Conversational AI for customer service

Conversational AI has become an innovative tool to enhance customer experience. From virtual assistants to chatbots, integrating AI-powered solutions is changing the customer service experience and offering unparalleled efficiency. With natural language processing and machine learning meant to mimic human-like conversations, AI-driven tools can accurately understand customer inquiries.

Conversational AI is no different and is helping businesses anticipate customer needs for more timely support. Unlike traditional customer service channels, which often have long wait times and scripted responses, conversational AI platforms are more interactive experiences. They can engage with customers in real-time to resolve concerns or questions instantly. 

What is conversational AI?

Conversational AI combines artificial intelligence, data analytics, and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to create human-like interactions and conversations. It has various applications, from chatbots to virtual assistants to voice-enabled interfaces and messaging applications. Advanced NLP techniques mean conversational AI systems can analyze the sentiment behind users' inputs and understand underlying intent to provide the most relevant responses. This level of understanding allows conversational AI to navigate complex conversations, handle ambiguous inquiries, and adapt to evolving user needs.

8 Benefits of conversational AI in customer service

From increasing efficiency to elevating customer satisfaction, conversation AI offers many advantages that reshape how businesses engage with customers. Here are a few of the key benefits of conversational AI for customer service:

1. 24/7 availability

Conversational AI can work around the clock, unlike traditional support channels that operate within limited hours. Chatbots and virtual assistants are always active and ready to assist customers across any time zone when your agents are busy or off the clock. 24/7 availability means customers can always get quick responses to their questions and concerns regardless of location. This continuous support increases customer satisfaction and loyalty as it eliminates frustrating wait times and delays and shows that the business is dedicated to providing exceptional service experiences. Customers will engage with conversational AI more often as they know their needs will always be addressed quickly and efficiently. 

2. Increased customer engagement/satisfaction

Another benefit of integrating conversational AI into customer service operations is the potential for increased customer engagement and satisfaction. Conversational AI never has off days. It always delivers error-free and consistent service, meaning that customers are more likely to trust your business and rely on it for information. 

3. Offer personalized responses to customers

Chatbots can be integrated into marketing automation tools or customer relationship management (CRM) systems to create more personalized experiences based on where customers are in their journey. Whether customers are exploring options, making a purchase decision, or seeking post-purchase assistance, conversational AI creates a personalized experience for each individual. Using insights from customer data and interactions, such as past interactions, purchase history, and more, this AI can also recommend services that align with customers' preferences. 

4. Improved efficiency

AI can automate routine tasks and streamline support services. Conversational AI is no different and helps businesses address inquiries quickly and effectively to reduce response times. These platforms are adept at handling repetitive questions like FAQs, order status updates, or appointment scheduling so that human agents can focus on more complex tasks. Conversational AI uses automation and self-service capabilities to help customers find solutions to their questions independently. This AI can guide customers through troubleshooting steps, provide relevant information, or direct them to select service options, freeing up valuable resources. 

5. Cost-effective

Unlike traditional customer support services, which require significant human resources and investments, conversational AI is a more economically advantageous option because it can provide automated services. By incorporating AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, businesses can reduce operational costs associated with staffing, training, and maintaining a large customer support team.

6. Consistent support for customers

Integrating conversational AI ensures consistent support for customers. Unlike human agents, whose performance and availability may vary, conversational AI is consistent in its performance and is available 24/7. It can deliver consistent support that follows the protocols and standards the business sets with precision and accuracy. 

Additionally, conversational AI are available across multiple platforms and perform equally well on each platform so that customers can receive consistent support no matter their chosen communication channel. Whether email, chat, social media, or voice, conversational AI allows customers to easily transition between channels without losing context or information.

7. Flexible/scalable to customer needs

Conversational AI algorithms can be easily updated based on new business needs, data, goals, and strategies. It is also flexible, as it can handle various inquiries and tasks across industries and business functions without compromising performance or quality. It allows businesses to choose a solution that meets their specific needs, whether that is a website chatbot, virtual assistant on mobile apps, or messaging platform on another communication channel. 

8. Customer insights

Conversational AI can gather information from customer interactions to develop insight into customer preferences, behaviors, and sentiments. With advanced analytical capabilities, conversational AI can use large volumes of conversational data to discover meaningful patterns and trends. It can also examine the language, tone, and context of these interactions to gain insights into customer satisfaction levels, pain points, and preferences. 

Businesses can then use this data to improve their products, services, and support strategies to meet customer needs better. Conversational AI can also typically measure metrics like response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores so businesses can identify areas for improvement within support processes.

Conversational AI best practices for customer service

As businesses adopt AI-driven solutions more and more, understanding and using the best practices for this AI becomes important when it comes to standing out from the competition and delivering exceptional customer service experiences. These practices are just a few guiding principles for maximizing the effectiveness of conversational AI:

Optimize for brand voice and message

Making conversational AI in tune with a brand's voice and messaging helps to maintain consistency and authenticity across customer interactions. Aligning the language, tone, and messaging of chatbots with the brand ensures all customer interactions reinforce brand values. It is also important to train conversational AI to understand and respond to inquiries in a manner that aligns with the brand's message and objectives. This includes providing clear guidelines and examples for handling different types of inquiries so that responses are accurate, helpful, and on-brand.

Continually monitor and build on machine learning/knowledge base

It is important to continually monitor and build on machine learning algorithms and the knowledge base of conversational AI platforms to maintain accuracy and effectiveness over time. Continuous monitoring means businesses can ensure their conversational AI remains up-to-date, responsive, and capable of delivering meaningful customer experiences. One aspect of this process is regularly monitoring and analyzing conversation data to determine trends and areas for improvement. 

Building on the knowledge base of conversational AI platforms helps to expand their capabilities and keep up to date with evolving customer needs and market trends. This involves continuously updating and adding new information like product details, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and policy updates to ensure the platforms remain relevant and informative. Integrating external data sources and APIs also helps improve the knowledge base so that AI platforms can provide more comprehensive and accurate responses to customer inquiries. 

Optimize integration

Integrating conversational AI platforms with existing systems, like CRM software, helpdesks, and knowledge bases, is important for increasing efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. Optimizing integration means conversational AI platforms can access relevant customer data and resources for more personalized and informed responses to inquiries. Making sure the conversational AI platforms and existing systems are compatible is important when considering integration. This could involve integrating APIs and connectors for data exchange and communication between different systems, allowing conversational AI platforms to access and use relevant information. 

Optimizing integration also involves customizing and configuring conversational AI platforms to align with existing workflows and business processes so that businesses can streamline operations and enhance productivity. Defining rules and triggers for routing tickets to the right agent or department, integrating conversational AI with ticketing systems for issue tracking and resolution, and automating data entry and updates are all effective ways to ensure integrations meet business requirements.

Conversational AI customer service use case examples

These conversational AI use cases show how AI is being used to address diverse customer needs and challenges:

• Virtual helpdesks: Virtual helpdesks show how conversational AI is changing traditional customer service models. By using AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistance, businesses can provide 24/7 support and address a large amount of inquiries in a short amount of time. Virtual helpdesks are the first point of contact for customers seeking assistance, offering instant responses to common questions and guiding them through self-service options. These virtual helpdesks can handle a large number of questions at the same time without the need for human intervention and use natural language processing to understand and respond to customer questions accurately and efficiently. 

• Self-service: Self-service solutions powered by conversational AI offer customers a quick and intuitive way to find information and resolve issues on their own. With interactive chatbots and virtual assistants, businesses can help customers access resources like FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and knowledge base articles. This self-service approach saves time for customers and agents and is convenient and accessible. Self-service options also lead to higher satisfaction and loyalty to a brand by guiding users through step-by-step processes and offering personalized recommendations. 

• Automate routine customer service tasks: AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants can easily answer frequently asked questions, process simple transactions, and update customer information. This automation capability reduces human agents' workload and ensures consistent and timely responses to customer questions and requests. A main benefit of automating routine tasks is handling many questions simultaneously without compromising quality or using many human resources. By using natural language processing, chatbots and virtual assistants can understand complex customer inquiries and respond quickly. 

• Personalize to individual customer needs: By using data analytics and machine learning algorithms, businesses can deliver tailored experiences that resonate with customers personally. With chatbots and virtual assistants, businesses can analyze customer interactions to provide relevant product recommendations, personalized offers, and customized assistance. Increased personalization efforts mean better customer engagement and satisfaction. Personalization includes simple traits like addressing the customer by name, remembering past interactions, and offering recommendations based on customer interests. Personalization also means businesses can anticipate customer needs and proactively offer customer assistance. Chatbots and virtual assistants can use data to identify patterns for potential opportunities for engagement or support. 

• Collect feedback: Using conversational AI to collect feedback is a strategic approach to gathering valuable insights and enhancing customer experience. With chatbots and virtual assistants, businesses can engage with customers to gain feedback on products, services, and overall satisfaction. Integrating feedback collection tools into customer interactions means businesses can gain important insights. Providing feedback prompts within a conversation helps businesses capture feedback quickly and ensures feedback is relevant and accurately reflects the customer's experience. This more conversational manner of gathering feedback increases response rates and quality feedback. With natural language processing, chatbots and virtual assistants can guide customers through structured surveys or open-ended questions in a conversational tone. 

How to implement conversational AI into your customer service approach?

Several strategies and considerations exist for implementing conversational AI into your customer service approach. From setting clear objectives to selecting the right technology to training personnel, there are various stages to ensure seamless integration. 

Establish goals/needs

One of the first steps in implementing conversational AI into your customer service approach is to establish clear goals and identify business needs the AI will address. Conduct a thorough assessment of current customer service operations and identify pain points and areas for improvements with factors like response times, customer satisfaction levels, and resource allocation. Also, consider whether you need conversational AI for marketing, sales, or another department and choose the appropriate platform for this need. Define specific objectives that align with the business goals and customer service strategies, whether it's reducing response times, improving satisfaction scores, or improving resolution rates. Make sure goals are measurable, as this will help you better understand the success of your conversational AI implementation. Also, make sure your needs and goals are closely aligned with your target audience's expectations and preferences. 

Determine available resources

The next step is to assess available external and internal resources to support the implementation process. Consider the expertise and capabilities of team members who will be involved in the implementation and determine if they have skills in AI development, data analytics, and natural language processing. Depending on skill levels, training may be needed to teach teams how to implement AI. No code options are also helpful for smaller teams or teams less advanced with AI implementation. Also, evaluate the available technology solutions and providers that can support your AI implementation. Research and find vendors that closely align with your goals and requirements and consider factors like scalability, customization options, and ongoing support services. Budget is another important factor to consider. Be sure to consider both upfront costs and long-term maintenance and optimization expenses. 

Find which conversational AI best fits your current structure

Finding the conversational AI solution that best fits your current structure and requirements is important. With many options available, choosing a solution that closely aligns with your business objectives and technical capabilities is critical. Understand which features are most important for your customer service operations and consider how well different options integrate with your existing CRM and helpdesk software systems. Test different options by requesting demos and pilot tests and make sure to gather feedback and reviews from stakeholders to assess the usability and performance of each option. Also, consider how much support different vendors offer regarding training, implementation assistance, and ongoing technical support. 

Continually monitor and improve where needed

Continuously monitoring and improving your conversational AI solution is important for ongoing success and enhancing customer service. Track key metrics like response times, resolution times, and customer satisfaction scores that provide insight into the AI's effectiveness. Also, analyze feedback from customers and stakeholders to see where customer service and conversational AI can improve. Fine-tuning conversational flows, updating knowledge bases, and experimenting with different strategies are all ways to make improvements.

How can Freshworks enhance your customer service with conversational AI?

Freshworks offers an easy solution to enhance customer service operations with conversational AI. With Freshworks, using intelligent chatbots is easy, and there is 24/7 support to resolve issues efficiently. Chatbots leverage automation to handle routine tasks, freeing up agents' time to focus on complex questions and tasks. 

With built-in AI capabilities, Freshworks chatbots can deliver personalized answers tailored to customer needs. Freddy AI Agent serves as an intelligent assistant that can interact with both customers and agents and learn from your knowledge base. It can also use insights and recommendations to identify opportunities for creating new bots and building these bots. Freshworks' Freddy AI Copilot assists agents with real-time assistance and offers conversation summaries, suggestions for improvement, tone refinement, and guidance on the next steps, leading to faster resolution and higher-quality interactions. 

Freshworks' AI capabilities analyze customer service data to identify opportunities for optimizing customer satisfaction scores and automation and filling gaps. Freddy AI Insights can also recommend solutions and conduct root-cause analysis.

Conclusion

AI technology and generative AI are extremely powerful tools. ChatGPT has increased productivity for a number of departments inside businesses across the US. While generative AI can’t solve complex issues yet, it can provide guidance on what to do to solve problems for those who need assistance.

This makes it perfect for customer service teams who are running a contact center. Conversational AI technology can reduce redundant tasks that burden support teams (like answering common questions) and ensure that only incidents and major issues or questions are going to the call center.

Offloading these small tasks can create significant cost savings in IT, ITSM, and help desk teams. And reduce the burdens on customer service agents to use templates to resolve simple requests on behalf of customers.