In customer service environments, having the right knowledge, data and information available is crucial. Customer service agents cannot answer all customer questions off the top of their head and need to have access to all relevant information in order to answer those questions correctly. Contacting customers expect customer service agents to answer questions quickly. Fortunately, this has long since ceased to be done with hitches and paper but we see in practice that these paper hitches have been replaced by PDFs, knowledge bases and pieces of text in which to search. With the advent of smart AI tools, this no longer needs to be the case. What are the benefits of AI chatbot tools for the availability of relevant data and information for the internal organisation?
An AI solution provides instant access to all relevant and available information. In doing so, a smart AI tool can extract and combine information from all kinds of different designated sources. We come across a lot in practice. On average, in almost all customer service organsiations of webshops, SMEs, housing corporations and the like, we come across the following:
It seems excessive but it is so not. Many customer service departments depend on lists, documents and shared drives or environments.
Imagine that, all that is no longer necessary because AI uses, aggregates and combines most of those sources. That makes the availability of knowledge a lot easier.
The above documents and sources are not very flexible. Again, an example: in a customer service department, the above documents and resources are used to answer customer queries. A new product comes out that is available at a discount for the first month for some of the customers. This means that almost all the above sources and documents need to be updated. In the process, all other versions of those documents that are locally somewhere, printed out on a desk or lying around elsewhere also need to be replaced or modified. So that is where things often go wrong. There are often all kinds of versions of the above documents in circulation with no or limited control.
Artificial Intelligence can solve that problem. You can have an AI tool scan all relevant documents, website or other sources regularly or even constantly, and because it is a smart tool, it will make relevant links. In the above example, a simple update will be added which will make the tool itself update the information for users. So if the customer service agent in this case were to ask the tool: Is customer with customer number 698239831 eligible for the discount then the tool will formulate the answer to that without the employees having to look in 4 different documents that may or may not be up to date.
AI learns constantly, more or less 2 ways. AI tools learn from the questions asked and follow-up questions to formulate better and better, more complete and clearer answers. In the process, employees learn to interact with the tool better and better, allowing them to ask the tool better questions. This creates something where both tool and human get smarter and smarter.
In addition, we can use any information from an AI tool to.... Yes learning indeed. If you can ask an AI tool in customer service: How many calls have been made this week about package delivery times? An AI tool helps you with reports that you don't easily get from an average phone system.
Yes and no. AI allows us to further optimise customer service. We bring with our AI solutions this kind of tools closer to organisations for whom it is normally far from their minds. It is and always will be a tool. A tool that helps us do things smarter and faster, thereby making customer service work easier and more fun. It is not a holy grail in the sense that smart tools are worthless without smart people.
In short: AI is handy, fine and fun tool to make customer service work more fun, easier and simpler. Always up to date and easy to use. However, it is and remains a tool and by no means a replacement for customer service
We are SpangenbergGroup! And we can help you make your customer service a good customer service to make. Just good customer service where the basics are in order. Where customer contacts add value to the customer experience. We unburden you in the area we are good at (customer service) so you can concentrate worry-free on what you're good at. Sound good? Get in touch.
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SpangenbergGroup.nl
Specialists in customer contact
Randwycksingel 20 (C03)
6229 EE Maastricht
T: +31 (0) 85 8884661
Info@spangenbergGroep.nl
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