Liberating you and your business with AI: customer service
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the business landscape. AI agents and tools are now the norm, allowing your small business to automate multiple different operational tasks.
Client service is a major area where AI can make a difference to your efficiency, your enquiry response rates and your ability to service a growing customer base.
1. 24/7 instant support for your customers
Customer service AI agents and chatbots can respond to customer queries around the clock. This provides customer support whatever time zone your customers are in.
This reduces wait times and ensures your customers always get an immediate answer to their question, even outside your normal business hours. AI tools, like HubSpot's AI Customer Agent (Breeze), can act as your automated concierge, answering queries, spotting sales opportunities and giving customers instant responses to their queries.
2. Automate your routine tasks
AI agents can handle many of your repetitive customer service tasks. Actions like booking appointments, tracking orders or providing FAQs can all be fully automated.
With AI doing the basics, your human agents have more time to deal directly with customers, allowing them to tackle more complex queries that require real emotional intelligence. Intercom's Fin AI agent works across many different helpdesk platforms, delivering high-quality answers to customers and resolving more complex queries – freeing up precious time for your staff.
3. Personalised interactions with each customer
In customer service, tailoring your responses to each customer is a must. AI agents can have completely personalised interactions with your customers, based on past behaviour.
AI can track and analyse your customer data and past interactions to offer tailored responses and recommendations to each customer. Tools like Zendesk AI empower your agents to solve customer issues faster and with tailored responses. This removes the inflexible, robotic communications that Interactive Voice Response (IVR) phone systems may offer.
4. Sentiment analysis that understands your customers
Understanding the emotional content of a customer call is vital to how you deal with the query. AI can use sentiment analysis tools to detect customer emotion from text or voice calls.
This ability makes it easier to spot frustrated customers and get them quickly connected to your human agents. An AI agent like Freshdesk's Freddy AI knows exactly when (and how) to escalate a query. Freddy can transfer conversations to a human agent, along with the relevant notes and context needed to resolve the customer’s issue.
5. Enhanced self-service for customers
Enhancing your self-service capabilities makes it easier for customers to get the answers they need, without your human agents needing to be involved in the process.
AI-powered knowledge bases and frequently asked questions (FAQs) allow customers to independently find the correct answers. This speeds up the query process for customers, and reduces the burden on your support staff. Many CRM platforms, like Salesforce, offer robust AI-driven self-service portals that can transform your efficiency levels.
Talk to us about boosting your customer service with AI
Keeping your customers happy is one of the most fundamental responsibilities you have as a small business. AI agents shouldn’t be used to replace your human customer service team wholesale. But they can be used to create a more effective, automated support function.
If you’re hungry to know more, why not talk to our team about the AI agents and AI-driven apps that would be most appropriate for your industry, niche or business type.
