The Top 5 Ways AI Helps With Customer Support

Customer support expectations are through the roof. When every business is offering customer support, you need to find ways to stand out. In this digital era, when competition is cutthroat and technology is advancing at the current pace, meeting customers’ expectations can become quite a challenge.

Three years ago, when I started my business, offering customer service was considered a bonus. Now, this is the industry standard. If you are not offering top-class customer service, you can forget about customer retention.

Nowadays, offering a good service or product is not enough. Customers want you to offer them all-round services if you want them to make transactions. It includes the best product, advanced experience, affordable price tag, best customer support, and the list goes on.

This is where AI can help, especially if you are looking for a budget-friendly option.

Top 5 Ways AI Is Assisting Customer Service

The only way to offer top-notch customer support without breaking the bank is to leverage AI.

If you are a business owner struggling with customer support, keep reading as we discuss the top 5 proven ways to use AI for customer service.

Stand Out In the Market

In the business world, competition will drive you crazy. If you want to stand out, offer something better, or just improve your product; you need a blueprint of competitor strategy.

You will select a top competitor, look at the strategy, optimize it as per your brand, and notice the impact. For instance, an Internet Service Provider will look at the top contenders as Spectrum. The brand does not just meet the industry standards but surpasses the expectations of the customers. It offers 24/7 customer support in multiple languages. To stand out, it also offers online services like Spectrum Internet for its customers.

That said, before the advent of AI, conducting competitive analysis was quite challenging. However, with the introduction of AI, businesses can now replicate, optimize, and improve their strategy in a jiff. You may use tools like Crayon, Kompyte, Elicit, and Cohesive, which are top AI competitor analysis tools.

Prioritizing and Sorting

Companies receive thousands of calls every day. In this case, most companies opt to put customers on hold, adding to the frustration. This is the reason prioritizing and categorizing calls is important.

Now, most experts will tell you that prioritizing queries can be challenging. It is correct but only if you are doing it manually. When you leverage AI, prioritizing calls and queries becomes like a walk in the park.

You can pick a keyword for each trigger, automate the call redirection, and AI will do the rest. Today, nearly 87% of customer representatives accept that using AI has helped them boost their productivity.

Personalization

Most companies have standard templates that they send for every query. The worst part of using a template is that there is a high chance of error. Every time you receive a query, you just copy-paste the same message.

In case of calls, companies train representatives to repeat the same message, apologize for the inconvenience, and redirect the call. There is no doubt it is time efficient, but it can impact customer retention. As per a recent study, 54% of customers expect a customized reply.

If you aim to offer time-efficient yet personalized customer support, AI can help. For every query, it will curate a personalized message within seconds. Most of the tools for live chat offer personalized message options, so your customer receives perfect replies every time.

Consistent Communication Style

Every brand has a persona. It reflects in your communication, marketing language, and even brand strategy. It helps your brand to reach the targeted audience. The problem arises when you do not follow the persona on all the channels.

For instance, Duolingo has a very quirky and fun persona. Regardless of the communication channel you choose, the customer support and the marketing team will maintain the brand persona. Comments are always fun– relevant yet witty. This helps them retain their customers and keep things interesting.

To stay consistent, you need to spend a lot of money on training, which can be challenging for small businesses with limited budgets. This is where AI can help. Most of the AI tools have full customization options. You can set your brand persona requirement and leave it to AI. It will ensure consistency regardless of the communication channel.

Proactive Feedback Collection

Feedback is one of the simplest ways you can retain your customers and boost customer satisfaction. This is the primary reason why most big brands have follow-up sessions with their customers. Even for recorded calls customers are asked to rate their experience after the call.

While rating is a good way to understand the customers’ satisfaction, it offers no information about customers’ expectations. This is where you can leverage AI and schedule feedback for every customer interaction.

The feedback process can be a simple rating form, a follow-up call, or just a simple feedback quiz. You can schedule a follow-up after the ticket is closed or you can trigger it every month, AI offers you the option to pick a time.

Best AI Tools for Assisting In Customer Support

Drift to Stand Out in the Market

Drift is one of the valuable customer service tools. It can pick website visitors and turn them into qualified leads. This tool is ideal for brands with high-value goods.

Zendesk for Prioritizing and Sorting

Zendesk is a very fun personalizing and sorting tool. It tracks the tickets, organizes tickets, categorizes the customers, and handles SLA management as well.

Ada for Personalization

Ada is a very good personalization tool that can gamify the user experience. Eventually, this can boost engagement and improve the overall experience.