Organizations of all kinds are looking to infuse generative AI into their day-to-day operations, and customer service teams are no exception. The technology behind ChatGPT and similar tools is already transforming nearly every aspect of customer support.

The generative AI revolution won’t take place at some point in the future — the tech is already available. That’s why it’s vital to embrace generative AI today if you want to deliver the cutting-edge service customers are expecting.

This starts with understanding what generative AI is, how it can be practically applied to customer care, and how to handle it safely.

What is generative AI?

To understand what generative AI is, it’s essential to grasp the building blocks of artificial intelligence. Here’s an overview of the key concepts:

• Large language models (LLMs) are a form of AI that’s trained to predict sentences and words based on a given context. LLMs are built on exceptionally large datasets, meaning they enable machines to process information in a natural way and provide truly human-like responses.

• Generative AI is an umbrella term for all the practical applications of LLMs. It describes the use of LLMs to solve real-world problems. People give language models prompts to assist with a given problem, and the solutions that emerge are what we call generative AI. 

• ChatGPT (along with other generative AI chatbots like Bard) is simply a product built as the result of implementing generative AI technology. 

Handling generative AI responsibly

How does this all tie into customer service?

Well, the specialists who create AI-powered customer service tools are using LLMs behind the scenes to build their own products geared specifically toward assisting service teams. As a ready-made product, ChatGPT isn’t suitable for use in customer support on its own — it’s too generic and can’t be customized to fit the needs of any one organization.

On top of this, implementing your own generative AI for customer service comes with a number of risks. Modern AI solutions are incredibly advanced, meaning they’re capable of hallucinating — or malfunctioning — in unforeseen ways. Chatbots can provide incorrect, outdated, or nonsensical responses without the proper oversight.

To leverage generative AI safely, customer support teams need to work with AI solutions built specifically for the purposes of customer service. These platforms come with pre-equipped frameworks to ensure your software is performing exactly as it should.

Top use cases for generative AI in customer service

Customer support teams can start applying generative AI to:

1. Boost automation capabilities

Generative AI can improve a chatbot’s ability to automate customer questions by:

• Scanning FAQs: Today’s tools are able to automatically learn your FAQ page, reducing chatbot onboarding times by as much as 70%.  

• Improving automations: Leading generative AI solutions analyze customer feedback to suggest new automations that can boost automation quality by 11%. 

2. Increase agent efficiency

Generative AI can effectively raise your agents’ productivity by:

• Summarizing chats: Top solutions can condense longer customer conversations into succinct action points, reducing first response times by as much as 22%.

• Providing writing assistance: Generative AI ensures agent replies are free of typos, grammar mistakes, or stylistic errors. As agents no longer need to check these details manually, resolution times are drop significantly.

3. Generate sales

Generative AI is capable of transforming customer support teams from cost centers into revenue centers by:

• Recommending products: Generative AI tracks customers’ browsing history and past purchases to recommend relevant products whenever shoppers need product advice. 

• Accessing catalogs and reviews: Leading tools can access your business’s product portfolio and share customer reviews to reassure shoppers looking to make a purchase. 

Zowie X1: the generative AI solution made for you

Building your own generative AI platform is a costly and time-consuming process. 

That’s why going with a ready-made generative AI solution like Zowie X1 is the smart choice. Tailor-made for customer service, Zowie X1 covers the costs of generative AI, gets up and running in hours, and comes with built-in QA features to ensure customers receive the right information.

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