Artificial intelligence in customer service: Main advantages and real examples 

Artificial intelligence has become one of the vital parts of modern customer service. It helps to empower the whole customer support system and each agent’s efficiency all at once. It covers the around-the-clock needs of shop owners and service provision managers and cuts the request processing time by a mile.  

Let’s examine AI’s importance in customer service, review its main advantages, and consider service, and review its main advantages and examples of use. 

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What is the use of AI in customer service?

Artificial intelligence can help improve customer service workflow in many ways. Automation tools speed up all cumbersome angles of the process and cover the major parts of simple requests, allowing customer service teams to concentrate on the most important tasks.  

There are many AI tools that are helpful for customer support systems, but we will review the most popular ones. 

Chatbots 

AI chatbots are powerful tools for customer self-service. They can cover user needs nonstop, responding to common scenarios and helping users find solutions easily on their own. If the bot can provide decent accuracy and response speed, people prefer to interact with AI more than with human assistants.  

Customer service AI can react and respond faster than people. It’s a great way to answer basic customer questions, help avoid extra customer calls, and reduce the workload for human teams.  

AI helps to handle more tasks within working hours and improves processing efficiency. A chatbot may participate in many conversations at once in several languages. Such a universal approach covers more requests and improves customer experience dramatically. 

Chatbots are best at offering solutions for routine issues and can serve as a bridge for starting a live chat with human operators. Chatbots can also form personalized recommendations according to customers’ requests and interaction history.  

Want to develop a custom chatbot for your business? Check out our chatbot development services.

Generative AI 

This AI tool is one of the greatest boosts for support team productivity. Support agents can delegate simpler tasks like writing an email to an AI assistant.  

AI in customer service can analyze customer data sections and research customer behavior to offer personalized solutions. It can also discover and forecast potential problems and offer ways to avoid them before they take place.  

Taking things further, generative AI equipped with natural language processing (NLP) can understand and interpret customer voice messages. This can enable chatbots and assistants to form accurate and relevant answers to speed up customer support responses. 

Routing tools 

AI can route customer service requests to the responsible representative based on the topic of the request. It helps the right agent to see and react in time. Artificial intelligence can analyze the urgency of requests and build a prioritizing structure.  

The routing tool is a simple but very effective way to improve the quality and productivity of customer service workflow. 

Key benefits of artificial intelligence in customer service

The key benefits of incorporating AI into a customer service team for a higher level of service provision and resulting customer experience include the following:  

• Efficiency of resource allocation. AI integration helps to reduce required costs most effectively. If the workload rises, you will not need more human staff as AI can cover the major part of the work connected with repeated tasks. Automating routine tasks helps unload support team specialists and lets them concentrate on more high-value work. 
• Improved agent productivity. Automating processes gives team members more time for meaningful tasks and helps to cover a bigger workload. Prioritizing urgent requests also helps to deal with issues without delays. If human agent assistance is required, AI can also offer insights and actions to speed up resolution time. It can provide the support team with all the information they may need to fix the issues and offer personalized solutions based on unique customer needs. AI-powered tools for performance tracking, customer service monitoring, and different dashboards with individual scores and recommendations are also available to improve the team’s efficiency. 
• Better customer satisfaction. Fast and convenient service is a crucial factor in attracting loyal customers. Human agents cannot work nonstop, but AI is always available and can provide customer support at any time of the day or night. It reduces the waiting time and helps customers get the required information faster. AI can create customer profiles and form personalized offerings to give customers the feeling of being heard and valued.  
• Optimized operations. AI in customer service can research and recommend which service operations can be automated and what can optimize workflows. It helps to streamline operations and reduce required time. 
• Lower handling time. AI-powered chatbots provide instant support for most issues and route to the correct agent when human assistance is required. In most cases, chatbots can offer the required information and effective solutions for users without involving human resources. 

Read our latest article about the usage of AI in finance.

Main use cases of AI in customer service for businesses

A combination of human work and AI assistance can greatly improve customer service. We studied and detected the most valuable and effective ways to use AI tools during customer support processes.  

AI support for human agents 

AI-powered tools help retrieve vital information and detect the content required for solutions. They can check customer history and study the records of interactions and purchases for agents to use within the conversation. They can also give recommendations and relevant data during customer calls, such as product specifications or steps to deal with issues during troubleshooting.  

Chatbots enable an efficient self-service for users, cutting the number of requests that need human assistance. Artificial intelligence routing ensures that the right agent will reach the request in time. It helps filter the queries and detect the most urgent cases at once. 

AI email processing 

Large companies may receive thousands of emails daily. It’s a time-consuming mission to process them all, solely relying on human customer service teams. AI can serve to make the process faster and more convenient.  

Artificial intelligence can scan and classify emails according to departments. This would help the correct person see the request as soon as possible. It can also clean email boxes from promotional emails and spam to ensure the team deals only with actual cases.  

AI in customer service can offer auto responses based on customers’ previous behavior to speed up the process. Email tools with integrated AI greatly expedite the work of the whole customer support department. Thanks to AI features, team members will be able to cover more requests daily and achieve an increased level of customer satisfaction. 

AI support for call management 

According to the statistics below, many users still prefer to solve their service problems through phone calls. Human operators have a serious workload during the day and are not able to cover all cases. 

AI in customer service is also a great support for this part of work. It captures the customer’s voice, studies the spoken input, and identifies the content of a message. This helps narrow possible responses to requests and choose the most accurate and relevant response or solution.  

After this, the AI converts responses into audio form via a text-to-speech system to give users audible answers. Such a complex AI procedure takes only a short amount of time.  

AI-powered visual recognition 

AI can analyze video and images, identify possible problems, and provide text and visual instructions for issue-solving. This AI feature allows users to perform simpler, intuitive troubleshooting. Text descriptions may confuse less experienced users, but visual ones are more accurate and clear. They reduce the possibility of misunderstanding.  

How to integrate AI into customer service: 7 steps of integration

AI integration into a customer support system may be a challenging task, but the benefits it could bring serve their purpose. Our expert team has valuable experience in the integration process, and we define the following steps for AI implementation: 

Step 1 – Classify your data 

Customer data can be classified into three types: structured data (such as analytics), unstructured data (audio and visual requests), and semi-structured data (a combination of structured and unstructured content). 

Step 2 – Structure the performance data 

A valid structure is vital for AI integration. To avoid possible errors, you need to make sure that you feed AI only well-structured data parts. Use tools to clean and transform data into the appropriate format. 

Tips: 

• Focus on the quality of data rather than quantity. The better quality, the more effectively AI performs. 
• Collect only required data avoiding information that is not required for defined purposes. More does not always mean better. 
• Provide security measures to adhere to privacy regulations and keep customer information safe.  

Step 3 – Label the data 

Labeling the data is one of the most effective stages for AI training. To make this real, you need to name customer data categories for better understanding. For example, you can define such categories as product name or interactions/purchase history. 

Step 4 – Build support-oriented intents 

The intent concentrated on customer service objectives will help AI to analyze requests and define common themes and subjects. Their identification will allow AI to provide relevant responses to customer requests. Some platforms offer pre-build intents in a wide range of industries, so you may use them and go directly to the next stage.  

Step 5 – Train the AI 

Now, you need to train your AI to reach a decent level of performance and ensure it will serve company goals. Use feature engineering as your preliminary focus. The proprietary data will improve the chances of achieving the desired results in the customer support system. 
 

Tips:  

• If you divide the whole data into training and validation sections, the AI model will learn to identify patterns intricately and indicate relations through the data.  
• You can use a pre-trained AI model with features designed for service goals. Learning techniques will allow you to adapt the model according to your company’s specifics.  
• Use human reviews to see how the training process works.  
• Check for errors and adjust the model to get better results. 

Step 6 – Integrate the AI into your system 

Once everything is checked and training is successful, you can integrate the prepared model into your workflow. Implement AI-powered chatbots and live chats to get quick, efficient responses to customer requests.  

Step 7 – Test AI 

Testing is one of the most important stages of integration. It will show how well the AI works. You need to evaluate agents’ feedback on AI activity to make sure it serves the proper goals. Check the model from the customer’s side to see to it that all interactions are convenient, intuitive, and accurate. The feedback on bugs will help to fix the system in the early stages and update it to work properly in the future. 

Challenges of AI in customer service

Integration of AI into customer service may bring a lot of benefits, but it can still be challenging. In our experience, the main challenges you will face are the following: 

• Costs. AI integration can be expensive. The price depends on your goals and requirements. For example, pre-trained models are cheaper than the models trained manually from scratch.  
• Time. You need to adjust the chosen AI model to the specifics of your business customer support. Given the amount of data involved and the overall project scope, this process can be time-consuming. 
• Security issues. AI must collect data according to all laws and regulations. To avoid any possible risks, ensure customer data protection. Make transparent privacy standards your priority. 
• Quality. The quality of AI implementation plays a key role. You need to make sure that the AI solution’s interface is friendly to both customers and agents and service to enhance the work of the customer support team. 
• Balance. Existing customers may be used to communicate with human agents. As much as AI can help in most of the tasks, there are still parts of requests that require human attention. Make sure you leave the possibility to reach the operator if the AI isn’t able to help. 

The future of AI in customer service

Artificial intelligence has already demonstrated a high level of support for customer service. In the future, the benefits and possibilities of AI will only grow wider.  

Generative AI can be used to create personalized training for support agents, write emails for customers, and develop call scripts.  

AI-powered personalization can significantly improve customer experience. Classic chatbots may be replaced one day with conversational AI bots. They can make the interactions more variable and helpful for customers. These innovative self-service tools react more similarly to humans to get better quality customer service.  
Artificial intelligence is the sphere of constant growth and development. In the future, it will bring even more possibilities for making customer service more powerful and efficient. 

DICEUS expertise with AI for customer service

Over the years, DICEUS has developed a high level of expertise in artificial intelligence solutions development. This helps us build solutions that raise customer support to a new level of professional efficiency.  

In one of our projects, we developed a round-the-clock chatbot for the insurance company Kniazha. The solution automates communication between the company and existing customers, building a bridge of contact between the insured users and insurance coordinators. 

The chatbot powers efficient customer support via Viber, Telegram, and WhatsApp at any time of the day. Users can receive assistance, submit claims, book appointments, and purchase insurance policies.  

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence can become an extremely helpful tool for customer support systems. It boosts agent productivity and improves customer service experience. By covering a slew of routine tasks, AI frees the hands of the support team and lets them focus on more urgent cases. If you are looking for a way to improve customer service, you totally should consider AI implementation. 

DICEUS can develop AI-powered tools specifically for your needs to satisfy your TA’s customer expectations. 

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