Ask any top executive, and they will point out and stress why extraordinary customer service and customer experience are both top priorities for any organization in any industry domain. Because, while drawing new customers is remarkably important, customer retention seizes a higher place in any business environment, be it software and technology, eCommerce, healthcare, or travel and tourism. 

To address this, organizations worldwide embrace technology tools and solutions to provide a seamless service and experience to their respected customers. The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) for customer service, is transforming customer service by providing twenty-four-seven customer support and increasing customer engagement.

The use of AI, and specifically conversational AI, for customer service is not only revolutionizing the customer support function but also improving brand reputation and customer loyalty. Thanks to the availability of software like Y Meadows’ AI customer service solution, companies in the B2C and B2B industry segments are progressively entering the age of automated customer service, boosting the entire brand experience for customers.

Customer service AI applications are becoming exponentially widespread in customer support to improve the experience and reduce reliance on human customer service representatives to provide consistently good service. Moreover, according to studies, eight out of ten businesses fear going out of business within five years if they don’t scale AI, while 86% of CEOs state that AI has become the mainstream technology in their office in 2021.

So what’s behind this AI customer service automation buzz and what’s the role of artificial intelligence in improving customer service? In this blog post, we’ll share information that will be helpful for anyone who wants to get a handle on the current state of AI and its future impact on businesses. Let’s dive in. 

AI Is Revolutionizing The Face Of Customer Service

First off, AI automates numerous processes that were once run solely by people. While some consider this a negative change, the reality is that artificial intelligence can help reduce the workload of many staff members and usually do their job more accurately and faster. Or in other words, AI permits organizations to deliver more intelligent, personalized, and predictive experiences that customers have come to expect.

And if you want to get a better perspective of what AI is for businesses these days, you can compare the technology to the Industrial Revolution. People were greatly concerned that machines were taking over their jobs back in the day, but ultimately, the change advanced the world for the better. And while the implementation took decades, thanks to the benefits which far outweighed the restructuring of jobs and changes in the workforce, in the end, society improved.

Without the Revolution, the world wouldn’t be as advanced as it is today, and without artificial intelligence, which some professionals are naming the fourth Industrial Revolution, the world wouldn’t be advancing once again. Nowadays, AI for customer service is continuously changing the face of customer service efforts and customer relationship management, as companies utilize AI-driven solutions like Y Meadows to: 

• Optimize and work on enabling customer service representatives availability, wait times, and opportunities for proactive service delivery; 
• Gain real-time insights across multiple customer contact channels; 
• Automatically classify cases using predictive analytics and sensitivity; 
• Power rule-based chatbots to deliver genuine knowledge using automated workflows; 
• Enable representatives to provide service based on access to structured data; 
• Optimize scheduling and routing; 
• Deliver personalized services and experiences anywhere. 
  

Automated Customer Service And How It Improves Customer Satisfaction 

By its very nature, customer service automation is a business operation aimed to reduce or eliminate the level of human involvement in catering customer service. So, how can your business achieve automation in its customer service efforts? Well, with the help of AI for customer service, automated customer service could be implemented in multiple ways, including customer self-service so that customers could solve a customer service problem or answer queries on their own, or by incorporating intelligent chatbots, which is one of the most significant benefits of conversational customer service AI. 

But what about customers and their satisfaction rates? Do they prefer interacting with automated chatbots instead of human agents? According to an article by Kevin Gao, the founder and CEO of Comm100, 60% of online customers don’t like to wait for more than a minute to respond to their request or query. The utilization of intelligent chatbots significantly reduces customer wait times and faster resolution of their demands, improving customer loyalty and satisfaction. Moreover, chatbots with natural language processing capabilities can resolve customer complaints and requests even quicker, elevating customer satisfaction to an even higher level.

Outside the use of self-service platforms and AI-powered chatbots, AI-driven automation transforms the customer experience by customizing product offerings personalized to the customer’s individual needs. Companies like Netflix and Amazon exploit artificial intelligence to analyze customer data and position the right products and services to them. And can you imagine what analyzing quality customer feedback can do for your business and your customer support activities? Below, we’ll evaluate the role of AI in customer feedback and how it can help you achieve even higher customer satisfaction rates the next time you engage with a customer.

The Role Of AI In Customer Feedback 

Explicit feedback is the cornerstone of improvement, a crucial principle for any customer-centric business out there. Analyzing customer feedback enables companies to understand their clients' pain points better, develop their customer support and business strategies based on positive and negative comments or sales trends, and know the needs of their customers to build a stronger business connection with them. 

Nevertheless, being qualitative in nature, most companies can't precisely analyze customer feedback and turn them into valuable, actionable insights. Luckily, AI customer service tools can help you automate this process by analyzing descriptive customer data and structuring the data floating around your business. And one of the best techniques to utilize in order to know what your customers think about your business to meet their expectations is called customer sentiment analysis.

Sentiment Analysis 

Sentiment analysis in customer feedback is a justified use case of AI in customer service, used to evaluate what customers think of your company, products, services, or brand. AI-based models like ours can gauge and categorize the feedback as either positive, negative, or neutral. 

To do that, the Y Meadows model utilizes natural language processing and machine learning to group all words, determine the emotional tone behind online conversations, and extract valuable insight from the text. This way, once you know what your customers think about your product or services, you can quickly react and fix the issues on your behalf, thanks to AI and its subcategories. 

In addition, customer experience metrics like CES or NPS can also be effective indicators of the overall customer sentiment and their perception of your company. 

AI For Hyper-Personalization In Customer Service 

Hyper-personalization, one of the latest trends in the customer service industry, blends artificial intelligence and real-time data to deliver content that’s specifically relevant to each customer. Lately, organizations and consumers are embracing conversational AI for customer service because it provides highly personalized experiences that are also more convenient and much quicker than conventional ways of interacting with businesses. Along with the hyper-personalized experience, customer service AI can also eliminate various pain points in the customer journey, like waiting on hold for a phone call or clicking through a million pages to find the correct information.

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer. An enormous source of frustration for customers is repeating information they’ve already shared with the customer support department, like re-confirming their address or phone number or having to re-explain their issue to different customer service agents. As companies adopt solutions like our AI-powered software, which allows conversational AI to connect to conversation histories, customers’ previously stated intentions, and other data, the interactions they have with their customers feel far more personalized than before.

In Conclusion 

Customer service AI tools started generating buzz when customers could speak and type their needs instead of pressing a number on their mobile device to be taken to the next branch in the menu tree. Artificial intelligence and its subcategories have helped customer service departments streamline their efforts for years now, and they are indeed set to continue to help. With their help, customer service representatives can focus on more complicated issues while AI-enabled technology can work in the background routing calls, assisting clients, and collecting vast amounts of data along the way. 

This is the epoch of personalized customer service and progressive customer experiences. To accomplish both, you need to rely on technology, AI, and big data. Using an AI customer service solution like Y Meadows is a fantastic way to take the plunge into this exciting business revolution and take your customer service efforts to the next level. Learn more about our AI Customer Service solution.