How Conversational AI Is Revolutionizing Customer Service
Whether you talk to Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, or Cortana, all these are some forms of conversational AI. As the name suggests, this AI technology allows people and computers to communicate in plain language. But the applications of this technology go beyond these small assistants. In fact, they can be excellent for contact center services too.
Many call centers use applications of this technology like a conversational chatbot and IVR. Apart from such direct uses, businesses often use contact center software that generates a call quality rating. Spectrum call center and various others could be already using these technologies. Whereas many others are doing it for sure.
The following are the benefits of conversational AI:
Ease of Offering 24/7 Support
Many companies offer limited hours of customer service by humans. It could be within the 9 am to 5 pm window or as per the company’s timing. But the point is that their customer service is not available around the clock. So, what many companies do to receive and respond to customer queries is to use chatbots
The chatbots can ask a range of questions to understand the customer’s problem to offer the most fitting solution. A range of questions with different selectable answers appears on your screen when talking to a chatbot. Often with SaaS applications, chatbots can offer links to the pages or videos with your solution.
Apart from offering fitting solutions on the spot, sometimes the chatbots offer you the option of a callback. When a customer drops their email, the chatbots can create a ticket for them. Similarly, customers can leave their numbers to avail of the call-back service. When the customer service team comes back the next day, they can easily resolve the email queries and call the customers who opted for a call-back option.
Cost-Effective Support Solution
There’s no denying that the current AI technology cannot respond to customer queries as effectively as a human. But customer support operations with real humans can cost around the clock can cost significantly more. Offering customer service with real humans for companies that prioritize customer experience makes perfect sense. But startups or companies on a tight budget may prefer cutting down their operations costs.
In that case, companies either leverage chatbots or hire offshore contact center service providers. Since chatbots are more cost-effective, many companies adopt them to save money. Also, they can be easier to manage compared to the hassle of working with a contact center partner.
Assisting with Support Agent’s Workload
Conversational AI does not necessarily have to be a replacement for human agents. In fact, human agents and technology together can handle workloads and handle call center operations together. There are many instances when an influx of customer queries can be hard to manage by your agents. The holiday season can be among such occasions with high call volumes and chat queries.
Instead of creating lengthy and annoying queues, chatbots can assist the agents. These automated responses can extract important information from the customers in the meantime. So, when the agents are free from their previous customer’s queries, they can work directly toward the action of satisfying a customer’s requirements.
Call center jobs are one of the most stressful occupations. Because of how demanding these jobs are, their turnover is one of the highest turnovers. So, giving your customer support team a smart assistant can enhance your customer experience and make things easier for the team.
Can Conversational AI Replace Human Agents?
A question many people could be asking is whether AI can replace human agents. The answer is no, at least in the next few years. It is because AI is not smart enough yet to respond to human customers in a human way and you can easily get Spectrum store locator through AI search but AI can’t help in any related query.
There can be figures of speech, sarcasm, and other types of sentiments in written text or audio calls. Also, the technology cannot empathize like humans and put the robots in human shoes to see how they feel. So, more fitting use of the technology is in filling the gaps in service and assisting humans in the operations. If you are into customer support, do not hate AI but leverage it to your advantage.
