November 06, 2023
How to Be a Primary Teacher: Best Practices and Insights
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October 10, 2024
Customer support is a critical aspect of business operations today. Companies can no longer afford to deliver mediocre service and so must look for increasingly innovative ways to improve their customers’ experience.
Generative AI offers one way to help support desks and other customer service consultants improve their service offerings. In this article, we’ll look at the ways call center outsourcing professionals are starting to investigate these benefits.
Will generative AI take over all support functions? Certainly not, it’s no match for human interaction yet and won’t be anytime soon. However, there are some ways we can use it to enhance the experience by improving performance, enhancing the customer experience, and personalizing interactions.
Let’s see how this looks in the real world.
Speed and Efficiency
One of the primary benefits of using this tech is its ability to give customers the rapid responses they need in real time, irrespective of the time. Traditional support methods often involve long wait times and frustrating automated phone systems. AI, on the other hand, can instantly analyze and generate responses to common customer queries, reducing the time customers spend waiting for assistance.
This might be in the form of a chatbot dealing with live chat or social media questions. Or now that OpenAI’s announced that ChatGPT will be able to listen and talk, through phone calls.
We’ve already seen the benefits of having chatbots available to clients 24/7. They’re capable of answering quick and easy questions that human consultants soon find tedious. The client gets the right answer every time and doesn’t experience long wait times.
However, the downside is that the bots are limited in the answers they can give. Generative AI is improving its capabilities because it’s able to better understand the context of the query. While the bots will still have to escalate some queries, they act as a reasonably good first point of contact.
At the very least, the client knows their request was received and forwarded to the right department.
Personalization
Today’s clients expect you to know more than just their names. They want to know that companies understand something about their preferences and needs. And, considering how much information we gather on our clients, this isn’t unreasonable.
The downside of having these vast amounts of information, however, is that you need to process them. Relying on humans to do so is prohibitively expensive, which is why most companies have wasted this opportunity until now.
With AI on board, however, it’s easier to reap the benefits. The system can draw client data from several sources and make on-the-spot suggestions that are, for want of a better term, spot on. For example, the system can check the client’s purchase history and then also track their behavior on the website to draw conclusions about their preferences.
They could, furthermore, work in any notes from the support team about previous complaints to further hone in on the right recommendations. While we’ll have some bugs to work out, you might have the bot greet the client by name, give them a summary of the past call if asked, and recommend solutions tailored to the client’s unique needs. And it can do all of this in seconds.
This level of personalization creates a more engaging and satisfying customer experience, leading to increased customer loyalty and repeat business. Moreover, it demonstrates that the company values its customers and understands their individual needs.
Scalability
One of the significant challenges in traditional customer support is upscaling operations to meet a surge in support requests. You can predict peak demand periods, but something might go wrong, leading to an overwhelming number of support queries. Or, something could go right, leading to a much higher number of orders.
Either way, the result’s the same with customer service levels dropping. It’s not easy to source and recruit human consultants off the street. What’s more, it’s an expensive exercise, especially if the increase is only temporary. Some companies deal with this by outsourcing, but even that takes time.
AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can handle a high volume of customer inquiries simultaneously without the need for additional staff. As customer support demands fluctuate, businesses can easily adjust their AI resources, ensuring that customer service remains efficient and cost-effective.
Will they need to consider increasing their human complement again? No doubt, but the AI buys them valuable time to do so.
Continuous Learning and Improvement
Generative AI systems are designed to continuously learn and improve their performance over time. This is valuable in several ways. For starters, they can analyze customer interactions and feedback to refine their responses and become more accurate and effective in addressing customer queries.
This iterative learning process enables businesses to stay ahead of evolving customer needs and preferences. It also allows companies to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and customer expectations.
Secondly, you can use this strive for improvement to better your human support team. AI can design training exercises. It can even simulate live interactions, allowing your consultants to train. Finally, the system can review the consultant’s responses, identify areas for improvement, and create a tailored training exercise for that individual.
Multilingual Support
You may or may not operate in different countries across the globe. However, the world’s becoming smaller, so your geographic area no longer defines the languages your clients use. Some might speak English as a second or third language, making it wise to look for multi-lingual consultants.
AI can offer multilingual support, breaking down language barriers and reaching a broader customer base. These AI systems can provide real-time translations, enabling businesses to communicate effectively with customers who speak different languages.
This capability is great for the customer because it reduces the chances of miscommunication. It’s also very gratifying when a company adapts to your personal preferences rather than expecting you to adapt to theirs. Which, let’s be honest, is something that many companies do.
A further advantage is that this capability makes it possible to start expanding into new territory, irrespective of the chosen language in the area. This can, therefore, increase your revenue over time.
However, at this point, it’s worth being careful about implementing this type of system. You must carefully evaluate the AI’s capacity to communicate as a natural speaker would. If it can’t match the linguistic niceties in the area, it might be better to wait.
Cost Savings
You can save a reasonable amount of money using AI if you implement it in the right way. While there’s an initial expense, maintaining the system is relatively inexpensive. The long-term benefits are that you have “representatives” who can work 24/7, provide consistent service, and give accurate advice.
The upside is that you can use these systems to perform tedious, repetitive tasks flawlessly. A human consultant may get bored, become emotional, or make errors. AI, with the right training, won’t.
While this is very appealing, it’s worth remembering that AI lacks the empathy of a human consultant. Therefore, many clients still prefer dealing with people. AI’s not ready to take over yet.
Enhanced Data Insights
Generative AI systems generate vast amounts of data from customer interactions. This can include everything from pain points, preferences, the tone the customer used, and how long it took them to answer questions. All of which can prove invaluable for your sales and marketing team and also for your customer UX team.
Furthermore, AI-powered analytics can identify trends and patterns that may not be immediately apparent to human agents. These insights can help businesses proactively address issues and opportunities, improving overall customer satisfaction.
Challenges and Considerations
We live in exciting times, and it will be interesting to see what aspects of customer support change due to our increasing reliance on AI. However, companies must carefully weigh the pros and cons. Some things to consider include.
Data Privacy Concerns
Businesses must ensure that customer data is handled responsibly and in compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR or CCPA. AI systems should be designed with robust security measures to protect sensitive information.
Training and Maintenance
Maintaining an AI model is relatively simple, but training isn’t a one-and-done deal. You’ll have to regularly monitor the system to ensure it doesn’t develop biases or that it continues to align its responses with your company’s values and standards.
Think of AI as you would a child. It learns from the example of the people it interacts with. If those people behave well, the child learns to do the same. Therefore, it’s possible for AI to pick up bad habits.
Human Oversight
While we can hand over many tasks to the computer, there’ll always be a need for human intervention. In cases where your clients prefer to deal with people, giving them the option of dealing with a bot or person can enhance their experience.
Ethical Considerations
You must program your systems to act ethically and avoid discriminatory or offensive responses. It’s also essential to be upfront with your customers about when you’re using AI.
Conclusion
Generative AI is set to transform our world in ways we can’t begin to imagine. The prospects for using it to improve customer service are particularly promising. It may allow companies to interact with their clients on a far more personal level than ever before, delivering outstanding service.
However, we must not blindly start using this technology without considering all the potential impacts. Companies must be wary about rushing into this arena.
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