We have discussed the potential of artificial intelligence and the impact it is having on industries across the world. In a world where technology is changing rapidly, it can be hard for businesses to keep up with shifting consumer demands.
In this article, we explore the potential impact of AI in the customer service industry and how it might change the face of the entire market. We have covered artificial intelligence before, as you may have noticed. Like these articles here, here, here, here and here.
We have also covered customer service before as well in the context of technology.
Why customer service?
For startups that are looking to build their customer base, understanding the needs and demands of their users is crucial. However, the resources required to find this crucial information is often beyond the grasp of growing customers.
However, the advancements in AI and machine learning is starting to fuel a change. Conversational AI has helped bridge the gap between customers and businesses, offering consumers instant results while making it easy for businesses to provide attention to every person in need.
Therefore, for entrepreneurs it is time to start looking at AI solutions that can help solve their customer service issues. We look at how and why.
Real time conversations are possible
The vast majority of consumers highly value customer service that provides quick responses. This is from personal experience and a general understand of how consumers work, as well as the tonnes of research out there.
In a traditional scenario, there is considerable resources required to provide real time responses to consumers across all channels. Immediate responses are usually difficult to deliver to everybody who wanted one. With AI and automation, however, this is changing. Businesses can now create services where common questions can be answered through automation, and filter difficult issues to real life customer service agents for their assistance.
This could include chatbots like Facebook messenger, which allows businesses to automate responses to customers and provides simple tools to help entrepreneurs build a basic bot.
Consumer feedback and data gathering
An often under utilised aspect of customer service is the feedback and data that they are able to gather from your customers. As the first and sometimes last line of defense in your company, they are often poised to understand your customers the best.
However, this often was not used properly due to inability to gather sufficient data or even just a poor analytical process to understand whatever data they were gathering. Now with AI technology managing this, it is capable of not only efficient gathering of data and feedback, but also providing statistically analysis of the data.
This can help with sentiment analysis, which helps identify when your customers are happy or unhappy, and if used properly, can even turn a dissatisfied customer into a satisfied one. Understanding how a consumer feels can boost sales, improve customer service and help evolve business according to the market changes more effectively.
Overcoming the challenge of globalisation
One of the main issues around scaling for startups in Southeast Asia is being able to localise according to the languages. Indonesia by itself, has over 700 languages. Language is often a costly and cumbersome barrier to scaling, especially small startups.
AI has the power to remove this barrier. For businesses, the ability to cross borders can change the trajectory of user adoption, but also presents great challenges for companies when it comes to customer service and communication. By using AI-enabled translation, you can use the automated customer service options and scale it across Southeast Asia even with local languages.
The technology exists to provide immediate translation for major languages and incorporating this technology into chatbots, automated customer service technology is readily available. Startups will need to invest in this form of technology to scale their customer service efficiently.