7 benefits of using AI in customer service

AI in customer service is the use of advanced technologies to enhance and automate customer support. This can include the use of chatbots, virtual assistants, natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and more. AI can supercharge your customer service processes to make it easier and more efficient for customers to interact with your business.

AI technology adds new capabilities to customer service that were once not possible. It can do things and learn faster than humans are capable of. What it learns can be used to improve the customer experience and create more positive interactions between the consumer and your organization.

Furthermore, AI comes in various forms and can be adapted to your company’s needs. In the same way a shirt can be tailored, AI software can be custom-built to meet your business objectives. How you customize it will depend on how well you understand your customers and your support team’s demands.

AI offers a myriad of benefits to help your customer service thrive. Here are seven ways AI can drive business growth and innovation within your customer service team.

Customer service conversations are often the most direct interactions you’ll have with customers, so they must be used efficiently. However, sometimes agents can lose focus on the main issue during the process of manually collecting information from the customer and summarizing it. This can require customers to repeat information and lead to agents providing delayed or incomplete responses during service interactions.

AI tools solve this issue by summarizing complex conversations in seconds. It can take long conversations and generate an easy-to-understand bullet point summary of key takeaways. This means less time summarizing the problem and more time solving it, which helps to reduce frustration and enhance the quality of your customer conversations.

Hosting live events and webinars offers customers opportunities for real-time learning and engagement. Topics such as product updates, training sessions, and Q&As with internal experts keep users informed while encouraging participation.

By utilizing AI chatbots to handle routine tasks, agents can focus on addressing complex issues or those that require a personal touch. This might include unique situations where there’s no documentation of how to handle the case, or frustrated customers that may prefer to interact with a real person. You may even choose to dedicate agents to serving your most important customers so they don’t get stuck in a queue. The point is, AI prevents your agents from getting bogged down by common requests so they can focus on other matters.

AI tools can act as agent assistants that help your service representatives save time through suggested responses. For example, AI tools can be a personal writing assistant for communication channels including emails, chat support, and texting. It can give agents suggested responses based on the nature of the issue, customer sentiment, and your company’s voice and style. Not to mention, AI tools also help save time by collecting and summarizing information for recordkeeping purposes.

AI can help streamline customer service processes in several ways. It can interpret and route queries to the appropriate department or agent that’s best able to help at first touch, reducing the time spent bouncing from person to person. It can also identify high-priority issues so they’re pushed to the front of the line. This might mean prioritizing customers with severe issues like a product or service that’s not working at all over customers with less urgent requests. AI can also be used to analyze customer sentiment and prioritize those who seem especially disgruntled. These capabilities help streamline customer service operations in ways that benefit your organization and the customers themselves.

AI tools can analyze large quantities of customer interaction data much faster than humans can. For example, it may be able to analyze thousands or millions of interactions across all of your channels to identify the most common questions and issues. This has become increasingly complex and time-consuming as the number of channels and amount of data grows, but AI tools make it possible to interpret all of the customer service interaction data you have at your disposal. The result, is that you can spend less time on analysis and more time on strategy to improve your customer service.

After analyzing your data, AI tools can provide you with insights according to trends or patterns it finds. It can generate actionable summaries for businesses to use for decision-making. For example, AI can analyze all of the customer interaction data across your channels to figure out the most common reasons for contacting customer support. Using those insights, you can create self-service resources like an FAQ page or informational videos so customers don’t have to reach out to customer service teams for those issues moving forward. AI can collect information, dissect it, and provide personalized recommendations to support your customer service objectives.

Now that you know the benefits of using AI, it’s time to learn how to integrate it into your customer service operations. Creating an integration plan is crucial for maintaining a seamless workflow. Here are some key steps when implementing AI into your customer service operations:

Analyze your current service operations to identify areas that could benefit from automation, aka pain points. Pain points are tasks that take up a lot of time or processes that have recurring problems or delays. For instance, if your agents are spending an excessive amount of time on simple order status inquiries, you could add that to the list of things you wish to automate. Knowing which areas could most benefit from AI and automation will lead to a faster return on investment.

It’s important to clearly define your company’s objectives for implementing AI in customer service. Setting clear goals will help to guide your implementation plan. Examples of goals could be to improve response time or customer satisfaction. Knowing what you hope to get out of AI will make it easier to tailor the tools to your goals.

Before integrating an entirely new system into your customer service system, consider starting small. Begin with a pilot project that targets a specific issue, such as fraud detection or routine customer inquiries. Test out the AI, collect feedback, and adjust based on what you learn. Find a process that works for your team then expand.

When implementing AI, it’s essential to choose the right solution to align with your business goals. With many AI technologies available, consider what best meets your objectives. For example, if your goal is to communicate with customers across multiple languages, look for a chatbot with international language processing capabilities.

However, if you're seeking to elevate self-service and community-driven support, an AI-powered online community might be the perfect solution. By integrating AI into your community, you can provide efficient, real-time support while also offering valuable self-service options. The simplest way to enhance your customer service with AI is by utilizing a comprehensive solution that seamlessly integrates into your existing system, with customization options to fit your needs.

When implementing AI, it’s essential to choose the right solution to align with your business goals. With many AI technologies available, consider what best meets your objectives. For example, if your goal is to communicate with customers across multiple languages, look for a chatbot with international language processing capabilities.

However, if you're seeking to elevate self-service and community-driven support, an AI-powered online community might be the perfect solution. By integrating AI into your community, you can provide efficient, real-time support while also offering valuable self-service options. The simplest way to enhance your customer service with AI is by utilizing a comprehensive solution that seamlessly integrates into your existing system, with customization options to fit your needs.

Khoros Communities helps you build and manage thriving online spaces that not only engage users but also provide valuable customer service support. With AI-powered tools, you can streamline community moderation and ensure smooth, efficient interactions. Our advanced community management software uses AI to:

• Detect discussion intent and sentiment, allowing you to quickly address customer inquiries

• Automate content filtering, tagging, and prioritization to keep conversations on track

• Route or remove offensive content, ensuring a positive and safe environment for all users

By integrating AI-driven community management, you can enhance your customer service by offering self-service options and real-time support within your community. Plus, gain actionable insights with community analytics and create a completely customizable community for your brand — no custom code needed.

Ready to take your customer service to the next level? Request a demo of Khoros Communities today.