI may help you streamline and hasten your operations.

2. Choosing the Right AI Tools and Technologies

To choose the best AI customer support software, review your team’s pain points you’ve figured out in step 1.

For example, if you think that your team is sluggish because of high customer traffic, you can employ AI chatbot assistants to automate simple tasks and address basic queries so your staff can work with complex problems.

More importantly, check the reliability of the AI tools you plan to integrate. Read reviews online to see how the technology performs relative to its alternatives.

3. Training and Integration

Don’t expect your staff to immediately figure out how to use AI in customer support. While this technology can significantly improve your team’s efficiency, there’s a learning curve to master them.

Here are some ways to train your employees to use AI:

On-the-site workshop: Provide mandatory workshop sessions so your staff can understand how the AI works. You can invite AI experts and trainers to ensure your employees can learn the technology as quickly as possible.

Online training modules: You can provide your staff with learning modules that they can study at their own pace. To manage the training process, you can use an online learning management system that can also gauge your staff’s learning progress using assessments and practicum.

Site-based learning: With this approach, your employees will work side-by-side with the AI tools. However, they must be supervised by a tech expert who will guide them to use the new technology properly.

Improve Customer Experience With AI-Powered Customer Support Solutions

AI is now crucial for business innovation. To get ahead of the competition, you must utilize AI in every aspect of business operations, including customer support.

MyAskAI can provide top-notch, AI-powered tools to boost your customer support’s efficiency and productivity. Start AI integration today and keep your customer satisfaction going through the roof.

8 Ways To Use AI in Customer Support

Exploring the Benefits of AI in Customer Support