Brands that deliver great customer experiences (CX) will always be more resilient than those that don’t. Providing our customers with personalized support at every stage of their journey is proven to build long-term loyalty and prevent them from switching to a competitor. The challenge, however, is that many teams operate in silos, preventing them from meaningfully applying their customer insights. And many brand leaders still view customer experience as an expense, not an investment.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, savvy brands are increasing their capabilities and rapidly improving their experiences. If your team is lagging behind in AI adoption, you’re giving your competitors an opportunity to get ahead. It is now a necessity to implement AI to deliver the personalized journeys your customers expect. Generative AI is especially necessary as your business works with an increasing number of customers. Consider Salesforce, which has more than 150,000 businesses relying on its customer relationship management platform. These customers are using AI in remarkable ways to gain competitive advantage.
3 Ways Generative AI Can Improve Your Customer Service
It can seem difficult to know where to start with AI and how to prove its value. Customer service is an area that presents immediate opportunities for AI to truly transform your customer experience. Let’s explore what you should consider and how to get started.
Generative AI is a top priority for CEOs, with 75% believer companies with the most advanced generative AI will beat their competitors. The key is to identify specific problems that AI can solve and start testing use cases so you can begin to realize its limitations, challenges and undeniable benefits.
Once you have defined your CX Mission Statement, you can use it to assess whether your AI initiatives across departments support the promises you’ve made to customers. I often recommend businesses start with customer service, as there are already tested ways to integrate AI and achieve measurable results:
Agent tools: As your service representatives interact with customers, generative AI is essential to quickly deliver personalized services. AI tools enhance your customer insights to ensure tailored services based on their unique needs and circumstances. Check in with your reps regularly to understand the challenges they face when interacting with your customers and consider areas where AI can help. Ideally, you should see an improvement in your post-service call satisfaction surveys as well as a faster resolution time for customer inquiries, all with the help of AI!
Automated Email Development Flows: Communications, or lack thereof, often make or break your customer experience. AI can help automate messages at key moments, such as when customers purchase your product for the first time or when they explore additional features or services. Your customer service team can create email flows that welcome customers and show them how to use your product. A few days or weeks later, you can send emails to provide updates on their experience and provide additional resources. AI is essential to delivering these messages when they matter most, based on each customer’s individual journey. Your salespeople can leverage generative AI to create the perfect message, then your system can take care of the rest! Track your email engagement rates to see what resources your customers are accessing and measure to learn what works best (and potentially adjust your outreach cadence).
Dynamic customer onboarding: Complex implementations can frustrate your customers and prevent them from realizing the full benefits of your solution. AI is ideal for guiding customers through their onboarding process and providing personalized support based on their use cases and experiences. Instead of sending complicated user manuals or “starter” kits, I recommend exploring how AI can provide dynamic, in-the-moment assistance. You should see an improvement in your CSAT scores, as well as a faster implementation time for clients. It’s a win/win!
Empower your salespeople to deliver personalized experiences
Generative AI tools significantly increase our ability to meet the evolving needs of our customers. Humans will always play a critical role in delivering authentic, personal experiences, and AI enhances our ability to do just that.
Customer service is an accessible place to start experimenting with and benefiting from AI. My best advice: make sure you have a clear problem in mind that the AI needs to solve before piloting a use case. Be open throughout the process and seek feedback from your team and customers on how you can continue to improve their experience.
Now is the time to get started.
Read IBM’s State of Salesforce report to learn how top performers are using generative AI.
Award-winning customer experience expert, international speaker and founder of Experience Investigators
