The importance of customer service for any industry just cannot be stressed enough. A recent study done by Zendesk showed that 42% of customers came back to shop more if they had an excellent customer experience, while 52% never returned once they had a single bad customer service experience.
The implementation of Machine Learning powered artificial intelligence is fast becoming the next significant revolutionizing change within the customer service sector. So much so that several studies have indicated that over 85% of all communications involving customer service will be done without the participation of a human agent by 2020.
Customer Service with AI
Customer service has become one of the most critical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Here, the basic concept behind the service remains the same, with the implementation of AI making it far more sophisticated, easy to implement, and way more efficient than conventional customer support models. AI-powered customer service today doesn’t just include automated call center operation but a mixture of services including online support through chat.
Along with the diminished costs associated with using an AI, the other main advantage is that AI can dynamically adapt itself to different situations. These situations can change according to each customer and their related queries. By monitoring an AI during its initial interactions with customers and correcting them every time a wrong step is taken, we can permanently keep “teaching” the AI what is right and wrong in particular interaction with a certain customer.
Due to the AI being able to “learn” in this way, it will have the capability to accurately determine what needs to be done to rectify a particular complaint and resolve the situation to the customer’s satisfaction.
The AI can be trained to identify specific patterns in any customer interaction and predict what the customer will require next after each step.
No Human Errors
Another advantage of AI is that human error, as well as negative human emotions like anger, annoyance, or aggression, are non-existent. AI can also be trained to escalate an issue if it is out of the scope of its resolution. However, with time and increased implementation, this requirement will quickly decrease.
In today’s fast-paced world, more and more people prefer not having to waste time interacting with another human whenever it isn’t essential. A recent customer service survey targeted at millennials showed that over 72% of them prefer not having to resort to a phone call to resolve their issues. The demand for human-free digital-only interactions is at an all-time high.
Thus, it would be no surprise to find that savings would increase drastically with the implementation of AI-powered chatbots. One research by Juniper Research estimated that the savings obtained through chatbots would increase from $20 Million in 2017 up to more than $8 Billion by 2022. Chatbots are also becoming so advanced that according to the same report, 27% of the customers were not sure if they had interacted with a human or a bot. The same story also added that 34% of all business executives they talked to believe that virtual bots will have a massive impact on their business in the coming years.
Hence, the large-scale implementation of AI in customer service is inevitable and will bring drastic improvements in customer satisfaction and savings shortly.
