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Ready or Not: AI Customer Service Will Change Your Business and Brand
Say hello to the future: the robots are right here. Artificial intelligence is flipping all kinds of traditional business models on their heads. In the customer support space, AI is changing the customer experience for better or for worse depending on the elegance of your deployment. And the new world of AI is creating out-of-this-world efficiencies for businesses who are leveraging it effectively. Whether you are seeking to enhance your customer service or you want to boost business processes, here is some binge-worthy content to consider as you explore the perspectives and benefits available through AI customer service and business solutions.
TL;DR: AI is being adapted to every business function from customer service to IT to even more niche ones like finance and healthcare.
1.) Most Important Artificial Intelligence Skill: A Sense of Imagination
Are you ready for your robo-coworkers? Most companies aren’t yet. The fear that artificial intelligence in business will take away jobs has contributed to plenty of sleepless nights. However, a recent Forbes piece pinpoints AI’s potential – if business leaders are imaginative enough to balance machine learning’s adaptiveness with the ingenuity of their team.
In the author’s mind, businesses that successfully embrace AI aren’t afraid to do a little experimentation. The right blend of humans and machines, sometimes working alone and sometimes together, is going to be found through trial and error. Businesses willing to go outside their comfort zone, never settling for second-hand strategies, will pioneer their own insight.
2.) The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Business and Society
This blog by Information Age is a great reminder of how artificial intelligence still hinges on human guidance. Unlike the independent AI we see in TV and movies, most machine learning tools today cannot run on full autopilot. AI can handle mundane tasks and analyze data, but if there is no one available to direct it, then that computing power runs the risk of being wasted.
The author highlights some of the benefits that we are already seeing in the customer service and IT service world. Chatbots are fielding the more transactional processes and can escalate more complicated challenges to live agents. When it comes to IT service, the more routine updates and processes can be completed by machines with direction from members of the IT team. The blog outlines plenty of other ways that artificial intelligence can work on its own, and how human interaction fits into the puzzle.
3.) How Artificial Intelligence Powered Customer Service Will Help Customer Support Agents
With predictions that 85% of all customer interactions will happen without customer service agents by 2020, it’s easy to assume the customer service world’s perspective might be clouded by doom and gloom. Count on CustomerThink to put together a thoughtful piece considering how AI customer service will empower agents going forward.
One of the benefits CustomerThink points to is the increasing ability of customer service agents to take more preemptive actions. As chatbots evolve, so does their natural language processing, making it easier to go down the right research and response paths. Increasingly, they can anticipate buyer or support events before they happen, alerting customer service agents of the actions they need to take to keep furnishing customers with a memorable experience.
That ability is revolutionary, and can impact everything from the overall customer experience to the revenue stream – if you have smart and dedicated customer service agents at your disposal.
4.) Artificial Empathy: Call Center Employees Are Using Voice Analytics to Predict How You Feel
How are your customers feeling when they call your customer support? Emotions are nuanced and, without visual cues, can be hard to determine. Yet customer service agents still need to be able to read callers’ layered emotional responses like an open book. Though we can’t read minds (yet), a new blog by ZDNet covers the future that voice analytics has in AI customer service and beyond.
How does it all work? ZDNet focuses on the story of an MIT spinoff company that analyzes tone and voice patterns to define the complex mix of emotions being communicated as people speak. Call center agents don’t need to exclusively read between the lines anymore – they can get real-time confirmations of the emotions behind the interaction. The article digs deeper into the application of this type of technology, covering everything from making customer interactions more intuitive to providing more attentive care to veterans with PTSD. This post is really worth checking out!
How to Start Using AI Customer Service
The range of possibilities with artificial intelligence in businesses goes well beyond the examples provided by these thought leaders. AI is being adapted to every business function from customer service and IT to even more niche ones like finance and healthcare. The truth is that if your business is going to thrive in the future, adapting to the versatility of artificial intelligence is how you’ll do it.
