Last Updated: April 2025
Businesses have always valued sturdy customer support. Contact centers have been at the epicenter of it. But times have changed.
Beyond the pandemic, customer expectations are not the same anymore. There are more apprehensions and doubts in the minds of customers, triggered by these uncertain times. There is more impatience. So, businesses now have to focus on delivering the best consumer experience with fewer resources. Companies are cutting costs and even reducing their headcount. At the same time, customer issues are becoming more complex.
Technology, especially AI Technology, has offered solutions to many such complex problems, improving user experience significantly. By 2022, it is expected that conversational AI tools and agents will handle about 20% of user service interactions. As a result, the AI technology market will reap about $4 billion to $15 billion ROI by the end of 2024.
What are the Possibilities of Conversational AI?
There are a host of exciting possibilities for AI in the context of customer service. Here are some of them:
Conversational Responses
Artificial agents understand natural language, interpret intentions, and respond in the same way as a human would. When applied to customer service, these responses are a lot faster, more accurate, and most importantly, at a much lower cost per interaction, specifically because artificial agents can simultaneously handle an unlimited number of customers.
Conversational AI offers flexibility
Once it has access to the company’s CRM and other databases, the conversational AI system will be able to instantly tease out much more insight into customer behavior than a human agent, even when it comes to individual customers.
Best customer experience
A conversational AI will have the power to address customers’ issues directly by chatting with them. Therefore, customers can solve their problems or concerns without sending emails or calling service centers to address their problems. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, companies can save time, energy, and resources as well as cut costs.
Companies can also deploy AI in the form of chatbots, intelligent self-help systems, voice bots etc. For example, like eBay, e-commerce businesses could integrate conversational their site to help customers address their issues or concerns.
A few pros of Conversational AI for Customer Service at a glance:
- Maximize human resources
- Lower cost of customer support
- Scale operational efficiency
- Increase customer engagement
- Leverage data for actionable insights
How to Use Conversational AI to Benefit Customers
Companies can use conversational AI by providing customer self-service on mobile, voice channels, and the web. The AI system interprets customers’ queries and responds in the same way that a human agent would.
The benefit of this service is that although it is 24/7, it is more cost-effective than having rotating shifts of human agents. It also increases the volume of interactions as every customer is attended to immediately.
According to a survey, 40% of the customers interact with businesses and new tools through conversational AI. The way Conversational AI works for CS/CX is it understands and engages in contextual dialogue with visitors using natural language processing (NLP) and multiple complex AI algorithms. Doing so, AI agents can provide personalized responses to customers, who don’t even feel like they are chatting with the bots.
On the whole, AI has a very direct impact on increasing customer satisfaction. But it has other indirect advantages as well.
Assisting Agents:
Conversational AI can also support live agents by providing an interface to the tools, information, and system that the agents require while conducting customer interactions.
The AI can monitor the conversation between the agent and customer through voice or chat and intervene at appropriate times with important information, prompts, or screen notifications. This helps reduce the hold time and the need to transfer customer calls from one agent to another.
In addition, it allows the agent to find answers faster and reduces the length of the interaction. The quicker the problems are solved, the shorter the interaction, and the better the customer experience. This way, AI becomes the agent’s favorite support tool.
Agents will also be more satisfied with their jobs when they don’t have to answer the same queries routinely. In addition, the job will become more interesting as their customer interaction will be represented at a more intellectual level.
According to a report, 56% of companies say that conversational AI is ruling the market, and about 43% of their competitors are implementing AI technology. According to the same report, by the end of 2021, 50% of enterprises will have incorporated AI technology on their mobile apps and websites.
Unlocking knowledge:
An AI can interrogate data stores to cross-reference and find links between pieces of information that might give better and newer insight into customer behavior.
A conversational AI does this by monitoring customer-agent conversations, using keyword analysis to understand customer reactions and then predicting the customer’s needs. This process helps the company to understand how they can maximize customer satisfaction. Conversational AI can also inform the agent during a live interaction and guide the agent to take a specific course of action.
Conclusion
With its ability to assist customers and agents and unlock knowledge, AI allows companies to cut costs, increase efficiency and provide customer satisfaction. This helps maximize the value of every interaction that takes place.
Today, conversational AI technology analyzes and summarizes the unstructured data in customer interactions and predicts customer behavior. Most companies use conversational AI in the form of chatbots. But, there is plenty of room for improvement, and many possibilities lie ahead for this technology.
If you are an e-commerce company or even a small business, we can help you set up and manage your customer support, thereby increasing your customer satisfaction and reducing overall costs. In addition, we provide customer support services and help you understand your business and increase your company’s ROI effectively!
Additionally, you can also go for the AI-powered live chat solution offered by Saufter. It can also help your team with automated workflows and real-time reports. What’s more, it also comes with customized pricing plans.
So, what are you waiting for?
