Customer service has proven to be one of the most popular use cases for generative AI. But how exactly will generative AI assist customer service teams (and in particular, eliminate customer alienation)? What companies are already using generative AI? This article will take you through the answers.
One of the core uses of generative AI is customer-facing chatbots. If you've ever encountered a chatbot before, you may remember that they were stupid and stupid, and they couldn't understand or help. But rest assured, with the help of advanced models such as ChatGPT, today's chatbots are better able to understand customer intent and respond to needs with more accurate and detailed expressions. They can also efficiently handle a large number of queries and improve the personalization of content over time.
Traditional AI products (like those chatbots that everyone has encountered before) still rely on established rules to give canned responses. And when you encounter a query that you don't understand, or that is not included in the answer bank, you will immediately fall into paralysis. And even if the answers are true and valid, the language is often quite stiff. In stark contrast, tools like ChatGPT are able to understand rather complex questions and generate responses in more natural and catchy language.
Considering ChatGPT's excellent language skills, Octopus Energy, a British energy company, has built conversational AI into its customer service platform and found that it can indeed handle inquiries accurately and responsibly. It has been observed that the robot can replace 250 human agents on its own, and the customer satisfaction score is higher than that of human customer service. That's why call centers are increasingly using generative AI chat and voice tools to handle simple, frequently repetitive queries. What's more, these tools enable customers to access support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, through multiple channels such as chat, and social direct messages.
In addition to answering customer questions directly, generative AI has other customer service value-added options. Other tasks that generative AI can accomplish or assist with include:
Further enhance the customer experience by providing customers with personalized recommendations based on customer data and previous interactions.
Conversational search capabilities are available, such as FAQs. Generative AI is able to receive natural language prompts such as "Where's my package?" and then direct the customer to the correct answer or tailored response. In addition, AI can smoothly switch between different languages to serve customers around the world.
Optimize data to support customer service operations. Generative AI is able to process large amounts of data and turn that information into actionable insights – such as "What are the most common complaints from customers?" "It also tracks customer trends and categorizes opinions.
Support for human customer service**. Generative AI can help human agents work more efficiently. For example, it can automatically generate responses to common queries, provide agents with a summary of previous complaints and resolutions, and quickly provide product recommendations.
In this way, generative AI will dramatically improve the productivity and experience of human agents, allowing them to focus on more complex customer interactions and improving service experience and value.
As the U.S. subsidiary of Manulife, a global financial services provider, John Hancock has been supporting customers with a variety of services for more than 160 years. Faced with the rapid development of generative AI, the life insurance company decided to give it a try.
The company has partnered with Microsoft to deploy conversational AI tools, including Azure Bot Service, to support common customer queries and questions. Like other companies, with the sudden outbreak of the pandemic, calls to John Hancock's call center began to surge. This meant the company had to take a new approach to help customers get the answers they needed quickly. To do this, they turned to Microsoft to deploy a chatbot assistant that can handle routine queries, thereby reducing the total number of queries** received by the contact center and freeing employees from endless repetitive tasks.
In this way, the new approach allows call center staff to focus on more complex cases – the ones that really require expertise – rather than "How do I reset my password?" ". As a result, customer service team members will have a better work experience and more tolerable work pressure, while customers will have shorter queue times and a better service experience. Tracy Kelly, Vice President of Contact Center and LTC at John Hancock, said, "The chatbot has dramatically reduced the need for human agents, significantly saved operational costs, and freed up resources to further upgrade our call center......”
In addition, the introduction of chatbots has brought unexpected benefits – the customer service team has gained valuable AI skills, allowing them to better plan their careers and meet their personal development needs.
According to data released by the IBM Institute for Business Value, customer service has become the top priority for CEOs. That's why 85% of executives surveyed have decided to make generative AI services available directly to customers within the next two years. And those companies that still ignore the general trend of generative AI are likely to be ruthlessly eliminated in the fierce market competition.