When you hear AI, you might still ponder images of futuristic, sci-fi concepts found in movies or television even though it’s been gaining in popularity and used in common applications for some time. Artificial intelligence in customer support is an example of how AI is being utilized in our everyday lives. You've likely encountered it for yourself at some level when you needed questions answered about a product or service. Remember the phone support machine voice asking you questions about how to help you? That's a basic, (but classic) example of AI in customer service.

From a business perspective, this is great! Customer service chatbots offer a range of powerful services which expedites tasks, improves company efficiency, and even helps cut costs. As a source of automation, artificial intelligence in customer support can provide critical resolutions to a variety of problems. This means your customer support team is able to focus their attention towards unique problems presented by customers, instead of addressing the entire spectrum of issues.

Of course, integrating this kind of service into your own business sphere is daunting. Not just for the technical challenges, but for the questions it raises: will this benefit the company? Will it improve efficiency? Is worth investing so much in a growing, new technology?

Consider an AI solution if your company deals with one of the following:

• Frequent staff turnover and a high cost of training

• Frequent complaints and frustration associated with your support model

• Staff efficiency reduced by handling too many irrelevant queries or basic questions

• Lack of reliability with your current customer service model

• Inflexible options regarding mobile technology like messaging apps

The answer isn't always straightforward for every company. But, if your business relies on customer support and wants to introduce artificial intelligence into its service, there are a variety of factors to consider.

Let's break down the pros and cons of AI in customer service

The Pros

1. 24/7 Customer Support

There's nothing more frustrating to a customer than having an important question, only to receive no help for it. Especially if the inquiry is service specific. With hourly limitations put in place by company hours combined with off-time for workers, it's possible a customer is left waiting multiple days with no help in sight.

Customer service chatbots and automated assistance, however, changes this. A database can store a warehouse of answers for different questions, without the need of available staff. That means your business is always helpful to someone. It might not apply for more unique, complex problems, but it's a good cover all for basic issues callers might have.

2. Staff Cost Reduction

Training call center staff is costly. Bringing on new employees, especially during crunch time, can really affect the bottom.

Naturally, any new employee will need time to acclimate, meaning while they're learning the ropes the workload is shifted to other staff members. This extra load slows down performance, reducing call quality.

Unfortunately, the turnover rate in call centers is also painfully high, (about 45 percent). This means signing on new employees gets expensive, especially with proper training considerations. But as you can imagine, an AI chatbot is capable of filling in these gaps, allowing you to maintain essential services while reducing the hit to your bottom line. It also allows your reps to focus on more unique, challenging problems, saving them time and energy.

3. Reduction in Waiting

AI is capable of filling in the gaps when a customer needs assistance. Typically, callers provide info like name, address, phone, reference numbers, and other important details. AI can collect this info automatically and employ predictive methods to properly direct the caller to their solution.

Typically, these basic inputs are handled by a representative - which can extend the process. But an AI chatbot takes this data and, again, streamlines the caller needs to an appropriate resolution, leading to reduced wait times.

4. Evolving Technology

For a modern and professional business, there can be a great risk of losing out on efficiencies and competitive advantages gained from technological innovations. Artificial intelligence in customer service, then, is the wave of the future. As an expanding technology, it's capable of responding to consumer inquiries in a more contextual sense.

It's considered reactive in its current model, but early adopters may find their chatbots capable of answering more complex questions - even predicting the kind of questions coming in based on caller data. It's still a growing technology but expected to become commonplace as automation evolves.

5. Commonplace of Messaging Apps

Voice AI isn't the only service you can provide. Customer service chatbots play a vital role in answering questions. This is due to the rise of social media apps and texting. In 2018 alone, over 1.5 billion people use Facebook's messenger app.

That means it's far more likely a person may seek support through text/chat than a voice call. Utilizing AI chatbots can offer a whole new realm of service to this statistic, improving company efficiency overall.

The Cons

Plenty of other great benefits exist when using chatbots and artificial intelligence to augment customer support, but this doesn't mean it lacks drawbacks. Even if you're considering integrating AI into your customer support network, it's good to know the potential downsides too.

1. Improper Escalation

While we've been talking at length over the major benefits to context ready AI, that type of advancement is still a ways off for many businesses. Even with its advancements, AI is still quite limited in scope. Customers with unique problems may encounter issues when trying to weed through basic AI support options, especially with chatbots.

2. Machine Interaction

There's a reason so many people dislike automated calls - and that's because while a machine can direct basic problems to easy solutions, they may not address the entire scope of a caller's concern.

Considering callers need assistance for a variety of reasons, it's not uncommon for them to have feelings of frustration or anger. Machine and AI respondents can exacerbate this problem, whereas human representatives are more comforting.

3. Cost and Maintenance

Being that AI chatbots and artificial intelligence-driven customer support are complex things, they do require an educated staff for proper management. Installation, creation, and "education" of bots needs responsible data management. This requires employees or partners with unique skill sets as well.

As you can imagine, this can be expensive, not only relying on the experience of specialized staff but the upkeep of chatbots and artificial intelligence services too. In some cases, this capital escalates if utilizing third-party services or contracts for the service.

Conclusion

With greater demand for better customer service experiences, it's only natural to seek solutions in an evolving technology like an automated response. AI is only growing, with greater advancements made every year, improving its ability to navigate and adapt to specific situations.

As customer service is also so delicately intertwined with brand strength, it's worth looking into chatbots or AI based support to handle the torrent of issues appearing daily. By utilizing AI, efficiency can be improved across the board by handling mundane or basic queries. It's also invaluable to maintain a support service throughout the year, without incurring the extra labor-associated cost.

If you look at your current company model for customer service and wonder "how can I put more focus on solving increasingly complex issues quickly," AI might be the right call. Certainly, we're a long way from total intelligent implementation, but it's hard to argue against potentially having a "phantom employee" that never sleeps and is always ready to help.


 

Author Bio

Chris Nokes, CTO

Chris is the Chief Technology Officer for Executech. Chris is admired for his great depth of understanding in IT and his problem-solving abilities. He is an essential part of the team and is the go-to technology man for every technical need at Executech.

Executech is an award-winning, IT services provider of enterprise-quality IT support to small and medium-sized organizations across the Intermountain West. Executech is defined by its people and every technician serves clients onsite and is available 24/7/365.