The advantages and limitations of integrating AI into customer service

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into customer service is revolutionising the way companies interact with their customers. By combining sophisticated algorithms with massive amounts of data, companies can guarantee more personalised, rapid and efficient support. However, this evolution also raises questions about its potential limits in terms of confidentiality, ethics and technological dependency. Understanding the benefits and challenges of this integration is crucial to navigating today’s complex customer service landscape.

The rising significance of AI in the customer service landscape

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a major catalyst for transformation in modern customer service. Its ability to revolutionise interactions between businesses and customers offers significant benefits for both parties. AI is now finding its way into customer service because of the sheer volume of data to be processed and the large number of repetitive tasks involved.

Customer agents spend several hours each week searching for information, manually processing incoming requests and entering data into systems. Carrying out these repetitive operations reduces their efficiency: 20% of their time is wasted. By automating these tasks, AI frees up time for agents and improves service efficiency. Customers also benefit from faster responses and a better experience. Will AI replace traditional call centres? To find out more, read this article.

Statistics on the use of AI in customer service

According to surveys carried out by two consultancies in 2020, the benefits of using Artificial Intelligence are not limited to optimising productivity. There are other benefits too.

33% improvement in the rate of query resolution on first contact: agents can access the information they need more quickly to provide appropriate, personalised responses.

30% reduction in the average time taken to process requests: the automation of repetitive tasks frees up time for agents, who can devote their full attention to resolving problems.

30% increase in NPS (Net Promoter Score): customers benefit from fast, high-quality responses, which increases their satisfaction and their propensity to recommend the company.

23.3% of agents report an improvement in working conditions: rapid access to information gives them greater peace of mind from the moment they receive a call.

20% improvement in the performance of customer service managers: the data provided by AI enables better training and management of teams.

In short, AI makes a significant contribution to optimising customer service, both in terms of customer satisfaction and team performance.

What are the benefits of integrating AI into customer service?

According to a report published by Zendesk, 48% of French companies are investing between 10% and 24% of their IT budget in AI technologies to optimise their customer service. In fact, this technology has just as many benefits.

Increased availability

More and more consumers are demanding 24/7 availability from BtoC brands to get instant answers to their questions. Yet constantly mobilising teams to meet this demand represents a major challenge. The solution lies in the use of Artificial Intelligence, particularly through chatbots integrated into company websites. These chatbots direct customers to relevant answers, whether in the form of FAQs or human contacts.

By collecting information about customer queries, chatbots can quickly provide appropriate responses or forward contextualised requests to customer service agents if necessary. What’s more, they are able to analyse the frequency of requests or keywords in customer queries, which feeds into companies’ continuous improvement strategy.

Instant responses and optimised productivity

From the customer’s point of view, AI enables them to receive instant, personalised responses, eliminating any potential frustration. They feel cared for. As a result, their attachment to the brand is optimised and they remain loyal to it.

On the customer service side, chatbots can automate responses to simple, repetitive or time-consuming questions. This frees up agents’ time, which they can then devote to higher added-value tasks. The result is increased productivity and improved service quality.

Personalising the shopping experience

Personalising the shopping experience is a major challenge in customer relationship management. AI makes it easier to segment the audience and tailor interactions to each segment. This makes it possible to anticipate customer needs and improve their shopping experience by providing them with the right messages at the right time. The main aim of personalisation is to make it easier for customers to find the products or services they are looking for, and AI helps companies to achieve this by guiding customers through each stage of the purchasing process. In this way, Artificial Intelligence is helping businesses to meet their customers’ expectations as effectively as possible, whether through their e-commerce platform or their sales teams. By leveraging AI, businesses can push back the boundaries of the customer experience they offer.

Anticipating customer behaviour

One of the advantages of Artificial Intelligence is that it can use data to make forecasts and anticipate possible trends. This approach is widely used in customer relations as it helps companies to anticipate their customers’ future behaviour. The reason AI offers this functionality is that it has access to a vast array of data enabling them to conduct in-depth, detailed analyses to detect emerging trends. Based on these forecasts, companies can adjust their strategies, adopt appropriate approaches and mobilise the resources needed to respond rapidly to the new expectations of their target audience.

Saving on operational costs

AI effectively reduces the costs associated with customer service staff. By automating repetitive tasks such as responding to simple customer queries via intelligent chatbots, it lightens the workload for agents, enabling the business to operate with fewer employees. What’s more, by analysing customer data, AI improves processes and reduces the time taken to process queries, thereby reducing the need for staff. By providing intelligent assistance tools to agents, such as suggested answers or rapid information retrieval, it increases their productivity, requiring fewer staff to handle a given number of requests. Ultimately, the integration of AI into customer service leads to significant savings by reducing staff costs.

What are the potential limitations of integrating AI into customer service?

Alongside these many advantages, there are also limits to the use of artificial intelligence in customer service.

The high costs

If Artificial Intelligence has limits when it comes to customer service, it’s because it’s always expensive. Its integration requires financial resources, used to carry out a study of needs beforehand. This aims to identify the areas in which the technology needs to be used. Not forgetting the costs of licensing and API consumption, which are borne by the company.

The use of AI also requires technical resources that are useful in its implementation.

To meet these challenges, we advise you to choose open source technologies that compete with ChatGPT, such as Sphere, PaLM or OPT. These solutions will enable you to reduce your financial costs. You can also opt for publishers who have already integrated artificial intelligence into the software they offer. This approach allows you to benefit from innovative solutions and reduce the resources required.

The risk of dehumanisation

The integration of AI into customer service runs the risk of dehumanising customer relations. By replacing human interactions with automated ones, there is a danger of losing the warmth and empathy of human relationships, which can affect customer satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, AI can sometimes misinterpret the context of a conversation, which can lead to misunderstandings or inappropriate responses. Standardised chatbot responses may not always adequately address complex or emotional customer needs.

To counter this risk, it is essential to strike a balance between automation and human interaction, focusing on personalisation, empathy and the availability of human agents to ensure an enriching and authentic customer experience.

Ethical and data privacy issues

Integrating AI into customer service raises ethical and data privacy concerns. Firstly, there is the risk of algorithmic bias, where AI decisions can be influenced by unintentional biases, which can lead to unfair treatment of customers. In addition, the massive collection and analysis of customer data to train AI models can compromise the confidentiality of personal information, if not properly secured. To mitigate these issues, it is crucial to put in place robust data protection policies, train teams in AI ethics and ensure transparency in the use of AI in customer service.

A few examples of how Artificial Intelligence can be integrated into customer service

When it comes to customer relations, Artificial Intelligence can be used to automate various processes.

To optimise the handling of customer tickets

Even before making contact with the customer, AI takes charge of routing, prioritising and allocating requests to an agent, a task traditionally performed by the latter. Sometimes, for simple questions, the customer can be assisted without the need for human intervention. By automatically analysing requests, AI provides answers based on internal knowledge. It is worth noting that 35% of companies are now adopting chatbots. Others prefer voicebots or AI-powered voice assistants, capable of interacting with customers by voice.

Thanks to recent advances in AI, these chatbots and voicebots are causing fewer disappointments: they are evolving and responding more and more accurately to requests. This is a great help to customer services in reducing the volume of contacts requiring human intervention.

To assist agents

As mentioned above, Artificial Intelligence is not capable of understanding the subtleties of language or responding to complex human emotions. As a result, it cannot, for the time being, fully replace agents. Instead, it can be used to make their day-to-day work easier, helping them, for example, with the following tasks

• Gathering customer data for a personalised conversation
• Automatic verification of the customer’s identity
• Assistance in finding answers to questions asked by the customer
• Automatic creation of customer discussion reports.

ProContact, your outsourced customer relations expert

In addition to integrating artificial intelligence, outsourcing is one of the recommended solutions if you want to improve the quality of your customer service. This involves delegating the management of your multi-channel interactions to a qualified service provider, such as ProContact.

With proven expertise, ProContact manages customer interactions across all channels, incorporating the latest technological advances, such as artificial intelligence. Mastering the use of these technologies, our qualified and dynamic team ensures high-quality customer service.

Reach out to us via our contact form or call us on (+33)1 84 76 24 03 for your tailor-made offer.