One of the biggest challenges for any business is understanding its customers and keeping up with their ever-changing needs. In the age of omni-channel shopping and customer service, customers increasingly have more power and businesses need to be savvy and take advantage of technology to stay on top of fluctuating demands. That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) can enter the picture and completely change the customer relations game.
According to research from Gartner, 85 percent of customer interactions will be managed without a human by next year. That’s a bold prediction, but one that is backed up by the widespread use of AI in customer relationship management. CRM solution providers understand the importance of the customer experience above all else in today’s omni-channel business world, and are building AI into their solutions to help businesses speed up their customer response times as well as to help better understand customers’ needs and demands.
The rise of chatbots and virtual assistants is a testament to just how drastically customer service and customer relations are transforming. Not only can these AI-driven tools offer immediate assistance on a 24/7 basis, they engage customers and keep a log of transactions to better serve those same customers in the future. Along those lines, AI inherently collects and analyzes huge amounts of customer data and interactions, leading to better future customer interactions across the board.
There’s no question that AI is on the cusp of a full-scale transformation of the customer service industry. According to a recent State of Service report from Saleforce, more than half of all service organizations are actively researching ways to integrate AI into their operations. The report also found that AI use is expected to grow at a whopping 143 percent rate over the next 18 months. That growth will be fueled by strategies like letting AI handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks, enabling human agents to focus on higher-level and niche interactions. AI also serves an important role in providing human agents with immediate background information on individual customers and their specific needs.
Additional use cases, at least in the immediate future, including the automation of routine service tickets, enabling human agents to focus on more complex issues. The Salesforce report found that 65 percent of customer service agents aided by chatbots are able to focus on solving complex problems, compared to only 50 percent of those agents without AI or chatbots.
It’s clear that AI is already transforming customer service and relations and is slated to completely change the customer service game over the next couple of years. How drastic those changes will be is only limited by the pace of technology and how CRM companies leverage AI to improve their offerings.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
