By Mads Fosselius CEO and cofounder of Dixa, the all-in-one, conversational customer service platform.
AI is no longer an elite tool with only a lucky few holding the keys to the castle. Thanks to the folks at OpenAI, anyone can access ChatGPT and use it for everything from generating content ideas to competitor analysis. Being able to reap the benefits of AI without being a coding whiz is fantastic. But people are naturally feeling antsy about the potential risks to their jobs.
When we ran a webinar at Dixa about whether AI was here to steal customer service jobs, it was our best-attended ever. Customer service people are clearly feeling some trepidation about potentially being replaced by AI.
But AI isn’t here to replace your customer service agents—it’s here to save them.
How Can AI Help Your Customer Service Agents?
AI can cut down on monotonous tasks, give your agents better information, and free up room for growth.
Customer service can be a tough gig. I get it. I began my career as a customer service agent when I was just 19. I loved helping people, but repetitive low-value tasks were my nemesis. They sapped my motivation and left me little time to build customer relationships.
Being on the frontline gives your agents a unique chance to affect customer loyalty. Their interactions can shape your brand reputation and even determine whether customers will come back—in this way, they serve as the face of your brand.
But fielding every question that comes in can be hard, sometimes emotionally draining, work. Add in repetitive or monotonous tasks, and staying motivated can be a real challenge.
That’s where AI comes in. It can make your agents’ jobs easier and improve your customer experience. Here’s how.
1. Reduce Repeats
Answering repetitive customer queries uses up a lot of your agents’ time. Introduce an AI-driven chatbot to take care of the lion’s share of these, so your agents can focus on higher-value customer inquiries that need the human touch.
I suggest starting with an up-to-date internal knowledge base for your AI chatbot to draw from. After all, the answers it gives are only as good as the information you feed it. Bing found this out when its AI chatbot, while still learning, argued with users, professed love and even speculated on the size of their shoe collection.
Restrict it to high-quality information, and it will give your customers accurate answers. In other words, you control the narrative.
2. Get Up To Speed
Customers like quick answers, and they don’t like having to repeat themselves between agents. A good agent will look for context before answering a customer. Skimming through past conversations takes time, though—and that’s where AI can help.
AI can analyze and summarize customer interactions in the blink of an eye. It can even draft a response to the customer.
Getting up to speed faster reduces friction for your agents. It tells them:
• Why the customer contacted them.
• When they’ve contacted your company before, and what happened.
• Who the customer is and what they’ve bought from you.
• How to solve the issue, or at least, some solid suggestions on where to start.
Now your agents are less stressed, and your customers are happier.
3. Help Your Agents Do What They Do Best
When it comes down to it, customer service is about people helping people. And, despite its challenges, those who choose a career in customer service often choose it for the interactions they get to have—especially the feeling of making a difference in someone’s day.
Introducing AI to your customer service setup doesn’t mean forgoing all human-to-human interactions but making sure the customers who do need that human touch are able to connect with an agent and fast.
But it’s not only about speed. The mental weight that’s lifted from your agents should not be underestimated. Freed from the mundane and focusing on work that feels meaningful to them, agents can experience higher levels of satisfaction and, as a result, productivity.
GitHub recently discovered this when they conducted a study of developers working with their new AI: Between 60% to 75% of developers felt less frustrated, more fulfilled and better able to concentrate on their work with GitHub Copilot. In other words, their developers were happier and produced better work.
4. Learn, Grow And Develop
Agents who are eager to learn are gold! Nurture them and help them upskill, and they’ll stick around for longer. In fact, employees who have professional development opportunities are 34% more likely to stay with a company than those without.
The LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2023 found that wanting to develop new skills was a top factor in job hunting. Employees who make an internal career move in their first two years have a 75% chance of staying with the company. That’s opposed to just 56% of those who don’t move up internally.
Because AI lets you scale your customer service efforts, your agents can devote more time to the customers who need it. It’s the perfect opportunity for them to expand their know-how and bring even more value to the table.
5. Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
OK—this isn’t technically something you can task AI with. But CLTV (the overall revenue you can expect from a customer account over time) is a vital metric, and AI can help you increase it.
Customers appreciate excellent service. 78% are more likely to buy again from companies that offer great, personalized experiences—whether from an agent or an AI.
Learning and growing with more complex queries doesn’t just keep your agents engaged and working for you longer; it makes them better at what they do. This results in a stronger team that can create loyalty-building experiences for your customers. And loyalty leads to repeat spending and increased CLTV.
Your Agents Have Nothing To Fear From AI—And Everything To Gain
With AI as your newest team member, your agents can explore growth opportunities, get rid of monotony and provide more of the personalized service experiences your customers crave.
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