AI for Customer Support: Winning Customer Experience

By Deon Nicholas

AI for Customer Support: Winning Customer Experience

AI is changing the way we do business by performing repetitive, mundane tasks and allowing humans to do what we do best – think critically, empathize, care, and ideate new ways to improve current processes. 

AI for customer support will elevate the experiences of customers. And, luckily for you, now is the best time to take advantage of that. While only a small percentage of customer service is assisted by AI right now, that number is set to explode in the coming years. 

In fact, “Data shows that chatbot usage and engagement is on the rise. Today, only five percent of customer interactions with contact centers globally are powered by AI technologies, but Gartner estimates that by the end 2021 this will rise to nearly one in six.”

Given customer expectations, and the growth in technology now is the time to invest in AI for customer support. There is still a first-mover advantage in launching AI-assisted customer service as it is still only being utilized by a few companies. 

Just what are these rewards? 

Here, we cover some of the most notable benefits to getting you started. We will highlight just what makes AI central to winning customer experience.  

AI For Customer Support = Less Waiting

For agents, we understand the feelings behind being bombarded with an onslaught of support requests. And for customers, we know the frustration behind having to wait hours or even days for support. 

The reality is every team faces this challenge: customer service agents can only handle so many calls and questions and still perform their job well. You also have to think about how some inquiries are way more complex than others. Questions that require basic info can be solved promptly whereas if a customer needs more detailed help, an agent will need more intimate knowledge regarding customer accounts. 

Here is where AI for customer support can help. By automating some support work, you’ll be able to improve KPIs and help move the needle to reach new goals. 

Your organization has access to an incredible amount of data and AI systems like Forethought’s Agatha work by consuming that data to learn about your customers and their needs and help find places where automation can occur. 

With AI for customer support, customer support reps can summon exemplary responses faster than ever, reducing their time spent per customer. Customers have seen reduced time to resolution on tickets by up to 32%. 

AI Means A Personalized Customer Experience

Of course, a high quality customer experience is not just about how quickly customers are serviced. It’s also making sure they feel understood and valued. 

A major complaint about customer service is that the experience feels impersonal. 

This is an obstacle that traditional AI-based customer services (commonly known as chat bots) often experience, but new-generation AIs like Agatha can overcome. 

There’s an enormous amount of data available on your customers in your systems and AIs are able to quickly process that data. Unlike a chat bot, customer support teams can cater responses around the data or source materials that are relevant to that customer’s unique needs. 

The result? Customers naturally feel more understood. Say goodbye to the generic response, and hello to the personalized message crafted based on the actual customer.

AI Gives A Pleasant Experience For The Customer And Agent

Customer support work is hard. Experiencing your customer’s stress on a daily basis can cause uncomfortable or distressing customer support experiences. Agents deal with a flurry of tickets while trying to delight customers and get them the information they want as quickly as they can. 

Accumulated mental fatigue due to what is being asked of an agent, is a very real challenge faced in this industry. As customer support agents get more stressed, confused, or frustrated, the quality of their engagements with customers is likely to go down. CSAT will fall.

This is where an AI tool can help. Top-of-the-line answers and insights are at the ready for customer service agents, so AIs like Agatha can considerably reduce the stress that they’re under.

AI Leverages Vast Amounts of Knowledge 

We know. Agents are superhuman geniuses. But there is still a limit to how much knowledge they can retain about your product and your customers. No matter how good your customer support team is, there will be times where they simply don’t have an answer and have to make a customer wait while they search for the correct response. 

This delay contributes to everything else we’ve covered: long wait times, generic responses, and stressful experiences. 

You can overcome this challenge when using customer support AI. The right AI for your org will utilize all the data available from your CRM and help desk management software. As more data is added to your database, the smarter the AI will become. AIs with modern technology learn over time, just as humans do. As a result, AI’s help make customer support reps far more efficient in their responses. Enter: winning at customer experience. 

AI From Forethought

As a support agent or a team lead, what opportunities do you see in AI for customer experience? What challenges could be resolved through the use of futuristic technology? 

We believe the future of support teams is in solving complex issues and that your work will be more interesting and have more variety. 

Ready to take the leap? Book a demo


Still have questions? Download our ebook on piloting AI in Customer Support or browse our customer case studies.

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Interested in generative AI for customer support? Check out this guide to learn about the 3 key pillars you need to get started.

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