One of the ways artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the world can visibly be seen in customer support. It does this by using data to predict consumer needs, providing timely and quicker responses, and using human-like interaction with customers.
Table of Contents
You might have unconsciously interacted with an AI chatbot while trying to buy a product or find a solution to the product you bought.
This post explores ways AI is revolutionizing customer support in the bank, finance, and security sectors and how service providers can leverage AI technology to stay in tune with the modern-day business world.
AI and customer experience
The way service providers interact with customers has completely changed more than what it was in the 90s. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI) for being at the forefront of this revolution.
For instance, before AI was deployed to the customer service and support unit of the banking sector, members of staff were overwhelmed by customers’ inquiries, they were overstretched thereby affecting their output.
Today, with the use of AI, interaction with customers can be personalized without compromising efficiency and effectiveness.
Are companies willing to use AI in customer support?
A report by MIT Technology Review and Genesys observes that over 90% of world-leading companies use AI to increase customer support and satisfaction.
The companies include Uber, Zurich Insurance, Nubank, Uber, Alibaba, and BT Global, it refers to them as “iconic firms”.
The report also found that AI tools can be more efficient when they are supported by their workers.
Aside from that, we’ve also noticed that a visit to the customer support page of financial institutions has a WhatsApp chatbot that takes care of customers’ issues. They are trained to provide solutions or answers to whatever questions customers might have.
Definitely, firms that have yet to use this technology are ready to deploy it.
So, in what ways are businesses using AI for customer support and service?
1) Task automation
AI-powered customer service solutions use a technology called Robotic Process Automation (RPA). This technology is deployed to handle repetitive tasks such as filling of forms, data entry, and record keeping.
This process not only reduces the stress on human customer support staff, but it also allows support staff to attend to more complicated and complex issue resolutions that AI might not be able to handle effectively.
2) Simplifying customer needs
AI technology can analyze data that could take humans weeks or months within a few hours.
In today’s business world, data is germane to business growth. Businesses now use AI to analyze data for them to gain insights into the behavior of customers.
This data is used to predict what customers’ needs are and could be used to improve service delivery and satisfaction.
Achieving customer satisfaction could potentially increase retention and boost customer confidence in a business that meets their needs.
3) Stimulate conversation with customers
Chatbots are increasingly becoming popular among businesses to offer customer support to clients and customers.
Specifically, chatbots are programmed to engage human users over the internet, attend to queries and be able to make suggestions based on customers’ prompts or queries.
Chatbots swiftly provide human-like responses and reduce the time spent on queuing for real human interaction.
With the use of natural language processing (NLP), chatbots are able to understand customer requests and use them to provide appropriate responses.
While the AI-powered chatbot is revolutionizing customer service, it must be stated that it also provides an opportunity to interact with human support staff for complex issues.
Example: The Payoneer chatbot will ask customers to type a certain word to be connected to human customer support, that’s one of the benefits of AI to customer service.
4) Assisting in personalized recommendations
AI assists customers, and shoppers, to make better decisions based on their search history.
Examples of AI-powered customer service can be found AliExpress, Amazon and other E-commerce platforms by using customer’s search history.
Even if you’re using e-commerce for the first time, it will most likely make recommendations based on your recent search.
These platforms use machine learning algorithms thereby improving sales through related products.
5) Assist business owners to improve
AI assists business owners to collect feedback from customers and use the feedback to improve their services.
Getting reviews and feedback from customers is one of the best ways to improve service delivery.
Deploying AI to analyze feedback gives business owners insights of what issue to address and how to consolidate the existing success. Using AI in this way can help minimize negative reviews
6) 365-day support availability
Providing support for customers means you business owners or service providers have to be available 24 hours to entertain whatever queries customers might have.
There are companies (e.g namecheap) that use a human-support system to attend to the needs of their customers any time of the day.
Many others have fully deployed artificial intelligence to swiftly jump on resolving issues.
This has not only led to improved customer satisfaction, but it has also made issue resolution to be faster than ever because AI-power chatbots are available 365 days a year.
7) Opening doors of opportunity to prompt engineers
With AI-powered support, the customer service industry is experiencing a transformation that couldn’t be imagined a century ago.
With this, there are business opportunities for prompt engineers and chatbot developers to explore more ways of generating revenue.
Conclusion
The ways AI is revolutionizing customer support explained in this article are among the few ways artificial intelligence is solving issues associated with customer service. The transformation AI has brought to the customer support sector is fantastic!