It’s no wonder the use of AI in customer service channels is becoming more prevalent as today’s consumers have increasingly high expectations when it comes to what great customer service should look like. Alongside real-time help and a consistent cross-channel, they are more and more turning to digital channels as the first point of contact. Adopting a Native AI or AI First methodology for the delivery of these customer service channels is critical to providing top notch customer service enroute to building an impenetrable brand loyalty from your customers and patrons.
This change in consumer behaviour explains why organisations are turning to AI in droves to deliver the proactive and personalised service customers want and demand, when and how they want it. And the benefits on offer by doing so are significant. Companies that initiate AI-enabled customer service report they’ve unlocked significant value for the business that includes:
Research indicates that the implementation and ongoing optimization and orchestration of AI in customer service could potentially deliver up to $1 trillion a year in the global banking sector alone. That’s ROI you simply can’t ignore.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways organisations are using AI to improve the effectiveness of their customer service functions and deliver better customer experiences, drive costs down, increase revenues and propel their brand loyalty higher than ever thought possible.
AI in Customer Service – Improving Agent Efficiency and Productivity
Firms are using advanced AI enabled virtual digital agents to provide a first line of support and answer top customer issues – when will my order be delivered, how can I reset my password? – or undertake intelligent triage on calls to route requests to the right agent. By automating repetitive tasks and workflows, organisations can reduce workloads for human agents who are free to focus on more high value tasks and more complex customer queries that if not focused on could incur further costs or have a negative impact on brand loyalty and reputation in aggregate.
AI in Customer Service – Proactively Reaching out to Customers
Customer service functions are using AI enabled tools to prevent customers from abandoning shopping carts, whether that’s stepping in if it spots a customer has a problem with the checkout process or shipping costs, or proactively offering discounts and incentives to complete a purchase. It is also being used post-sales to check that customers are happy with their purchase, if they wish to share their experiences, and to provide suggestions on complementary products or services that may be of interest.
AI in Customer Service – Deliver 24/7 Service
24-hour, top-notch customer service is possible with the adoption of conversational AI and virtual customer service representatives. AI-powered digital virtual agents allow customer service teams to deliver convenient self-service help for customers, even out of office hours when human agents are offline. From providing access to knowledge resources, or handling basic queries, organisations can cost effectively extend their customer support window and increase the CSAT scores. With AI platforms such as Amelia that specialize in conversational search with NLP, customers can garner a human like experience that provides them quick efficient service where and when they want it.
AI in Customer Service – Deliver Personalised Support
From automatically identifying customer intent and classifying requests to troubleshooting and collecting feedback, today’s advanced digital agents are capable of intervening with a personalised response – for example, offering to send a replacement or issue a refund if a customer’s order was not delivered – or providing human agents with suggested responses to customer enquiries during a live customer service call streamlining the support process and tackling customer concerns and issues more quickly and positively than ever.
AI in Customer Service – Contact Centre Operations
Organisations are using AI in customer service functions to create intelligent workflows that enable faster support for customers and more efficient wait times. Capable of evaluating agent capacity, agent status and skill set, it can intelligently route calls in the most optimised way, providing agents with all the context they need about the customer – the device they are using, where they are calling from, their buying preferences, their purchasing and conversation history, any information they have already gathered, even suggestions on next steps, and more.
AI in customer service isn’t just being used externally with customers, it’s also critical for employee satisfaction and streamlining many internal process that cross departments such as customer service and HR. When it comes to onboarding new hires or training agents, AI can bring new personnel up to speed by gradually increasing the complexity of requests they handle or recommend next course of action to take in a given scenario.
But customer service isn’t the only function where organisations can benefit from the application of AI. At the heart of every enterprise are the IT functions that tie IT and Operations together.
Running a hassle-free IT service desk was a challenge before hybrid and remote working became the new normal. However, changing workplace behaviours and the growing use of end-user collaboration tools means that IT support requirements have significantly escalated.
Resolving user-specific issues fast – and first time – is key for limiting employee downtime and boosting productivity. But with ticket volumes increasing, organisations need to find a way to transform their IT service and help desk with cost and performance optimisation in mind.
Today’s AI-powered help desk solutions can resolve a number of basic day-to-day end-user queries and requests including:
The utilization of AI in IT is enabling operators to accelerate self-service, respond to FAQs and provide intelligence suggestions based on a user’s role 24×7. Today’s AI digital agents using Conversational AI can take care of a multitude of tasks. Escalating complex or more challenging scenarios to a live human specialist who is instantly furnished with all the information they need to get up and running fast when it comes to troubleshooting an end user’s issue.
However, AI services for IT needs to be implemented with skill if they are to perform as expected – digital agents can’t function or efficiently orchestrate service resolutions if they haven’t been appropriately and securely initiated.
Our cloud-based AI service platforms makes it easy to implement AIOps and an automated digital workforce at speed and at scale.
Powered by Amelia AI, automation, and conversational AI, and complemented by our highly skilled support teams, Bell Integration’s AI IT Managed Services give you a fast and streamlined way to incorporate a fully ITIL-aligned IT Help Desk and AIOps framework that frees up your IT personnel to focus on more value-add tasks. With Bell Integration your AI programs will be predictable in that they will have fixed outcomes, fixed costs, and be aligned with your goals, timetables, and requirements.
AI in IT – Lightening the Load with Bell
With properly executed AI programs in place, IT departments can monitor, manage and support Tier 1-4 incidents as well as service requests, configuration and decommissioning services, giving you everything you need to support your extended environment – cloud, physical and virtual servers, storage and backup, database management, networks, routing, firewall security, wireless and desktop management. What are you waiting for, call Bell Integration today for a free consultation to see just how far we can take you with AI!
Bell’s digital workforce, service desk engineers and management platform utilising AMELIA AI and Automation, allows us to complement staffing overheads with the creation of bespoke, or templated automations, for service desk demands.
