AI Agents in Customer Support
Artificial intelligence (AI) is vital to every modern organization because it can mimic human responses and perform cognitive tasks. Companies can utilize AI technologies to improve the customer support services they deliver, as they allow AI agents to attend to 24/7 inquiries and manage multiple inquiries simultaneously.
They can use AI agents to assist employees in providing excellent support to existing clients or customers and new services to new customers. There are different kinds of AI agents: chatbots handle written text, virtual assistants handle both text and speech, and robots handle physical tasks by performing activities based on perceiving the environment using computer vision techniques and natural language processing in speech-to-text and text-to-speech tasks.
They can be used for many different activities, including quote generation, customer acquisition, customer onboarding, product support, billing help, canceling assistance, postponing or rescheduling assistance, service suspension and freezing help, customer retention and reactivation, survey or feedback collection, and notifying existing clients or customers regarding new product information and promotions. AI (chatbots and virtual assistants) also increases the customer experience companies provide by offering personalized inquiry responses based on company services and product offerings and ranking customers’ inquiries based on their value or profitability to the company regardless of their arrival order.
Given these benefits, let’s focus on how organizations have taken advantage of AI agents and where they might be soon. Most companies in the United States with websites now incorporate AI into their customer support service. Companies have experimented with AI in providing their customer support services since 2017, with early adopters of AI in customer support. The report also shows that recently, the number of conversations with a mix of both AI and human agents has gone down. By having an AI-driven experience, various companies could resolve 50% to 70% of their inquiries in 2020. Further, there is an increasing trend in the adoption of AI agents across various industries year by year.
Benefits and Challenges of Implementing AI in Customer Support
Despite increased investments in customer support, wait times and response times hold back customer satisfaction levels. Integrating artificial intelligence communication agents into customer support systems brings various benefits. Using AI agents can save the company time and money. Customers will also be more satisfied with the quicker response times. Faster response times are one of the largest drivers in improving customer satisfaction. While a significant percentage of service calls are to get information, it is worth the investment. AI agents can handle quick information drops for people, reducing workload and allowing humans to handle more complex tasks. Customer support operations generally have a high turnover rate due to the repetitive nature of the work. AI agents can help to re-humanize call center work, making it more people-focused. Additionally, the AI agents can reduce long onboarding process times.
There are also potential issues with adding AI agents to a customer support system. First, the technology is not perfect. Implementing and maintaining AI is expensive, and many data privacy and security concerns exist around AI agents. There is also the question of customer resistance. Many people are more comfortable dealing with humans over AI, whether due to unfamiliarity with the technology or skepticism toward automation. Finally, the potential to bring information to employees more quickly raises the question of team dynamics and loyalty. Workplaces are grappling with this ethical issue across the nation, working to balance loyalty to current staff with the desire to implement technology that will make customers happier. Concerns about job displacement in a world already buffeted by big economic changes must also be considered. Based on these factors, it is worth it for the organization to take versus not leap AI agents. The firm should consider customer preferences for AI agents over human agents, free time for customer support representatives on lower-level support requests, the ability to generate significant savings in money and time, team culture, and ethics.
Will AI Agents replace humans for Customer Support in the United States?
One of the biggest debates nowadays, especially for countries like the United States, is whether AI agents, in general, will replace humans for customer support or any other professions. The answer to that question is yes; AI agents will produce more human-like communications with customers. However, the ultimate question is whether these AI agents will replace humans in the future. Unfortunately, the answer to this question is contentious. Suppose AI vendors and businesses are thriving in replacing customer support agents with AI agents. In that case, this will make firms’ communications more efficient, save money, and scale without many expenses. On the other hand, many stakeholders, such as industry and customer support agents, argue that replacing humans with AI agents is not the best practice, given that their customers want to speak to human agents who can understand their situations and problems by providing them with empathy and long answers.
In the era of customer service, many firms and companies are moving steadily toward digitizing their customer support operations with AI systems. Some businesses are still testing their new AI agents, piloting test offerings in which AI agents will complement human support. Indeed, it shows that using conversational AI alongside human agents can yield better productivity than using it alone. Moreover, recent statistics show that AI tools complemented by employees produce significantly better results than those operated by machines or employees alone. Given the current status of AI agents, customer preferences, and firms’ strategies, we believe AI agents could complement the human workforce instead of replacing them. Almost all consumers believe AI, especially in the support center, is essential in representing a positive view of the company.
Case Study of Successful AI Agent Implementations in US Customer Support
Case study: Flexcoin. In the customer support operations of Flexcoin, a mobile banking startup, they use an AI agent for customer support. Flexcoin has been using its AI for two years. It reduces the volume of emails or calls its human support agents must respond to by 70-75%. In the long term, once the AI has had more training, Flexcoin will be comfortable increasing its responsibilities to cover more areas of customer support. Working with an AI has also led to a cost saving of approximately $500,000 annually. It has drastically cut the company’s response time, which was one to two business days but has been reduced to approximately six hours on average by combining AI with manual responses. Flexcoin’s current net promoter score is 83%. In a survey made by Flexcoin to their customers, 72% of customers stated they could not tell if they were communicating with an AI agent or a human when interacting with their AI. Currently, all AI responses are reviewed by humans before being sent to customers.
