Many organizations and their customers experience a hint of initial hesitation when embracing customer service generative AI tools and processes.
According to recent research, 60% of customers say they prefer to speak to a live customer service representative, yet 50% of customer calls – without the assistance of AI tools – still go unresolved or require escalation. This results in long open rates for customer service tickets and queries, increased costs for businesses, and most detrimentally, negative customer feedback and a noticeable decrease in customer loyalty.
When it comes to customer service, generative AI has the power to enhance the customer experience and offer personalized service and customer interactions that facilitate an equal – and often better – customer satisfaction score than trying to directly reach customer service teams.
So why is there so much skepticism among businesses and customers when it comes to utilizing generative AI to improve the customer experience and, ultimately, improve customer satisfaction?
Table of Contents
Understanding Generative AI
The Core Components of How Generative AI Functions
Understanding Generative Ai in Customer Service
Generative AI in Action
The Benefits of Generative AI in Customer Service
How to Implement Generative AI in Customer Service
The Role of Generative AI in Customer Service
Clearly, many people are either uninformed or misinformed about this relatively new technology.
Because AI itself is so new, there tends to be a background fear that generative AI will completely replace live agents and humans in the customer service realm, which is triggering for small business employees and customers alike.
In addition, there is persistent confusion about what generative AI can do and what it entails.
Generative AI is much more than a straightforward chatbot or other simplified virtual agent prevalent in the past. Today, generative AI is transforming the customer experience for the better. That’s because generative AI tools can understand customer conversations and complex tasks and provide accurate and valuable answers to customer queries.
If you’re one of the 80% of small business owners who are thinking of using generative AI in your everyday operations – particularly in customer service – then it’s time to increase your knowledge base about how generative AI works and what it can do.
The generative AI specialists at C1M are always available to answer questions. However, in the meantime, it’s helpful to get up to speed on the definition of generative AI and how it can create a better customer experience on a day-to-day basis.
Understanding Generative AI
In its most basic terms, generative AI is a type of AI that creates new content, including text, images, and even music or videos, based on varying prompts or inputs.
Generative AI uses natural language processing and machine learning models to learn patterns and outputs from huge amounts of data. It then uses this vast knowledge base to predict what words, sounds, or even pixels will come next based on human prompts.
Generative AI is already being used around the globe in multiple ways, which includes the following:
- Chatbots for customer service and other complex tasks
- Media creation
- Product development
- Marketing
- Research
- Design and content creation
- Minimizing workloads for countless professionals, including human customer service agents, creative specialists, researchers, engineers, scientists, and much more.
The core components of how generative AI functions
When it comes to how generative AI works under the hood, the learning process that powers this technology is generally as follows:
- It starts with neural networks – The leading technology behind generative AI is neural networks, inspired by a human brain. These networks allow the generative AI tool or model to process complex patterns and key relationships within vast amounts of data. For example, humans increase their knowledge base by absorbing information and experiences and identifying patterns.
- Next up is training – While generative AI collects and understands these vast data sets, it is constantly learning how to identify these patterns and features. Additionally, it is improving its ability to perform certain functions – like answering customer queries.
- New content generation – Once the generative AI tool is up and running, it can generate new content by relying on the learned patterns to create outputs based on the vast amounts of data on which the generative AI tool was trained.
- Continual growth- Generative AI’s knowledge base is perpetual, which means the longer it exists – especially in a niche area like the customer service realm for a small business – the more it improves at its defined job.
Understanding Generative AI in Customer Service
When it comes to customer service, there are many different ways that generative AI can improve the customer experience while lessening the burden on human agents.
The most prominent example is generative AI-powered chatbots to serve as the frontlines (or in a supporting role) in customer service relations.
A generative AI tool like a chatbot can certainly answer common questions . However, it can also greet customers, create specific answers based on your knowledge articles, guide customers through business procedures or processes, send out a human field technician for complex requests, and much more.
Simply put, a generative AI tool in customer service isn’t just an automated system – like an old-school phone tree or one of the original non-AI- reliant chatbots. A generative AI tool can provide personalized answers to customer questions in seconds. Therefore, it can align with your brand’s voice and personality to foster and maintain customer loyalty.
Think of generative AI as a support system for your human agents and your customers. It doesn’t replace your human agents or diminish the service you provide to your customers. Instead, it allows your human team and live agents to streamline their workloads and eliminate repetitive tasks while giving your customers better access to answers, information, and insights.
Generative AI in action
Do you still have questions about how generative AI performs in customer service ? Here are a few examples of generative AI in action.
Generative AI in contact centers or call centers
In contact centers or call centers around the world, generative AI acts a support tool that assists customer service representatives by analyzing customer conversations. It also helps by generating appropriate responses, and handling customer inquiries, especially when it comes to more basic queries.
Again, generative AI is not replacing human employees in a contact center – it is simply providing relevant data and answers, which improves human agent productivity as well as customer sentiment and feedback.
Generative AI for customer support in a small business setting
Generative AI is already well in use in a large contact center setting, where providing exceptional customer service is the only goal. In fact, according to recent research, generative AI is found in an estimated 70-80% of contact centers, with many routinely using generative AI for common contact center tasks like customer interactions and instant responses to common queries.
However, a massive contact center is not the only place where generative AI can be a game-changer.
In a business environment (similar to a large contact center), generative AI can be launched to augment customer support by providing answers to routine and repetitive questions and being available outside of normal 9-5 working hours. It can also provide instant information to customers and sales agents alike, making customer interactions more intelligent and personalized.
Illustrating Generative AI in Action: Customer Service Applications
For example, let’s say a customer has a question about where a business is located or about holiday sales and promotions (and when they are available.) Instead of waiting for a human response, the generative AI chatbot provides this answer automatically, and within seconds.
Now, let’s say a customer has a more complex question about an issue with a product or service. The generative AI can offer initial insights into possible solutions and resolve the issue. Furthermore, the generative AI tool may pass the customer query on to a human agent, field technician, or another person in the company who is best equipped to provide a resolution.
Keep in mind that the above is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to generative AI and customer service. Up to this point, we have touched on how generative AI can be used to answer questions and solve problems. However, when it comes to enhancing your business – and even your revenue streams – there is a lot that generative AI can do.
Benefits of Generative AI in Customer Service
As stated, there are many benefits when it comes to utilizing generative AI in customer service and customer support, including the obvious and the not-so -obvious. A handful of these benefits are as follows.
Enhanced productivity
A generative AI tool allows and empowers your customer service teams to work faster, smarter, and better. Recent research has found that AI based conversational assistants can increase productivity by at least 14% for customer service and support agents.
Enhanced efficiency and automation
Manual processes can be a daunting and frankly boring part of the job for customer service agents. Without AI, agents tend to switch back and forth to varying data sets, systems, and other tools to find customer history, knowledge articles, and pertinent information. (All while a customer lingers on the phone or in an online chat.)
However, generative AI has instant access to all of these insights and can give customer service agents intelligent recommendations based on multiple knowledge bases, conversational insights, and personalized and/or broad customer data.
Improved customer service, customer interaction, and customer personalization
When generative AI is at its best, it has an intricate knowledge of your customers based on customer history and a wealth of other data sets. Therefore, when a customer initiates a conversation with a generative AI tool, the tool can access and populate important information. This information includes the basics like the customer’s name, location, account type, preferred language, preferences, and past interactions or purchases. Because of this, answers are better and more accurate, more personalized, and more efficient.
For example, if a customer needs a field service technician, AI can send all of the essential info to the human technician or customer support representative so that they can provide personalized service the moment they greet the customer in person.
Cost reduction and cost efficiency
Yes, generative AI obviously saves on costs on the frontlines by reducing your human employees’ workload. It has the capability to complete a range of tasks and eliminates the need for “after-hours” support and being available 24/7.
But generative AI can also help boost your revenue in other ways. For example, a generative AI tool can be trained to offer upsells on purchases and suggestions on new products or services a customer may also want to buy.
Generative AI can also encourage satisfied and happy customers to leave customer feedback on popular review sites like Google, Yelp, or Facebook (while not offering this same suggestion to customers who had a less positive experience.)
Perhaps most importantly, generative AI can use all of this data collected from your customer interactions to provide valuable insights into your customers’ buying habits, pain points, and behaviors, which is an undeniable asset to your marketing team.
Simply put, generative AI can do more for your bottom line then simply shaving costs on employee and workload-related expenses. It can provide new revenue streams in a myriad of ways.
A better brand reputation and marketing capabilities
As stated, customers may be hesitant about generative AI in a broad sense. However, generative AI simply provides great customer service, which in turn improves your brand reputation and brand loyalty.
Generative AI chatbots are available 24/7, so they can answer your customers’ questions within their timeframe – not just when your business is open. Generative AI is also fast, responsive, and personalized, which means that questions and issues can be resolved in seconds. This offers a great experience for customers since they don’t have to wait for a human agent to call them back or research an answer.
A generative AI tool certainly should be your only means of customer service. But when used as a support system for your human agents, it can provide a much better customer experience for everyone involved.
How to implement AI in customer service
Utilizing generative AI to improve our customer service operations is more challenging than it may initially appear.
You can’t just flip a switch and expect everything to instantly run seamlessly. Instead, it’s a process that requires a game plan and extensive training. In addition, you need to conduct research on the best, detailed ways that generative AI can serve your company – in customer service areas and beyond.
You also have to determine the best generative AI tools or applications to utilize and how generative AI will be integrated into your operations in a way that best benefits your customers and your team.
Generative AI for Customer Service with C1M
When it comes to implementing generative AI to improve customer service and your team members’ workload (while boosting your revenue), you need an expert resource to move forward. This is where C1M can help.
Our job is to help you create a detailed plan and blueprint that will have measurable results when implementing generative AI into your business. Additionally, we provide expert guidance, assistance, and ample support every step of the way.
Take a step forward with generative AI. Discover how much your business can grow and accomplish – while improving customer sentiment and loyalty – when you have an expert resource behind the scenes.
Working together, we can take your business to a new evolution of productivity, customer satisfaction, and insights.
Ready to elevate your customer experience? Discover the power of generative AI in customer service today — explore our solutions and take the first step towards a smarter, more responsive future!
