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4 min read
19th May 2023
Customer service practices have changed dramatically with the use of AI and live chat is now the vital link between your team and your technology.
While AI-powered chatbots are transforming the ever-evolving world of customer service with their speed, efficiency, and round-the-clock availability to handle customer enquiries, your contact teams continue to create real world connections with customers to serve their every need. Live chat seamlessly blends the quickness and convenience of AI automation with the warmth and empathy of your team ― in real time.
Find out how live chat works, why it plays a key part in modern-day customer service, and how easily it can be added to your AI framework for no extra cost to create a stellar customer service experience.
Live chat is an online communication tool enabling real-time customer support via digital channels. You customers can ask questions, receive support, or share feedback directly with your real-world team, without relying on traditional contact methods like phone or email.
Although live chat has traditionally been accessed using a basic chatbot on your website or app, these are rapidly being displaced by next-generation AI assistants that can do much more for your organisation, your team, and your customers.
These things combined make a seamless collaboration between your team and your AI assistant possible, with live chat being the tool that connects them. It helps your team and AI assistant deliver an unrivalled customer service experience together.
You can automate an endless stream of routine tasks to free up your team’s time and automate complex tasks to move customers painlessly through a process, but sometimes only a human will do. That’s why having your team working in tandem with AI is so effective.
There are always going to be customer enquires that can’t or shouldn’t be automated. Tasks that need more strategic thought to give your customer a fully satisfied response, or more sensitive topics where people need your understanding and support.
On our platform, live chat is already included with your AI assistant ― for free, and it’s easy to set up.
Just set the hours your teams are online, then individual agents can quickly move on- and offline, transfer chats to each other, and leave notes.
You can group your agents under Teams.
At the end of the chat, your agent passes the customer back to the AI assistant to finish off any routine procedures and get instant feedback from them to help continuously improve your offer.
One of the best things about using an AI assistant to control live chat is your agents don’t go into any new conversation blind. Your AI assistant has already determined what the conversation is about, so your agent knows what to expect. That means they’re already thinking about a response before they even join the chat.
It also means customers shouldn’t ever need to repeat themselves, which, as you know only too well, is one of the fastest ways for people to become disgruntled. Using an AI assistant, your agents can see the full transcript of everything the customer has already said about their enquiry, so they can easily pick up where the AI assistant left off.
Another scenario that quickly frustrates customers is being passed from one member of your team to another. This too can be avoided when you have an AI assistant to pick up the initial chat. The AI assistant can be trained to recognise which team deals with which type of enquiry. Say it’s a pricing enquiry, it’ll know to send that straight to your sales team. The query is then dealt with swiftly by the right person for the job.
On its own, live chat can overwhelm a customer service team in the same way a call queue or full inbox might, but used alongside your AI assistant, enquiries become well-managed. That’s because our AI assistants have, on average, a 96% success rate, which means they can answer customer queries with no help from you teams at all. Through live chat, they’ll only ever need to pass across necessary requests that need a human response.
This works just as well for your teams, since the enquiries it passes through are most likely to be the ones that are more intricate or rewarding to solve, so the work of your agents becomes even more worthwhile and enjoyable. Without an overwhelming pressure or backlog of contact enquiries, they have more time to offer a sympathetic ear or make the most of their problem-solving skills.
With your AI assistant and team working in harmony, customers that want a fast, accurate response get what they need. As do those who need to spend time talking with a person to solve a more challenging query. Achieve it all with live chat as your hub.
The more your AI assistant speaks with your customers and passes through unsolved queries via live chat, the more you learn what your customers need and ― more importantly, what they’re not getting. Once you know where the problems lie, you can fix them.
You can also gather customer feedback about every live chat experience immediately via your AI assistant to see how you’re doing and where you can improve.
If an AI assistant can’t solve a customer’s query instantly, live chat is your next best option for a swift resolution. Rather than lose the sale, or the sign-up, or subscription, your team can step in to investigate the issue and potentially save the day.
On our platform, there are no hidden costs or features. When you launch your AI assistant, live chat is automatically included as one of its many premium features.
In essence, live chat is free.
Why? Because we believe it’s fast become an essential tool for customer service automation success that you can’t do without.
You won’t have to figure out complex ‘pay per seat’ or ‘pay per agent’ pricing models. Simply add as many agents as you need to provide the best customer service ― seats are unlimited.
Yes, on AI Studio, live chat works seamlessly with your AI assistant. If your teams are online and the AI assistant can’t answer a query, it can automatically pass it over to a member of your team. When you set up live chat, you’ll add times for when you’re on- and offline, so it’ll know not to pass the query over if nobody’s there.
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Yes, you’ll get notifications in AI Studio when live chat requests come through, so long as you have them switched on. (You currently won’t get notifications on mobile as AI Studio is optimised for desktop.)
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Yes, you can integrate your AI assistant with all your favourite apps and tools, like HubSpot, Salesforce, 8×8 and Zendesk.
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No, on AI Studio you will never be asked to pay for more team members. Live chat is as helpful to customer support agents as it is to customers, giving them all the information they need up front to help a customer promptly, ready to improve your average response time and customer satisfaction score (CSAT).
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