Surprising data from the Combox company indicates a crazy increase in both the scope of use and the satisfaction of AI-based service-oriented customers./Combox
In an era where customer service is an integral part of a company's reputation, we see more and more companies adopting technological tools to improve customer service and experience.
If until today we could not understand how the customer feels during the call, then artificial intelligence has arrived that knows how to identify the customer's sentiment, and take steps to ensure a positive customer experience.
Imagine a world in which to talk to another person or receive service you had to physically go anywhere, Just to get personal attention.
Until recently this was our reality.
Over the years, some of the customer service moved to the phone, and then to digital.
In the previous decade, we met the chatbot, that personal assistant that gives us automatic answers to basic inquiries, but didn't really understand us.
In 2024, we have reached a new era in which chatbots based on artificial intelligence and Gen AI, not only provide personalized service and are available 24/7, but also understand and recognize the customer's emotion, and can take steps accordingly.
More bots than human representatives
Imagine a smart chatbot that can have a natural conversation with you, answer questions, solve problems and even offer you personalized recommendations.
Most of us have already experienced such a conversation, as for example with a WhatsApp chatbot.
This is an innovative tool that enables customer service throughout the day, and performing actions such as scheduling appointments on WhatsApp, without waiting for a representative and without bureaucracy.
An analysis by Combox shows that in the past year there was a 53% increase in digital communication with the service centers as well as a 52% increase in communication with smart bots.
Beyond that, about 61% of all communication with customers is managed by smart bots.
In other words, this is the year that smart bots have overtaken human representatives.
The smart bots bypass the service representatives./Combox
Artificial intelligence and empathy - a powerful combination in customer service
So what makes really good customer service?
Personalization, personal attitude and empathy.
AI-based chatbots can already today, recognize the customer's mood and respond in a sensitive and personalized way.
They will understand the customer's needs and will do everything to provide the most personal answer until the solution - and all automatically.
The customer service using bots was not always glamorous, and sometimes it was even frustrating, for example in situations where the bot would get stuck in loops and not understand the essence of the reference.
But today, after upgrading the technology, these systems are able to easily identify situations in which a customer is frustrated with the service and take appropriate steps, from a sincere apology to an immediate referral to a human representative for further treatment.
This approach is especially essential nowadays, when we have become accustomed to receiving quick and to-the-point answers, but at the same time we are sensitive to a negative service experience.
The integration of AI-based chatbots in customer service brings the best of both worlds: a smart and immediate response to the customer around the clock, and an improvement in the efficiency of the service centers themselves.
The chatbots handle the simple inquiries and forward the complex ones to the representatives.
As a result, we see a doubling of the representative's productivity and a 20% improvement in customer satisfaction, along with a savings of about 30% in the centers' operational costs.
The empathy doesn't end there.
Service representatives today also benefit from AI tools that allow them to provide personalized and empathetic service to the customer.
By rephrasing answers with AI, changing the tone and adapting the answer to the customer's mood, representatives can provide faster and more accurate service.
learn while moving
The AI chatbot is an important analytical tool for monitoring customer satisfaction.
The chatbot is constantly learning and analyzing the customer's emotions.
It is able to identify customers with negative sentiment who are at high risk of abandonment and alert the company so that they can respond in real time, or identify satisfied customers and know how to offer them exactly what they need, even before they know they need it, and increase the shopping basket and satisfaction.
In this way, you can identify sales opportunities, risk factors, trends and recurring mistakes and create an optimal customer journey based on live data.
AI-based chatbots are here to stay, and in a big way
We expect to see an expansion of the use of AI-based chatbots, also in the worlds of service, but also in marketing and sales.
In the world of sales, you can send campaigns on WhatsApp and connect to them an AI bot for collecting leads, which provides customers with initial information, collects details, identifies the level of potential and relevance of each customer before the sale, rates the lead, alerts the representative, thus improving and optimizing the sale.
In addition, a bot can prevent cart abandonment by notifying a customer who has not completed the purchase.
The bot can even accompany the purchase journey, whether it is on the website, or in the WhatsApp bot.
This is how you create a relationship with confidence and trust, and create new sales opportunities.
Eli Israelov is a co-founder of CommBox.
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