Some Basic Facts About AI and Customer Service

Artificial intelligence is transforming customer service while delivering insights to improve business operations. From chatbots to AI-powered phone calls, AI can be used to streamline and enhance customer communications. Using AI, your company can reduce wait times, accelerate customer inqiuiry and call resolutions, and deliver more personalized service.

AI-driven communications are a practical way to meet the rising expectations for customer service among consumers, especially millennials, who expect immediate responses and satisfaction of their needs.

Meanwhile, AI allows businesses to collect, analyze, and integrate customer data in meaningful ways. When applied to your business' customer service function, these operational changes can cut costs, improve brand reputation, and better retain customers.

AI accelerates and improves customer service by augmenting and replacing human call agents.

According to, companies use AI to support a variety of customer service functions, including athering information from customers, automating routine customer issues, routing and classifying calls, and collecting operational insights.

Automation, call routing, and data collection all contribute to a more expedient and streamlined customer service experience. By reducing call times and call volume, these capabilities translate to efficiencies and cost savings for businesses.

Leveraging AI also frees up time for human agents to do more impactful work. Meanwhile, AI will gather and integrate customer data that can provide actionable insights in the background.

Chatbots and automated speech recognition (ASR) are two technologies that perhaps best demonstrate how AI can support your company's customer service function. Chatbots and automated speech recognition systems are already being implemented to bolster communications, improve efficiencies, and maintain more rewarding customer relationships.

Online conversation agents use virtual scripts to respond to customers' needs on demand. Chatbots enable 24/7 customer service without delays or errors while helping route calls as needed.

According to a study by Software Advice, 55 percent of people habitually use live chat to answer questions on business websites.

Chatbots are suitable for basic service inquiries, such as order tracking and self-help directions, offering a resolution in just a few clicks. If the interaction gets too complicated, though, the bot can invite a human agent to join the conversation.

People increasingly use social media and messaging apps for customer service, making chatbots an ideal way to help customers on these channels.

AI-powered phone calls recognize phrases in speech and respond as a human would. These virtual assistants attend to both call content and tone, helping engage and route customers responsively and efficiently.

Speech recognition is most effective at helping customers with simple questions. ASR expedites calls that need a human touch after collecting the information agents need to deliver a swift resolution. These systems also help monitor and improve call quality and make suggestions to human agents in real time based on the customer profile.

AI-derived insights help businesses enhance customer experience and drive results.

Most people now expect a company to answer their service queries in real time, according to Salesforce. No longer do customers want to go out of their way to explain their issues or situations. They want businesses to anticipate their general needs as customers. The ability to resolve customer issues before they arise has huge potential.

By leveraging integrated customer data, AI can customize its engagement patterns to minimize issues and improve customer satisfaction. If a call center is receiving a high volume of calls about a problematic product, the technology recognizes this pattern and then customizes the call menu with a direct-to-agent option for customers experiencing this specific issue.

The access to customer insights that AI enables allows you to make precise product recommendations, help boost sales, and lower cart abandonment rates. For example, clothing retailer H&M integrated AI into the Kik messaging app to offer customers on-demand assistance. Whether in store or at home, users can get fashion tips and personalized recommendations based on their customer profiles and purchase histories.

Savvy companies are using AI to bolster service interactions and to maximize their customer relationships.

AI allows businesses to provide the attentive customer service that people expect. Businesses without this technology risk falling behind in the eyes of customers.

Riley Panko is a senior content developer at Clutch, a reviews platform provider for business process outsourcing companies, development firms, and marketing companies.  

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Posted October 25, 2019