2023 is poised to bring significant advances to the realm of customer service. This will be led by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) and the increasing role it will play in how online businesses provide customer support.
While there remains uncertainty about the ultimate responsibility AI will have in the customer experience, customer service managers who know how to adapt to this digital transformation, and stay ahead of the curve, can reap significant rewards. As part of this process, we’ve identified five of the top emerging AI trends in customer service we’re following in 2023 (and beyond).
5 Trends in Customer Service AI for 2023
1. More effective AI-powered chatbots
As ChatGPT and powerful large language models (LLMs) gain widespread use, more support teams, businesses, and customers will grasp AI’s value in customer service. One instance where this is already taking place is in how companies train their chatbots.
For example, LLMs can be — and already are — used to train chatbots more effectively so that they can correctly identify and respond to incoming questions with increased accuracy. Previously, you would need to manually put in every iteration of a specific question or phrase. And if you missed one, the chatbot wouldn’t recognize the question. Considering how long and tedious this process could be, it’s no wonder why most chatbots were simply ineffective.
However, today, the best customer service chatbots today can now use LLMs to turn a few phrases into countless variations of that specific question. Rather than guessing how customers might pose their inquiry, businesses can harness the power of AI to do it for them – greatly improving the customer experience and speeding up their ROI.
Furthermore, leading customer support automation software comes pre-equipped with this knowledge, having already identified and addressed the top questions online businesses receive. This means brands need only to add their answers and let the chatbot take it from there.
See what role ChatGPT is expected to play in customer service moving forward in our blog post, “What Does ChatGPT Mean for the Future of Customer Service?”
2. Improved customer service agent efficiency
In 2023, AI will transform customer service by optimizing agent efficiency at an unprecedented level. Through automating repetitive tasks – like data entry and customer routing – AI solutions free up agents to focus on more urgent cases and high-value customers. AI chatbots can already reduce resolution times by 30%.
When human agents are assisting customers, AI empowers them to offer much more effective service. Agents get real-time guidance on handling various customer issues, meaning teams won’t waste time figuring out the best solution to a particular problem.
Moreover, these tools automatically collect and pass along customer information, saving agents from constantly repeating themselves. Teams will now leverage this data to deliver tailored customer responses and a personalized experience that fits each shopper’s needs, boosting customer satisfaction along the way.
3. Gathering and analyzing customer feedback with AI
AI isn’t just taking the agent experience to another level — it’s transforming how businesses listen to customers through self-service.
AI chatbots were already capable of asking customers to leave feedback. Now, though, they actually analyze these comments on their own and reveal customers’ most common pain points. In doing so, they clarify the voice of your customers at an unmatched scale. Solutions can easily spot what your customers like — and what’s bugging them — and recommend what actions to take next.
For example, if customers are consistently noting an item runs small, they haven’t received their order yet, or perhaps it looks different than the photo – AI can spot these and send them in a report to your inbox. Furthermore, AI is making it easier to plug these tools into all of your channels – including social media – to truly gauge the voice of the customer.
4. Employing AI to drive sales
In the coming years, AI will become increasingly adept at helping support teams enter the sales process and even start generating revenue itself. This can be accomplished thanks to a number of features.
First, AI allows businesses to leverage proactive chat – meaning it can automatically reach out to shoppers at critical touch points along the customer journey. By checking in at these various intervals, AI can help customers who are undecided or considering abandoning their cart.
Based on the customer, these chats can be used to offer promo codes, suggest items that would make them eligible for free shipping, or even redirect the customer to a specialist to maximize the odds of conversion.
Likewise, leading AI software is improving at identifying an individual customer’s buying intent. By identifying patterns in customer interactions and behaviors, AI-powered tools will detect how likely a customer is to make a purchase, equipping agents to push high-value customers toward the finish line. In fact, acting on accurate buying intent data can grow a brand’s online sales by 10%.
5. Leveraging AI to make data-driven decisions
By embracing AI, agents and managers can develop better decision-making strategies to improve any aspect of their business.
Self-service solutions help boost a team’s performance by identifying any inefficiencies and potential areas for growth. Overall, this has traditionally been a manual process, relying on agents themselves to report issues or supervisors to conduct regular check-ins. However, with the advent of next-gen AI, it’s now possible to use data to pinpoint where your business needs the most help automatically.
For example, today’s leading AI chatbots can identify which questions customers are asking most frequently and, using this information, recommend automations for the ones that currently don’t have answers. By making this information more digestible and readily available, managers across your company — from marketing, production, and even sales — know where to allocate more resources to deal with your most pressing issues and turn your biggest weaknesses into strengths.
Faster changes, greater growth
AI is pushing the limits of what’s possible in customer service — and will continue doing so in the years ahead.
AI-powered customer service is driving the field of customer care forward by instantly delivering personalized, human-like responses to more and more questions. And automation solutions aren’t stopping there.
Leading AI platforms like Zowie are already letting agents work more efficiently, ensuring customers’ voices are heard loud and clear, and helping support teams proactively generate sales.
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