Benefits of using AI in customer service

If you’re unsure about starting with AI customer service strategies, or are unfamiliar with how it can assist your team, here are some benefits you can expect:

• Reduced workload for your staff: AI tools can lighten the workload for employees handling customer service, allowing them to focus on essential tasks rather than repetitive, administrative duties. This can help employees dedicate more time to critical responsibilities and reduce staff burnout.

• Improved efficiency: AI solutions handle important but time-consuming tasks, enabling customer needs to be resolved faster. This allows you to assist more people, and customers spend less time waiting for answers or solutions.

• Better customer experience: streamlined processes improve customer satisfaction. AI can support customers using self-service tools to manage their products and services, and help your team address customer needs more efficiently.

• Personalised options: by learning about your customers and their habits, AI can personalise suggestions. It can also gather information about customers before they interact with a live agent, allowing your customer service team to greet them by name and have context on their inquiries.

• Round-the-clock support: staffing the customer service department 24/7 isn’t practical for many small businesses. By combining AI with customer service staff, you can provide round-the-clock coverage for many issues. Automation allows customers to find answers and use self-service options, such as managing subscriptions or initiating returns. 

• Gaining insights: AI helps you gather and analyse data about your customers. These tools enable you to collect feedback, understand preferences and identify trends in customer behaviour. With this information, you can tailor your offerings to better meet the needs of your customer base.

AI customer service methods

AI can manage several aspects of the customer service process. Your organisation may only need certain tools, depending on how you operate and the types of customer interactions you handle regularly. The following AI customer service strategies illustrate what the technology can do for your company.

1. Chatbots to answer customer questions

Customers visiting your website often need specific information or assistance. Chatbots provide a way to access answers without calling a customer service line, spending time searching your website, or waiting for a live chat agent. Chatbot technology can automatically generate responses to common customer questions.

2. Routing customer calls

Not all inquiries are simple enough for chatbots, and some customers still prefer speaking to a human. AI can help route callers to the appropriate department or the specific person best equipped to assist them. This reduces the need for customers to speak to multiple agents and allows your customer service team to work more efficiently by focusing on clients they can assist. 

3. Personalised shopping recommendations

If your business offers online shopping, AI can encourage customers to purchase additional items. The technology can analyse past searches and patterns to identify other products that might meet their needs, and suggesting these products could prompt customers to add them to their cart. 

4. Increased language options

When you reach a wide audience, you often attract customers from different cultures. If your customer service team is primarily English-speaking, communicating with speakers of other languages can be challenging. Since recruiting agents fluent in multiple languages may not be feasible, AI tools can translate languages for your team, enabling them to provide quality customer service despite language barriers. 

5. Creating content for marketing

If content is part of your marketing strategy, AI can make the creation process more efficient. You may not have enough time to devote to producing emails, blog posts, FAQs, web content and other written materials.

AI can generate all types of content for your website, social media accounts, and other online platforms. Providing specific prompts detailing your requirements can produce better results. Once you have AI-generated content, ensure it is reviewed by your marketing team and revised to align with your organisation’s goals, voice and culture. 

6. Organising support tickets

If your organisation uses a support ticket system, AI can help organise and prioritise those requests. This frees your staff to handle the work itself without spending excessive time reviewing and manually sorting issues. AI uses natural language processing to evaluate each ticket, helping to prioritise tasks, escalate urgent issues and route tickets to the appropriate personnel, all of which improves customer service and reduces processing time for support requests. 

Tips for implementing AI in customer service

Getting started with AI can seem overwhelming. Use these best practices to implement it effectively:

• Evaluate your current processes: gather feedback from your team to identify where tasks can be streamlined. Look for inefficiencies or redundant tasks that AI could address.

• Create goals for AI: identify specific tasks to transition to AI and how you want the technology to assist. This helps in selecting and implementing the right AI tools effectively.

• Train your team: customer service staff perform better when they understand how your AI tools work. Ensure they know how to use all available features fully.

• Test out your options: experimentation may be necessary to utilise AI products to their full potential. Understanding how they integrate with other tools and learning their features are important. Some AI options may suit your needs better than others.

• Protect data and privacy: to maintain customer trust, ensure data security when using AI. Review local privacy regulations to ensure compliance with any AI products you adopt. 

Evaluate and modify: use analytics from your AI tools to assess effectiveness. Feedback from your team and customers can guide adjustments to how you use AI.