How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Customer Expectations with Laura Burgess
Effectively Integrating AI into Customer Service
Shep Hyken interviews Laura Burgess, senior research analyst at Capterra (a division of Gartner), a trusted software and services marketplace that offers a wide range of solutions to help organizations meet many of their business needs. She talks about how AI is transforming customer service and how organizations can balance digital interactions with the human touch to enhance customer satisfaction.
This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:
- Why are customer expectations rising in today’s market?
- How can AI enhance customer service experience?
- How can businesses effectively implement AI in customer service?
- Why is transparency when using AI in customer interaction?
- How can businesses balance between AI and human support?
Top Takeaways
- Over the last two years, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores have increased. A study by Capterra found that 63% of U.S. businesses have shown a marked improvement in customer satisfaction.
- Customer expectations have risen due to the availability of multiple communication channels like the phone, email, chat, and social media. Today, customers expect quick, efficient, and instant responses. Technology plays a significant role in meeting these expectations by providing faster service across multiple channels.
- Transparency is key when it comes to customer interaction. Letting customers know that they are interacting with AI through notifications before the engagement and during interactions can build trust, comfort, and acceptance.
- To optimize customer service, companies should leverage the strengths of both AI and human support. While human support is crucial to personalized interactions, AI excels in faster response times, handling repetitive tasks, providing 24/7 availability, and offering multilingual support.
- AI will not eliminate jobs. It will disrupt job roles. Employees believe that, in the next five years, 52% of customer queries will be handled exclusively by AI. Customer service roles will evolve, with humans focusing more on strategic, empathetic, and more complex tasks.
- Integrating AI into customer service isn’t just about getting the latest technology. It requires training employees to use AI tools and understand AI insights effectively. This training also benefits employees by boosting their technical skills, making them more versatile and valuable to the organizations they work for.
- As businesses continue to invest in AI, it’s essential to continuously measure its impact on customer experience. Companies should focus on fine-tuning these technologies to deliver accurate and helpful responses while maintaining the availability of human agents for more sensitive or complex issues.
- Plus, Shep and Laura discuss more stats from Capterra’s 2024 Customer Service Technology Survey and how it shapes the future of customer service. Tune in!
Quotes:
“Consumers are more demanding than ever when it comes to their interactions with companies, thanks to multi-channels of communication which enable faster services and instant responses.”
“Technology plays a big part in increasing customer expectations and customer satisfaction because while companies offer human support, they also have efficient software tools and AI to address smaller queries faster.”
“Identify the areas in which both AI and human support agents perform best and leverage that. Train your employees to use AI tools, handle sensitive data while using AI, and understand AI-generated insights.”
“AI makes processes quicker for our customers, but in case the customer’s experience is not going very well, a human agent must be on standby and to handle the more complex, emotionally sensitive issues.”
“AI could open new career pathways in roles such as AI management, strategy development, and leadership. AI is not the end for all human employees. It paves the way for an evolution of the roles for everyone.”
About:
Laura Burgess is a senior research analyst at Capterra with specialized knowledge of sales and customer experience (CX). Capterra offers businesses over 90,000 solutions across 1,300 software types and 50,000+ service providers to choose from.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.
Originally published at hyken.com on September 17, 2024
