The AI-driven future of customer service

In customer service, AI can be used to analyze and prioritize masses of information: being able to sift through thousands and sometimes millions of different customer interactions to understand which one's matter. Another is prediction: using AI to predict what will happen in the future to allow you to adapt to provide better, consistent customer service. AI is very much underused in these areas but it’s also where a lot of companies can benefit from using it.

The benefits of AI and automation in customer service

AI unlocks the removal of waste - such as the wastage of customers and agents' time. We can use AI to identify mundane or straightforward interactions that can be automated using self-service technology—things like password resets or tracking packages. Ultimately, we want to make sure high-value or complex interactions are directed towards people in the customer service teams.

AI analysis of customer interactions can also be used to dramatically improve customer experience as it can provide deep insight into the reason for customers calling in, as well as their sentiment, emotion and any other characteristics of the call that could indicate a poor customer experience. This information can then be used to customize and personalise coaching and development for each team member to ultimately improve customer experience.

All our customers have seen a significant uplift in customer experience and satisfaction scores and this is due to our solution being not just a stick but moreso a carrot. The insights that our customers are providing their agents are improving their day-to-day life as it’s not just about where things can be improved, in a matter of seconds managers are able to bring up a dashboard that shows exactly what agents are doing well. It's easy to show the wins.

One of our customers in particular, MYOB, showed over 20% improvement in their already very strong CSAT scores. Another win for MYOB that is related to customer experience but also revenue, was their coaches were able to identify areas of improvement for their sales teams to become more solution centric in their pitches which resulted in an 18% increase in conversions. That is huge! These types of improvements are echoed by all of our customers.

Implementing AI in an organisation

AI can be seen as quite complex, which is often a barrier to implementation. We are an intelligent middleware that sits on top of your existing systems and simplifies the process of implementation and operation. You need a solution that can fit into your existing infrastructure and data layer rather than something that has a difficult implementation. Ideally, you want to be up and running within a matter of hours and days rather than weeks and months.

The moment of truth

In its broadest sense, service is all about moments of truth. These are the interaction points when your customers come and talk to you about an issue or problem they have, so it's important to be able to surprise and delight your customers with these interactions. Keeping a customer is much more cost effective than attempting to win new ones, so this idea that service is somehow something we have to do has to be changed. We need to use AI to focus in on looking after our most valuable customers—our existing customers.

AI will also help us with consistency of interactions with our customers across the organisation. That's one of the biggest challenges we all face—when a customer interacts with us, they get a different experience depending on who they talk to. With the use of AI and tools like daisee’s, we can lift the bar on the overall standard of service.

Humans remain the superior intelligent beings on the planet but I believe AI can help us be even better. It's like having Google Maps in our car. We don't need the car to drive itself, but it's helpful having Google Maps in it. That's the context we should think about when we think about the impact AI will have on customer service—augmenting human capacity.