The Best of Human and Ai in Redefining Customer Experience

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has seen a massive leap in deployment from 4% to 14% within a short period from 2018 to 2019! As a result, automation brings with it the rampant fear that virtual agents powered by AI will soon replace human resources. However, experts believe that though efficient, technology is yet to reach a point where it can replicate the computational capacity equivalent to that of the human brain. So in the current scenario, AI can effectively support human intelligence to build a symbiotic relationship and work as a team to overcome the individual obstacles faced by each of them.

Traditional vs AI-powered customer service

Traditional customer service is very manual in nature. Organizations employ huge task force to revert to customer queries over email, WhatsApp, social media, live chat and voice. Due to the manual nature, high volumes and high attrition, customer experience have never been a focus. With the AI-powered customer service technology, usual customer service pain points – long waiting time, staff un-availability, and a spike in customer tickets can be easily managed without impacting the customer experience.

Here’s how AI is redefining customer experience:

Immediate Resolution– There are countless tasks that are recurrent in nature and tend to consume customer service representative time. To list a few – rescheduling deliveries, setting up appointments, sharing the status, FAQ’s, and many more. An AI-powered virtual agent seamlessly connects to the backend system to provide immediate end-to-end resolution and passes on complex tickets to a customer service representative for resolution.

Scalability– The biggest downside of traditional customer service is their inability to handle spikes. Spikes during festival season, sales and during the holiday season can adversely affect the customer experience. With the AI-powered virtual agents, all recurrent queries can be easily reverted by AI virtual agent as per the process flows and high-value tickets will be transferred to the customer service representative who is best trained to handle it, ensuring no customer query goes unanswered.

Always available– Customer service representative often does regular shifts between 9 am to 6 pm and it gets difficult to address customer queries post the regular shift hours. Organization either hire customer service representatives or pay premiums for getting work done outside regular shift hours. The AI-powered virtual agent can be a cost-effective solution in this scenario by being available 24 x 7 and handling queries across channels, which works as per the convenience of the customers.

Unprecedented Accuracy– With the power of machine learning, the virtual agent once trained on the historical data, will respond to similar queries with high precision. Virtual agents are seeing a lot of tractions by organizations that have strict regulatory compliance. Further, the system also helps you log customer interactions and could be used for monitoring purposes.

The way ahead

AI-driven virtual agents are not here to take away the roles of humans. Instead, they are ready to nurture and facilitate their growth. As virtual agents make use of automation and machine learning to handle routine requests, human agents can work on solving complex issues. Collectively, they add value to your brand and enhance customer satisfaction.

As always, a happy customer is a happy business.

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