12 practical ways AI improves work for customer service agents
With so many potential uses for AI in customer support, it’s important to choose the right starting point based on the unique needs of your teams and overall business. Whether you’re keen to boost morale, be more proactive or productive, or get rid of the mundane tasks, there are lots of ways you can make a start today:
1. Address customer queries instantly
An AI assistant provides fast, consistent replies to customer inquiries round the clock. No delays. No automated messages promising a response ‘within X hours or days’. Remember, an instant reply must fully resolve the customer query otherwise it’s not true AI automation, it’s just another route to creating a backlog of enquiries for your team. An advanced AI assistant is key to speaking with and assisting your customers in real time, so your team doesn’t have to.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Cuts out stress and frustration caused by long wait times and reduces the chances of getting harsh feedback or abuse.
2. Boost productivity
Let an AI assistant handle routine tasks, even complex ones through seamless integrations with your business systems. A 2023 university study found customer support agents using an “AI-based conversational assistant” increased their productivity by 14%, which could be the difference between hitting and not hitting your contact centre targets.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
More time for tasks that require specialist expertise, strategic decision-making, or essential skills in empathy every agent should learn, enhancing overall job satisfaction.
3. Consolidate systems
Use an AI assistant to compile all essential information into one single, easily accessible platform.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Speed up tasks with all necessary data conveniently located in one place.
4. Provide a 24/7 hour service using AI
Our AI assistants manage 30% of all enquiries outside traditional business hours, catering to customer demand for convenience. You can easily overcome an emergency too: When Mytime Active had to unexpectedly close their contact centre, their AI assistant managed customer communication, meaning their support agents returned to zero complaints.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Fewer queries to address at the start of the workday and reduced need for constant online presence.
5. Assign urgency with AI
A next-gen AI assistant can flag urgent issues, such as imminent travel plans or same-day deliveries, so potentially upset customers are soothed promptly.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Swift tackling of urgent issues lowers the chances of confrontational encounters and stressful situations.
6. Increase accuracy
Use an AI assistant to give customers scripted answers set by you, so customers get the same answers every time. This is especially important now LLMs like ChatGPT are being used to transform customer service because, currently, generative AI used without supervision will give your customers a different message every time. Make sure there’s a human in the loop on any platform you use to approve messaging and keep it consistent.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Minimises the likelihood of avoidable misunderstandings or potential complications, including legal issues.
7. Be more proactive
An AI assistant can guide customers to suitable products, personalise suggestions based on their needs, automatically suggest additional purchases during checkout, and prevent abandoned carts by eliminating confusion.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Shifting from reactive to proactive measures eases customer interactions and mitigates potential issues.
8. Spot patterns in enquiries
Detect common trends in customer enquiries, so you can add necessary integrations, processes or channels to improve your service.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Smoother processes mean you can constantly improve services and get recognition for it, boosting agent job satisfaction.
Better understand customer preferences, behaviour, wants, needs and pains by capturing data across all channels and storing it in one place ready to offer a completely personalised approach.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
More frequent, enjoyable, and effective engagement with customers.
10. Support multiple languages
Detect a customer’s language, so you can give immediate support without any delays, and train your AI assistant to recognise different dialects, industry-specific jargon, idioms or even slang.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Removes language-based barriers, contributing to more seamless interactions, avoiding miscommunication.
11. Streamline live chat
An advanced AI assistant can transfer live chats to agents showing all pre-existing customer information, so the query can go straight to the most suitable agent and customers don’t ever have to repeat themselves.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Never getting caught off guard with an incoming query or having to deal with a customer who becomes frustrated at being passed from person to person.
12. Reduce repetitive tasks
Assign the mundane tasks that can often lead to burnout (one of the most common reasons customer support agents leave their jobs) to an AI assistant.
🎉 Biggest win for the agent
Lessens the chance of burnout by removing tedious and uninspiring tasks from their workload.
These 12 uses for a smart AI assistant highlight the transformative role of AI in customer service support today. Far from being a threat, AI serves as an opportunity to enhance agent capabilities, improve operations, and elevate customer experiences overall, bringing big wins for customer service leaders as well as agents.
