Predicting the future is no longer considered out of the world, or automating mission-critical tasks does not appear like magic. The new-age boom called Artificial Intelligence (AI) is doing wonders by executing the functions and helping businesses engage with customers better.
The power of artificial intelligence is such, that service managers are now forced to implement this futuristic technology to drive sustainable and exponential growth. This is because, at every stage of the customer journey, AI helps deliver stellar customer experiences.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How does AI work?
A lot has been spoken about artificial intelligence or machine learning (ML). But simply put, AI is the idea of building machines capable of thinking like humans. The ability of computer-controlled robots to perform tasks are commonly associated with intelligent beings, where AI adopts the intellectual processes or characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, learn from experience, discover meanings, or provide the best solution.
Often, it is assumed that the over-dominance of AI will take over humans in the workplace. However, this assumption does not stand valid simply because only the proper blend of human and artificial intelligence can make a difference. By 2030 AI is expected to contribute $15.8 trillion to the global economy. The number of enterprises using AI in business has already grown by 270% and it will continue to grow further.
Also Read: 10 Salient Features of a Premium Helpdesk Software
Advantages of Artificial Intelligence
AI-powered digital solutions are prepared to improve every aspect of your business, including online customer experience, engagement, loyalty, brand reputation, preventive measures, and even revenue streams. In addition, AI sets new standards in client servicing and empowers your support agents to excel in their day-to-day activities, increasing efficiency and quality. For example:
- AI reduces human error in work
- Available any time (24×7)
- Help automate repetitive tasks
- Act as the digital assistant
- Facilitates instant decision
- Help in predictive analysis
- Make client servicing super-easy
Application of AI and ML in Customer Service
You must have had this experience when you called a contact center and steered through plenty of confusing options where they put you on hold for several minutes (maybe a little too long), and then you heard these famous words – "Hello, how can I help you?"
But have you ever imagined being on the other side? It might change your perspective for a moment putting you away from being judgemental.
Picture yourself asking the same question 1000 times a day to 1000 different customers. Or even worse, being unable to decide the correct responses to your customer inquiries. There lies the concern, and support teams deal with it daily.
So, how do service centers provide an exceptional customer experience in a world of fading customer loyalties? What are the best ways to ensure a timely response to customer inquiries? How to strategize seamless digital communication in customer service?
The answer is simple; by applying AI and ML to customer service, which is made possible by powerful helpdesk software. It helps reduce your support agents' mundane and recurring activities, achieving better efficiency.
1. Intelligent Suggestions
ThinkOwl’s AI assistant provides intelligent suggestions to the support agents to drive faster, efficient, and standard case resolutions. AI learns how to do this by collecting agents' past actions as events and using them as training datasets to make new suggestions. On this path, artificial intelligence has a gamut of roles to play in customer service. Let us dive into the details.
Smart Responses and Knowledge Suggestions:
When working on cases in ThinkOwl, the onus of carrying out the correct case-related actions lies on the support agents. It includes selecting appropriate responses and resources from intelligent suggestions. As the AI observes multiple agents working on various types of cases, AI constantly refines the recommendations that it provides. After a large enough dataset is trained upon, AI suggests smart responses or knowledge articles.
For instance, let's consider a support team where Steve is a key member. He keeps receiving a myriad of customer inquiries all day long. Steve can manually respond to each case one by one, but he chooses to take the help of intelligent suggestions. Why? Simply because AI analyzes which smart responses and knowledge articles have been used for similar cases in the past. It then provides intelligent suggestions for Steve where he only has to select a suitable suggestion while replying to a customer message. Now, he can resolve every case swiftly and with accuracy.
Similar Case and Expert Suggestions:
Artificial intelligence also suggests similar or relevant cases. For instance, if Steve (the support agent) wants to refer to cases that are like the one he is currently working on, AI recommends those cases as well. It helps Steve find the resolution methods that were adopted to resolve cases in the past, and subsequently, he may apply the same approach for the case he is acting upon at this moment.
In addition, ThinkOwl also suggests expert users who have experience handling similar cases. Steve can directly contact any of the suggested expert users to seek help in resolving any roadblocks that he may face while trying to resolve a case.
The benefits of Intelligent suggestions are galore:
- It empowers your support agents with AI-powered tools that facilitate efficient case handling
- Removes any scope of error or oversight
- Helps solve customer problems swiftly
- Makes the overall service process easier
Also Read: AI Helpdesk Software is The Backbone of Service Companies. Know Why!
2. Intelligent Guide
ThinkOwl's Intelligent Guide is the best bet for resolving customer issues quickly and orderly, ensuring no cases are missed out by mistake. In the Guided Mode, cases are automatically assigned to agents one after the other in the order of case priority, due date, creation date and time, and escalation level (this order of case assignments can be customized by account administrators).
AI predicts up to three assignees who can handle the case, and subsequently, the most relevant case is pushed to the appropriate agent. So, when Steve (the support agent) logs into ThinkOwl's Guided Mode, he immediately sees an open case assigned to him.
Overall, the intelligent guide helps push the next most relevant cases to the appropriate agent as an alternative to manual case selection from the inbox.
3. Auto-Categorization of Cases
Suppose Steve (the support agent) logs into ThinkOwl helpdesk and finds hundreds of inquiries. For him, it would take hours to manually sort through these cases and determine a category for each case. This calls for a profound, machine-assisted technology that can classify incoming cases into the correct categories and display the performance of its classifications.
Artificial intelligence has the ability to analyze customer messages, learn from agent actions and their choices, to understand which case belongs to which category. With time and training, it auto-classifies all new cases to the correct categories.
ThinkOwl provides a report on auto-categorization so that users can decide which categories require more training and which auto-categorization has worked well. Also, as an admin, you can evaluate how effectively the AI is trained on your helpdesk by checking its learning statistics in the Dispatcher AI.
4. Conversation Bots
Clients nowadays expect faster service, and that too at their convenient time. That is just fine! Because ThinkOwl has conversation bots. Conversation bots use artificial intelligence to understand customer intents and subsequently determine the best response for them. The more you train these bots, it takes control of client conversation when support agents are unavailable or when customer traffic is too high to handle by them. As a result, these bots ensure all clients are attended to, and their issues are resolved swiftly 24/7.
5. Topic Analysis
Gaining client insights has always been critical for service managers. Artificial Intelligence has got you covered on this front through ThinOwl's Discover module. It helps determine the topics that customers are writing about in their messages. Based on the analysis, you can act to further improve your support operations.
Check out this video — it gives you an overall picture of ThinkOwl's AI assistant.
The central principle of artificial intelligence is to replicate—and then exceed—the way humans perceive and react. Ideally, it learns from experience and performs human-like tasks, providing a more comprehensive understanding of data, and automating complex or mundane tasks.
The customer service industry is gaining much momentum, primarily due to the brilliance of artificial intelligence – a technological breakthrough that has taken almost every business industry by storm.
ThinkOwl, in its relentless pursuit of creating a perfect AI-powered helpdesk solution, keeps improving its AI capabilities. To explore the features of ThinkOwl live, sign up for a 30-day free trial.