PERHAPS COUNTER- INTUITIVELY , AI IS PROVING TO BE AN INVALUABLE WAY TO IMPROVE THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF CUSTOMER CARE .
AI : AN ESSENTIAL AGENT AND MANAGER ASSISTANT
There may be no magic bullet to resolve these complex challenges , but artificial intelligence ( AI ) technology has emerged as a powerful - I would argue essential - tool that can transform both the customer and agent experience for the better . One that can give businesses valuable new insights into their customer service .
Today ’ s customers don ’ t want to be put on hold for long periods of time or repeatedly transferred from one agent to another . They also want to contact a business across numerous touchpoints - social media , email , telephone - and not have to repeat their request each time .
AI can effectively plug agents directly into a business ’ s knowledge base , putting all of a customer ’ s information at their fingertips regardless of which channel they ’ re using . That feature also enables it to give agents real-time assists during the call , prompting them with relevant information based on the caller ’ s queries .
With AI applied in this way , there are no more 15-minute holds while the agents go searching through account information or other documentation or seeks advice from a supervisor .
Perhaps counterintuitively , AI is proving to be an invaluable way to improve the emotional side of customer care .
AI sentiment tracking can alert agents when a customer is showing signs of frustration , prompting them to slow down , or provide them with ideas for taking a different approach , including bringing in a supervisor immediately .
AI can also allow agents to connect customers with complex cases to actual experts within the organization who can resolve their issues more effectively than the customer care team .
The end result is better customer-care metrics : lower levels of call abandonment , higher FCR , and higher overall customer satisfaction .
Leveraging AI to achieve these results is crucial because the value to businesses in providing excellent customer service has perhaps never been higher .
Some 72 % of consumers say they ’ re willing to spend more with a company that offers high-quality customer service , according to one survey . And 94 % of consumers are more likely to make further purchases from a company after a positive customer service experience .
PERHAPS COUNTER- INTUITIVELY , AI IS PROVING TO BE AN INVALUABLE WAY TO IMPROVE THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF CUSTOMER CARE .
HAPPIER AGENTS , HAPPIER CUSTOMERS
Another vital industry metric that AI can improve is agent job satisfaction : something that is intimately linked to customer satisfaction .
The happier and more empowered agents are in their work , the greater their likelihood of staying with that employer , and the better they can provide excellent service to customers .
Any fears of agent longevity costing companies more through pay raises are offset by reduced hiring and training costs , and , more critically , by greater customer loyalty , likelihood of referrals , and ultimately more revenue opportunities .
The average customer service representative between 20 and 34 years old stays in their role for just over one year ( Harvard Business Review ). The average contact center turnover rate is as high as 45 %— twice as high as other departments . More than 70 % of customer service agents surveyed last year said they had considered quitting .
Customer service agents quit because they feel they are unable to meet the needs of the people they speak with every day . When agents are under-resourced , it can result in frustrated and angry customers . This can , in turn , cause agents to feel demotivated and burned out .
AGENT EMPOWERMENT
On the flip side , agents equipped with the tools and support they need can deal with queries , get a sense of satisfaction , and delight customers ( or at the very least reduce their frustration ). This creates a virtuous circle in which agents are happier and able to perform better in their jobs .
The best AI solutions provide agents with an easy-to-use interface that contains records of interactions between the company and the customer , regardless of the channel they have come through .
This enables agents to access the full range of information they need in real time , saving them from frustrating manual tasks like reading through product manuals . Or searching for information that might reside in a dark corner of a CRM application .
The AI tools can answer questions like :
· Who is best to contact for questions about billing , finance , or engineering ?
· Which of them are available now ?
These details need to be natively available through an interface that doesn ’ t require months of training to use .
If agents have to navigate a dozen tabs to access multiple applications to deal with queries all day , they will get burned out . A well-designed and accessible AI-powered interface isn ’ t a niceto-have ; it ’ s increasingly a must-have .
LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD
Chatbots , of the kind popularized by OpenAI ’ s ChatGPT , can pull answers from huge swaths of information using natural-language queries , reducing the technical demands of the job and allowing agents to focus on the human side of their role : connecting with customers .
Recent — and fascinating — research shows that the least skilled staff often benefit most from the use of AI assistants .
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