Using AI to Supplement Your Customer Support Team

    WILMINGTON, DE, October 22, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ -- AI is here to stay. It's already an integral part of the workflow for many companies. But the technology is still in its nascent stages. We haven't scraped the surface of what it will be capable of yet. 

At present, we use it mainly for repetitive tasks. However, it's capable of a lot more. In this article, we'll look at how you can use AI to supplement your customer support team.

Using Chatbots to Upscale Operations

Running a full-time support team can be tricky. You have to make allowances for annual leave, sick leave, and training. With human consultants, there's a chance of someone having an off day. In some cases, it might be hard to find the right candidates in your geographical area.

These concerns have led many companies to outsource their customer support division. They might ask a qualified third-party provider to handle queries via the website, phone, and email. This is usually a great strategic move that saves the company money and improves satisfaction. 

To save even more money, many companies now also use chatbots. Thanks to advances in generative AI and natural language programming, these tools are far more capable than before. 

Chatbots can handle simple queries 24/7. It's a one-off investment with low ongoing maintenance costs. 

Support for Your Team 

What do you find the most difficult when it comes to managing an internal team? For many companies, it's challenging to get everyone to give consistent answers. If your team has to search through an extensive database, query resolution takes a lot longer. 

AI can help here, too. You can task a bot to work for your internal team. You can give it a query, and it'll search through several databases for the answer. It might use sources like your knowledge base and previous customer interactions.

The advantage of using AI in this way is that it can read many pages of data in seconds. The bot can then present your team with the most common solutions to the query. 

Depending on how you program it, you can have your team confirm the most useful answer. The bot can then learn from this as well, improving its performance. 

The advantage of this approach is that your team gets the answer it needs in seconds. Since the bot sources these solutions from your internal information, they're also more accurate. 

Custom Reports Thanks to AI

A more novel way for AI to help your support team is by analyzing its performance and interactions. The system can analyze queries and identify common sticking points. 

You can use this information to improve your product design or instructions. The overall aim is to reduce customer frustration. You might also use the information to create helpful tutorials. 

AI can help management identify bottlenecks and better manage their staffing needs as well. You can ask your bot to predict the busiest periods so you can shore up your team at those times. 

You can also ask it to look at historical data to see if your service is improving. For example, you can have your bot compare query resolution times for the past month to the same period over previous years. 

You can also ask the bot to scan external data sources to identify opportunities for improvement. It could:

- Look through industry publications for best practices
- Scan competitor websites 
- Look through authoritative sites for tips and tricks

Conclusion

AI is a very useful tool that can supplement your support team. It won't, however, fully replace it. If you use it correctly, it can save you time and money while improving customer satisfaction.

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