AI for Customer Service: 4 Ways to Get Ahead of the Curve
by Hulda Echave A cutting-edge global cloud solutioCustomer expectations have changed massively thanks to the internet.
Instant gratification is simply expected as normal and it’s harder than
ever for service to stand out. Meanwhile, significant growth in customer
contact is also putting serious pressure on organisations to offer a
prompt response.
It’s great that customers feel more connected
to brands, but as we’ve come to expect instantaneous replies to queries,
organisations are reaching their physical limits in terms of how much
their human workforce can handle.
To deal with the demand for
tailored 1-to-1 customer/company conversations, businesses are using AI.
In fact, by 2020, Gartner predicts that 85% of customer interactions
will be handled this way.
But when we talk about AI for customer service,
we don’t just mean customer service bots replacing human agents. AI
technology is also easing admin workloads – allowing representatives to
focus on providing the human touch.
Here are four important ways
AI is transforming how organisations communicate with their customers
and manage increasing workloads.
1. Using AI for customer service helps solve small problems – before they grow
Remember
the last time you demanded to speak to a call handler’s supervisor? If
only that escalated complaint could have been nipped in the bud early.
That’s why AI is now helping organisations to deal with small issues
early, before they become big ones.
If customers are provided
with the means to contact a company with minimal effort, such as through
a messenger window while they work instead of a phone call, they’re
more likely to report minor concerns, rather than waiting until the
problem can no longer be avoided. This can prevent issues from
escalating beyond what’s necessary – improving brand satisfaction.
In
turn, reducing the number of escalated complaints means human agents
are under less pressure when it comes to getting to grips with more
complicated cases. That’s good for brand satisfaction too: according to
the Ombudsman Service, 75% of shoppers in the UK feel encouraged to make
a repeat purchase if their complaint is well dealt with.
2. AI for customer service can improve your multichannel offering
Customers
spend a lot of time on their smartphones, communicating through
messaging apps. So if this is how your customers prefer to communicate,
why wouldn’t you give them this option?
Messaging
means talking to your customers on their terms, through their choice of
application. But the Harvard Business Review says the biggest benefit
is the ability for a brand to immediately understand the customer’s
query in context – helping to provide quick, no-nonsense responses.
More
organisations than ever are now allowing their customers to contact
them this way, to good effect – research by Aberdeen Group suggests that
companies with a strong omnichannel presence have on average an 89%
customer retention rate.
The challenge is handling the resulting
increase in customer contact. Automation can help, but only for basic
enquiries – and that’s where AI for customer service can help. By using
intelligent deep learning capabilities, AI can make decisions on whether
to reply to a customer automatically – giving an instant response – or
transfer them to a human agent if the enquiry is more involved.
3. Making self-service smarter – the rise of AI customer service bots
AI
customer service bots – whether on a website or a messaging app – allow
customers to address their own issues instantaneously – without putting
unnecessary pressure on contact centre teams.
But it’s important that AI complements the human aspect of customer service.
A
recent report from Accenture suggests that AI will dominate the way the
big 3 banks in the UK interact with their customers – but it also notes
that, even though customers are willing to embrace AI, they still want
to be safe in the knowledge they can speak to a human.
And the
great news is, bots are getting better at making that happen.
Organisations gather more data from their customers, AI becomes more
competent at diagnosing customer issues and offering first point
resolution – allowing physical agents to optimise those human-to-human
interactions.
4. AI can predict what your customer’s going to do next
Good
predictions about customers’ likely behaviour are among the most prized
assets an organisation can get its hands on – because it means you’re
ready to respond.
Whether it’s being able to predict stock demand
based on the weather, or identifying problems before they affect
customers, AI has the ability to make real-time decisions on a scale
we’ve never seen before.
Customer issues are generally not
unique. And if one customer is contacting customer service with a
problem, it’s safe to assume there are more to follow. But it’s this
repetition of issue cases that helps AI to learn and understand the
common – but sometimes complex – reasons why customers interact with a
brand, and the solutions that go with them.
This is where AI
deep learning comes into its own. By linking up data silos across the
organisation, companies can pinpoint customer issues and resolve them
quickly.
And this will only get better with time. As
organisations accrue more data on customers, their predictive accuracy
will increase.
Introducing Service Cloud Einstein – Salesforce’s AI for customer service
There’s
no doubt, great customer service still leaves a lasting impression –
and AI has an increasing role to play in providing what your customers
demand. That’s why we’re excited to introduce Service Cloud Einstein:
Einstein
Supervisor – empowering contact centre supervisors with real-time,
omni-channel insights and AI-powered analytics to increase productivity
and customer satisfaction Einstein Case Management – using machine
learning for automatic case escalation and intelligent information
gathering to save valuable time for agents
Intelligent Mobile
Service – keeping your team in the field connected, providing
personalised and exceptional service wherever they go.
To discover more about how AI can revolutionise your customer interactions, Follow Us & Like our Page @Solunusinc
This Article Source is From : https://www.salesforce.com/uk/blog/2017/08/ai-for-customer-service-4-ways-to-get-ahead-of-the-curve
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Created on Sep 12th 2017 06:36. Viewed 622 times.