Generative AI: Meet your partner in customer service

Brands that deliver an excellent customer experience (CX) will always be more resilient than those that don’t. Giving our customers personalized support at every stage of their journey is proven to earn their longtime loyalty—and keep them from switching to a competitor. The challenge, however, is that many teams operate in siloes that inhibit them from applying their customer insights in meaningful ways. And many brand leaders still view CX as an expense, not an investment.

Given the rise of artificial intelligence, savvy brands are augmenting their abilities and improving experiences rapidly. If your team lags in AI adoption, you give your competitors an opportunity to get ahead. It is now a necessity to implement AI to deliver the personalized journeys your customers are expecting.Generative AI is especially necessary as your company works with a growing number of customers. Consider Salesforce, which has more than 150,000 companies that rely on its customer relationship management platform. These customers are using AI in some remarkable ways to gain a competitive advantage.

3 ways Generative AI can improve your customer service

It can feel challenging to know where to get started with AI and how to prove its value. Customer service is one 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% believing the companies with the most advanced generative AI will beat their competition. The key is to identify specific problems that AI can solve and start piloting use cases so you can begin to realize its limits, challenges, and undeniable advantages.

Once you define your CX mission statement, you can use that to gauge if your AI initiatives across departments support the promises you’ve made to customers. I often recommend companies start with customer service, because there are some already tested ways to integrate AI and drive measurable results:

• Tools for Agents: As your service representatives engage with customers, generative AI is essential to provide personalized services quickly. AI tools uplevel your customer insights to ensure tailored services based on their unique needs and circumstances. Consistently check in with your representatives to understand what challenges they face when engaging with your customers, and consider where AI can help. Ideally, you should see a boost to your post-service call satisfaction surveys as well as a quicker resolution time for customer requests, all thanks to the help of AI!
• Automated Email Nurture Streams: Communications, or a lack thereof, often make or break your customer experience. AI can help automate messages during key moments, like when customers first purchase your product or as they explore features or additional services. Your customer service team can create email nurture streams that welcome customers and show them how to use your product. A few days or weeks later, you can send emails checking in on their experience and providing additional resources. AI is essential for delivering these messages when they matter most based on the individual journey of each customer. Your reps can leverage generative AI to craft the perfect message, then your system can take care of the rest! Track your email engagement rates to see what resources your customers access, 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 great for walking customers through their onboarding process and delivering tailored support based on their use cases and experiences. Instead of sending user manuals or complicated “getting started” kits, I recommend you explore how AI can deliver dynamic support in the moment. You should see a lift to your CSAT scores, as well as a quicker implementation time for customers. It’s a win/win!

Empower Your Reps to Deliver Personalized Experiences

Generative AI tools significantly augment our ability to meet our customers’ changing needs. Humans will always be an essential part of delivering authentic and personal experiences, and AI supercharges our ability to do so.

Customer service is an approachable place to start experimenting with AI and achieving its benefits. My best advice: Ensure you have a clear problem in mind for AI to solve before piloting a use case. Be open throughout the process and invite 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

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