AI for Customer Service: 5 Easy Ways to Help Your Customers

Replacing humans with robots? Not too long ago this concept struck fear in the hearts of the general public who believed humans would soon be redundant. Luckily, the human species has warmed up to the idea of living side-by-side with cold machines. Compared to antiquated customer service teams staffed by real people, consumers have realized that AI for customer service and voice intelligence (VI) can make their lives far more convenient.

READ: Exploring the Potential of AI Bots in HR — Tips for Leveraging Technology in Employee Communications

AI and VI have, for a while now, been at the epicenter of customer service operations — especially in call center quality assurance. Customers can now enjoy a seamless customer experience, which does not involve being on hold for an hour (or more), thanks to processes such as machine learning, natural language processing, and speech recognition.

These are cost-effective solutions, but, most importantly, AI is seen as a key driver in improving customer satisfaction. If the customer is happy, then your business will be successful. Here are five ways AI and VI can help your business.

24/7 Service

The traditional working routine of 9:00-5:00 is dead. The days of a customer only being able to contact customer support through VoIP phone apps within normal working hours are long gone. One of the problems with humans is that we need to sleep, and paying staff to answer phones 24/7 is expensive. Full online service means that a customer can contact your company whenever they need to.

Also, messaging is now the customer support method of choice. Implementing a system such as a chatbot that can answer a customer’s query at 2 am will help your customer and your brand. 

If yours is a global company operating across different time zones and in different languages, then an AI chat is an essential business communication tool. You can help a Spanish speaker in Seattle at seven in the morning and a Tamil speaker in Texas at ten at night, for example.

Personalization

One of the simplest ways to please someone is to call them by their name — the personal touch. A virtual assistant can call customers by their names and do so much more. They learn from every interaction with the customer and make use of their history to ensure every interaction is customized and personalized. It’s as if you personally know every customer, and you can achieve more in less time. 

In the past, customer service was reactive; it waited until there was a problem and then tried to address the issue. AI has revolutionized the idea of what customer service can be. What about those great series Netflix recommends or that Weekly Mix that Spotify compiles just for you? These are just two excellent examples of AI-powered recommendations facilitating better-continued user experiences.

READ: Improving Your Customer Experience and Boosting Satisfaction — 3 Easy Tips

The more music we listen to on Spotify, the better the recommended music becomes, and our experience of listening to music changes. AI is like the friend we used to have who knew all the great music, except Spotify really knows all the great music. Spotify knows us, and this creates a personal connection between the consumer and the brand. This translates to the customer being happier and more likely to continue consuming the product. 

AI also works for companies selling products other than just entertainment services. With tools such as conversational data analytics, you can extract the necessary data to deliver a personalized service. Travel companies can use AI to learn from their customers’ search histories and then offer specifically targeted packages. One customer might prefer trains over planes, so using this contact center analysis can give the customer travel ideas they never knew existed. 

Personally sending customers content based on their interests also captivates them. The result: an increase in revenue and a happy traveler. 

Efficiency

The call centers of old are clunky, potentially accident-prone and inefficient. It is expensive to pay people to work in them, and they are a waste of time for both your business and your customer.

Call center software, however, such as virtual assistants and chatbots don’t have to put anyone on hold. They can also simultaneously assist a large number of customers and quickly provide them with answers in real-time. Interactions using these methods of AI for customer service reduce the time customers have to spend interacting with the company and solutions are far more long-term, which reduces the need for second contacts.

AI platforms have unlimited memory capacity and use super-fast processors to speedily locate answers without the need for a human to manually search in several different areas before successfully finding a response. This means that machine-learned answers are faster and more accurate than would be possible with a traditional customer service team. 

Predicting Customer Needs

The best way to address a problem is to prevent it from ever becoming a problem — recent developments in collaboration software have helped us with this. Traditional customer service has no way of doing this; however, AI tools are trained to predict a customer’s needs. If, for example, a customer has not moved from a particular webpage in a longer-than-normal time, this may indicate that they are stuck. 

A well-programmed chatbot can appear and both amicably and objectively lend a hand to the confused customer — possibly offering solutions for some of the most common issues that it has identified. The problem will seamlessly be resolved before it has escalated, and your company has provided a solution to a customer who has exerted less effort.

Security

Can you tell me your date of birth and your mother’s maiden name? This is not the first-class security we demand in 2023 — it is susceptible to fraud. However, AI recognition systems on smartphones can automatically identify a customer using face recognition software, making banking and other transactions far more secure. What previously might have taken a customer hours can now be done in seconds.

READ: How to Minimize Cybersecurity Risks and Balance Customer Friction for your Online Business

This technology also gives your customer far more confidence when purchasing your product as there is less chance of error. Choosing the right software will also put customers at ease as they know their personal information will be protected and their privacy safeguarded. 

The Bottom Line

Customers want seamless experiences when contacting your company’s customer service team. They need answers quickly, want interactions to be secure and desire that the time spent talking to your company is kept to a minimum. Using AI and VI, combined with solid QA testing, will ensure that customers are always satisfied. 

Why not take it one step further and use technology to your advantage? Harbor the power of AI to learn more about your customer: their likes, their personality, and their history. Give them more of what they want and then sit back and watch your customer smile and your profits grow.

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.