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How to use integration to make your cust...

How to use integration to make your customer service AI assistant smarter

Trending and new

3 min read

22nd Feb 2024

Natalie Smithson

AI enthusiast | Tea addict | Focused on using AI assistants to win the working week

AI assistants have moved on from the clunky, frustrating, rules-led chatbots we used to know. Now, a smart next-gen AI assistant can chat with you naturally and handle customer service tasks in the same way your support agents do ― so long as you set it up right.

Find out why integration is such a big part of creating an AI assistant that actually works, how it helps in a real life work day, not just in theory, and how easy it can be to set up.

Integrate an AI-driven assistant with your go-to customer service tools and it becomes infinitely more helpful, answering routine customer queries without any help from your support teams, so they can focus on higher-value tasks.

Jump to section

What is integration? How integration improves customer service Popular customer service tools you can integrate with today Specific use cases for integration How to set up integrations Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

TL;DR

Without integration, your AI assistant can only give out information to customers, it can’t carry out customer service tasks to help out your teams and free up their time.
With integration, your AI assistant can resolve many more queries for you end to end, making sure customers never reach a frustrating dead end in the chat.
The easiest, most secure way to integrate a next-gen AI assistant with all your customer service apps and systems is to use an API (Application Programming Interface).
Select examples show connectors for HubSpot, Jira, Zapier, Freshdesk, Trello, industry specific tasks like bin management for a local council, shipping, email management, and live chat.
On our unique platform, you can even add custom connectors for software, apps or platforms you’ve built yourself.

What is integration?

Integration is the process of linking up different computing systems and software applications, so they act as one coordinated whole. When your go-to tools and systems are all communicating with each other, your customer service support can rapidly become more efficient and the customer experience enhanced.

Link all your favourite platforms to an AI assistant and it will be able to take on the repetitive, routine queries your customer support team can do in their sleep, giving them more time to work on challenging, rewarding, or more profitable tasks.

Screenshot of a screen from AI Studio where you can connect your AI assistant to various customer service tools, like Zapier, Trello, Jira, Hubspot, Dropbox, ShipStation, Freshdesk, Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, Make.com

How integration improves customer service

Without integration, your AI assistant can only give out information to customers, it can’t carry out customer service tasks for your teams.

While information is helpful and sometimes all a customer needs, more often than not, your support teams need to do something more to fully resolve a customer query. If your AI assistant can’t carry out these tasks to help them out, they’ll continue to be inundated with those queries over the phone, email, live chat, on social media and messaging platforms, and anywhere else you offer support.

Image shows an illustrated chat conversation where the customer asks

To make your AI assistant truly useful to your customers and your support agents, you’ll need to integrate it with your business systems, so it can do all the things your customer support teams do.

Instead of just giving out a booking number, for example, an AI assistant integrated with your booking system can book your customer in without any help from your customer service teams, and it can do this instantly, 24 hours a day for tens of thousands of customers all at the same time. This gives your organisation a subtle, but significant edge on delivering exemplary customer service.

Customers never reach a dead end in the chat
Integration eliminates those frustrating dead ends we’ve all experienced where a chatbot can only help you so much before it reaches the end of the conversation and your query remains unresolved.
Manages queries end to end using AI
Your AI assistant can take care of all your customer needs, from basic queries to complex transactions, so customers get instant resolutions to their queries and your teams don’t have to deal with routine or repetitive tasks.

An integrated AI assistant means you can consistently offer a sophisticated level of service across all channels for every type of customer interaction.

Popular customer service tools you can integrate with today

Take a minute to think about all those pesky admin tasks your customer service teams need to carry out, day in and day out. Wouldn’t it be great if they could be automated?

HubSpot

Here the AI assistant adds a customer to a company’s loyalty programme. It takes the customer’s name and email address, then adds them to a new loyalty record in HubSpot to automatically sign them up for the programme.

Jira

Here an AI assistant takes feedback from a customer and automatically creates a Jira ticket for the technical team. The customer gets a ticket number and will also receive an email to confirm it’s been created.

Zapier

If your systems are already set up using an integration tool like Zapier or Made, an AI assistant can access the same information it gives to your contact team. Here it checks the availability of parking spaces, which will generate an email to the customer to confirm the details for relevant car parks.

Dropbox

Here an AI assistant handles a request for information about software specification and is able to find the related document in Dropbox to send onto the customer. It does this after first confirming the email address.

Trello

Here an AI assistant takes a feature request from a customer who has used their product, then automatically adds it to the company’s Trello board, so the idea doesn’t get lost.

Specific use cases for integration

Your customer service teams might be using platforms everyone else is using, but some of your support tools might be highly specific to your organisation, or you offer a service like delivery that other businesses don’t need. Your AI assistant can handle those requests too, all through integration.

Industry specific

Here a local council uses cloud-based platform, Granicus, to manage reports of missed bin collections. The AI assistant confirms the customer’s postcode and address, then reports it to Granicus to arrange collection.

Shipping

Here a customer chases delivery confirmation using an order number, which the AI assistant checks against ShipStation to confirm it’s arrived and has been signed for.

Email management

Here, if a company uses an email platform like SendGrid, MailChimp or Campaign Monitor to keep customers up to date on offers and top buys, the AI assistant is able to suggest a relevant email to send to the customer to help them make a purchase decision.

Live chat

If you choose to use live chat for queries that need the human touch, this can improve customer satisfaction and is automatically included with every account on our platform, so there’s no set up at all.

Illustration showing a chat window between customer and AI assistant, with a pop up window saying

Custom connectors

You might have software, apps or platforms you’ve built yourself that only you know about, and you’ll be pleased to hear you can connect your AI assistant to those too.

There are quite literally millions of ways to use integration to connect all your favourite systems to your AI assistant to improve customer service. Thankfully, it’s not difficult to set them up either.

How to set up integrations

The easiest, most secure way to integrate a next-gen AI assistant with your customer service apps and systems is to use an API (Application Programming Interface). APIs create a connection between two applications, so they can talk to one another. The API takes a request from one system and delivers it to the other, before returning the appropriate response, like a messenger.

Choose an AI assistant platform with API integration baked in and you can quickly and easily set up links with all your favourite customer service platforms to transform your service.

Image shows a 2-step process to set up an API in the AI Studio platform. Choose

Try out integration today ― for free!

With our unique AI platform there’s no limit to the number of integrations you can set up to make your AI assistant insanely helpful and keep it evolving. Use it for free for 30 days to see how you like it, and if you need any help, book yourself in for a complementary 30-minute set up call.

Sign up for your free trial now and your AI assistant could be live in just ten minutes using only your website url to create it.

Start your free trial Ask us to set you up

FAQs

What does integration mean?: Integration, in the context of launching an AI assistant, refers to seamlessly connecting your AI chatbot to existing systems and platforms (like your CRM or website), so the AI assistant can retrieve and analyse data, give your customers real-time assistance, enhance customer interactions, and contribute to a sophisticated, enjoyable customer experience in the same way your customer service agents do.

How does integration help with customer service?: Integration helps with customer service because it gives your AI assistant access to the business systems you use to solve customer queries and carry out tasks, whether it’s a CRM, diary, or booking or payment system. This means your AI assistant can personalise responses and carry out tasks from start to finish, so your support agents can get on with more high-value work. Customers are happier too, with instant responses to queries and an enjoyable, hassle-free customer experience 24 hours a day.

What customer service systems can you integrate with?: Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, helpdesk software, live chat , e-commerce, social media, email and marketing automation platforms, content management systems (CMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems, voice assistants, human resources (HR) and learning management systems (LMS), financial or payment platforms, analytics platforms, appointment scheduling software, project management tools, and database systems, to name just a small selection.

How do you set up an AI assistant integration?: Setting up an AI assistant integration involves identifying the systems you want to connect, building or using pre-built APIs to link the AI assistant to these systems, testing the integrations for functionality, and setting up data flow for real-time responses. You’ll need programming expertise, plenty of time and a large budget to do this in-house, or instead, use an AI assistant platform with integration built-in that needs no technical skill to use.