Your customer experience (CX) team has always been your front line, but now, artificial intelligence (AI) promises to step in and alleviate the workload.
The prospect of its success is exciting. It will be a game changer if it can save your team time, improve the satisfaction of customers who want answers fast, route tickets, assist your agents, and do an incredible amount of data analysis at scale. But first, it’s got to impress the skeptics.
AI skepticism is naturally low here at Forethought, where we’ve made it our mission to transform CX teams with industry-leading AI tools. But don’t take our word for it. What matters is the real-world experiences of our formerly skeptical customers, which we’ll cover in detail.
Why are CX teams experiencing AI skepticism?
Generative AI was met with a wave of excitement and a decent dose of skepticism. Early adopters were bullish about its future in customer service because it sounded so human.
Chat-GPT proved AI could answer questions like ” How do I bake brownies?” but when it came to the more complex tasks customer service teams face, doubt set in. To really solve a problem with a confused customer, AI would have to analyze past customer interactions, read and understand a knowledge base, and interpret information to craft a thoughtful, personalized response.
Many skeptics have been burned by outdated technology that made the same promises. Old automated systems using manually built decision trees couldn’t help customers at scale without tons of maintenance. They ended up being more work than they were worth, and customers usually ended up talking to an agent anyway after using them.
So, when AI made the same promises, many had doubts about AI’s ability to:
- Handle nuanced communication with empathy
- Solve issues without creating more work
- Keep data secure
- Interpret customer requests correctly
- Be easy to implement
- Work with existing systems well
Imagine cleaning up the mess left behind after a new, shiny, AI-powered chatbot has given incorrect information to a customer. That’s not exactly a time-saver.
Skeptics are worried about cleaning up the mess left behind after a new, shiny, AI-powered chatbot has given incorrect information to a customer. That’s not exactly a time-saver. The good news is that it’s not really shaking out that way for those who adopt the right tools.
How has AI been adopted within CX teams?
Companies are using AI to speak directly with customers, just like you’d expect from a world recently rocked by generative AI. But it’s much deeper than that.
AI has found its way into almost every corner of customer experience, from powering chatbots to categorizing and routing tickets to quickly crunching massive amounts of data.
Powering chatbots
Remember when chatbots were about as helpful as a chocolate teapot? We’ve come a long way.
Early chatbots felt rigid, frustrating, and far from human. AI-powered chatbots are different because they can learn on their own. They aren’t just spitting out pre-programmed responses anymore. They’re actively analyzing resources and past interactions to be helpful to both agents and customers.
Forma is a benefits platform for companies that offer insurance to their employees. Customer support regularly talks to both customers and employees.
They needed to deflect some questions they were getting repeatedly but were skeptical about whether AI could really be helpful.
“I’m not a fan of automation, but I know I have to have it,” Kara Seymour, Director of Global Support at Forma, said. “It makes me way more skeptical than most people. I’m more cautious about selecting a tool that can preserve customer experience. It’s got to let customers quickly connect with someone if that’s what they want. And it must get the facts right while sounding conversational. Forethought immediately fit my vibe.”
They implemented Solve, and Kara became a believer. Over 13,800 customers contacted their team in the first three months. Their new AI-powered chatbot solved 5,081 tickets, and their deflection rate improved from 30% to 39%.
Forma isn’t alone. According to Zendesk, 45% of businesses are now using AI to accurately respond to customer inquiries and improve the customer experience.
Routing tickets
Some teams still route tickets manually because they’re worried they’ll end up in the wrong place. Each time that happens, more and more time passes before customers get the help they need.
AI can be just as smart as a person in this situation. The right tool will consider priorities, content, past interactions, and even language to send the right help requests to the right people.
Lime, a provider of electric bikes and scooters worldwide, faced the challenge of supporting customers in multiple languages. Their team manually routed these tickets, which was slow and inefficient. They knew they couldn’t scale operations at this pace.
Triage helped them automate ticket routing and categorization, assigning tickets to agents who spoke the right language and prioritizing them based on urgency. Their human support team was then able to focus more time on important issues like compliance and accident reports.
Assisting agents
AI adopters have also used AI to assist their agents. In these scenarios, AI-powered tools have access to company systems to synthesize information quickly for agents who are live with customers. No more frantic searches through knowledge bases or old emails. Everything agents need is right at their fingertips, on demand.
Every holiday season, Uncommon Goods, an e-commerce company that sells unique gifts, hires a team of temporary agents to help with the season. Typically, the seasonal staff has limited knowledge of the company’s operations and products. Training all these agents quickly was a challenge, but Assist helps them get started without extensive onboarding.
Their team reduced ticket resolution times and improved customer satisfaction, even during their busiest season.
Measurement and reporting
Unless you’ve got a dedicated data team at your service, analysis at a large scale is next to impossible. AI completely changes this reality.
Achievers, an employee voice and recognition solution, used Discover to analyze their chatbot inquiries. Discover comes with gap detection, which identifies when knowledge base content needs to be created or updated. Achievers also collects CSAT metrics directly within the widget through a pop-up that appears to customers after closing the chat window.
Companies like Achievers, Uncommon Goods, Lime, and Forma didn’t just stumble into success with AI, though. They were successful because they set themselves up for success.
How to set yourself up for success using AI
Your AI-skeptics might just be proven right if you adopt a new tool without a plan. AI isn’t a magic wand; it’s more like a very smart puppy (but not nearly as cute). It needs training to behave the way you want it to.
Set your CX team up for success by:
- Training your AI with the right information: Access to updated information from your knowledge base, past support interactions, and FAQs is critical. The better the input, the better the output.
- Integrating with the right tools: Provide access to your CRM, sales, and customer tools. The more data on interactions with customers AI has, the better it can help.
- Prepping your team: Train your team on how AI will make their lives easier and how they can use it to assist them when interacting with customers.
- Monitoring and adjusting continuously: Regularly check your AI’s performance, gather customer feedback, and make necessary adjustments. It’s an ongoing process, not a one-time setup.
One of the most effective ways to reduce skepticism before adopting a new tool is to involve your CX team in the selection process. When team members feel they have a say in decision-making, they’re more likely to embrace new tools. Get feedback from the team about the most important features and involve them in product demos.
If you’ve already selected a tool, establish a process for feedback from daily users. This will keep your team involved while ensuring that AI evolves in a way that aligns with both customer needs and team expectations.
The goal is for AI to get smarter over time, not gather digital dust. Take the time to onboard new tools and implement them correctly. Remember to give your AI-powered agent a cool name, too. Maybe something like…Otto—a play on the word “automation”? Or, maybe leave the naming to the marketing team.
AI is changing the way modern CX teams work today.
There will always be skeptics, but there is no denying that AI is impacting the way modern CX teams work today. Many of our most successful customers have gone from skeptic to enthusiast after reaping the rewards.
Implementing AI doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. Start with a pilot program focused on one aspect of customer service, like ticket routing or chatbots. You’ll start to see the benefits of AI on a smaller scale and can expand if and when it makes the most sense for your team.
While we understand the skepticism from those bogged down by frustrating chatbots of the past, AI is making good on its promises. It’s here to do the heavy lifting so your human agents can focus on what they do best—being human.
Still skeptical? Request a demo to see how AI can improve your customer experience.
