Customers often expect quick, personalized service from the businesses they use, and now there are and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help businesses respond faster, organize customer requests, and give employees more time to handle complex issues.

However, AI customer service tools are only as useful as the information, oversight, and controls behind them. To support better service while reducing operational strain, businesses should approach AI as a tool that assists employees rather than replaces them.

Five Potentially Productive Uses

AI can help your business:

1. Provide Immediate Answers, 24/7. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can answer common questions, day or night. You might train them to explain return policies, provide store hours, check order status, and troubleshoot simple problems. To deliver helpful answers, your AI tool should draw from accurate, regularly updated sources — such as your website and product or service instructions. To reduce the likelihood that AI will provide inaccurate or inappropriate responses, set clear limits on where it may gather information and what it may discuss with customers.
2. Classify & Route Requests. AI can analyze incoming phone calls, emails, chat messages, and support tickets to help determine your customers’ needs, issue types, and urgency levels. Then, it can route requests to employees who can address their concerns. A billing question, for example, might be routed to accounts receivable. Meanwhile, a technical problem might be assigned to a product specialist. Some AI systems feature sentiment analysis to identify frustrated customers and prioritize their cases.
3. Support Customers On Social Media. Customers often turn to Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms to ask questions, report problems, or post complaints. AI tools can monitor direct messages and comments made to your accounts, provide automated greetings, and acknowledge messages. You might also instruct your AI model to draft responses for employee approval. Facebook, for instance, supports automated Messenger greetings. However, you should instruct your AI tools to alert an employee about any sensitive or confidential messages, rather than responding automatically.
4. Empower Service Staffers. AI doesn’t have to communicate directly with customers to be valuable to your business. It can work behind the scenes to summarize a customer’s history or locate answers for staffers to convey. During a live customer service interaction, AI may recommend troubleshooting steps or identify appropriate actions. It can also prepare call notes and update records. This support may shorten response times and help employees provide better service.
5. Identify Recurring Problems. Customer conversations generally contain many different pieces of information about your business’s products or services. AI can analyze these interactions to uncover recurring complaints, common questions, and emerging trends. AI conclusions can help you take corrective action by improving your offerings, revising product instructions, and updating sales and support training. And AI can analyze which issues consume the most support time, helping you decide where improvements may yield the greatest return.

Understand Potential Shortcomings

Of course, AI isn’t always the best option for customer service. It can misunderstand requests, overlook context, and generate confident-sounding but incorrect answers. And customers may become frustrated if they can’t reach a live person quickly. In addition, keep close tabs on privacy and security issues, particularly if conversations contain payment, health, or other sensitive information.

Finally, your business should regularly test its AI systems, restrict their access to confidential data, and establish escalation rules. Employee intervention is especially important if the system can’t resolve an issue or a supervisor believes something requires human judgment. Instruct employees to take any AI concerns to their managers immediately.

An Extension, Not A Replacement

Ultimately, AI works best as an extension of — not a replacement for — your customer service team. Its greatest strength is automating routine tasks so employees can focus on nuanced or complicated matters. Contact us to discuss costs and potential savings of AI tools.