Today, there are so many AI customer service tools you can use to facilitate your calls, but how do you know if they’re actually worth it? AI can help your call representatives manage their CRM, handle repetitive tasks, transcribe conversations, and more. However, depending on the product you purchase, it could provide incorrect information or lack understanding if it’s not given enough context.
We’ll show you exactly what to look for when seeking an AI solution for your customer service representatives. Of course, the best way to determine if an AI virtual assistant will be an asset is to evaluate your customer journey map. If your workflow is slow, having an AI customer service tool will only benefit your process.
At Hooked, we created Tacklebox AI, a series of AI tools crafted specifically to assist with customer service calls and generate sales. If you’re interested in upgrading your workflow, book a demo with us today, and one of our qualified reps will walk you through Hooked’s many features.
What is AI in Customer Service?
AI in customer service refers to the different ways AI can assist in customer service situations. It uses machine learning and speech recognition to assist with customer interactions. The assumption is that AI customer service tools are restricted to just chatbots, but call centers and customer service locations are using AI voices, agent assistant tools, sentiment analysis, reporting, and more.
All of these tools work symbiotically to enhance the customer experience and call representative workflows. Here are just a few ways AI customer service tools have been used to upgrade processes and expedite customer journeys without sacrificing call quality:
Handle Repetitive Inquiries Automatically
When working with customers, you’ll often hear the same questions or concerns repeated. There are a few ways to remedy this issue; the most common is to use an interactive voice response system (IVR) with AI integration. This routes the caller to the right representative and fields monotonous questions without ignoring real questions.
Here are a few more ways AI can assist with repetitive tasks:
Chatbots & Automated Responses
When AI is integrated into your chatbots, it can generate automated responses based on the data you uploaded into the system. This AI customer service tool can answer questions before it routes to the lead agent.
It’s important to note that the quality of the chatbot’s response will depend on the quality of data it’s fed before it’s asked the question. Generic AI chatbots hallucinate details without any legitimate data to support them.
24/7 Coverage
Because AI systems don’t need to sleep or take breaks, if you set up AI to gather baseline information from the customer, it will generate a synopsis for your review. This ensures that you won’t miss a single lead for your business and can answer any questions as soon as possible.
For example, if you receive a call at 2 a.m. that you can’t answer, AI can pick up the call on your behalf, gather the necessary information, and send you a message when you get into the office. Having the right context allows you to reply with certainty, making this the most effective approach for handling incoming calls.
Help Agents During Live Interactions
Not only can AI assist agents with repetitive tasks, but it can also assist during calls. As a disclaimer, these suggestions will only work if you have integrations between your dialer, CRM, and AI assistant. However, if you have an all-in-one system, like Hooked, you won’t have to worry about integrating everything since it'll be native to one program.
Here are just a few ways customer service representatives used AI to assist them on their calls:
Suggested Replies & Knowledge Retrieval
If you have a live AI assistant listening to your calls, it receives full call context and generates a response tailored to the situation. Of course, it’s up to the call representative to use the result if they find it useful, but if you’ve given the AI enough context and set goals, it should provide the desired response.
When your client asks a question, the AI can pull a response from the documents you’ve uploaded to the program. This becomes increasingly helpful if you’re in an industry where you’re asked to keep track of several pieces of information. For example, in the life insurance industry, agents are expected to track dozens of policies and their rates for every pre-existing condition. With an AI catered toward knowledge retrieval, you can answer it faster than normal agents.
Live Call Transcriptions & AI Summaries
When you have a live AI assistant with you while you’re on a call, it can transcribe conversations for you in real time. This gives you an easy way to reference calls without having to listen to the entire conversation. It can also give your call representatives peace of mind when reviewing security and compliance features.
After you’ve finished your call and received your transcription, the AI assistant should provide you with an AI summary of the conversation. This gives you quick access to the call disposition and provides pertinent information upfront.
Auto-Fill & CRM Updates
If you’ve integrated your CRM and AI assistant, you can have your AI assistant fill out fields and automatically update your CRM without having to lift a finger. These AI customer service tools become essential for your workflows if you plan to prioritize efficiency, since they keep you focused on calls rather than organizing tedious files.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is the process of diagnosing the emotional tone of the customer’s voice. This can help you match the tone of the conversation and respond appropriately. With an AI assistant keeping track of the analysis, you won’t miss a single change in their emotions.
As frustration escalates, the AI can alert the customer service representative and give them strategies to resolve the issue. This sentiment analysis can also be used for call center training. Once calls are complete, managers can train the customer service agent on what to do when they encounter a similar situation.
How AI Customer Service Tools Change Workflows
With most AI customer service tools, you’ll see a change in your workflow, especially when it comes to your inbound and outbound calls. Here’s how AI customer service tools can enhance your calls:
IVR Integration
With interactive voice response (IVR) systems, calls are routed to the appropriate agent before the phone rings. When combined with an AI assistant, your inbound calls will always be sent to the appropriate customer service representative. The AI customer service tool will consider everything: sentiment, previous customer interactions, and more.
This ensures that no time will be wasted routing calls for the call representative and that the customer will be satisfied with the first response they receive.
AI Outbound Dialing & Lead Qualification
AI agents can determine lead qualification by performing outbound calls. If your business has a form fill where people are inputting their information, the AI assistant can answer basic questions before they reach a call representative and hand off warm leads to agents.
This is incredibly helpful for teams that perform a high volume of outbound calling, such as insurance and sales companies.
What Most AI Assistants Struggle With
While AI assistants are helpful and necessary for customer service success, they can still struggle with a few tasks. However, more complex AI agents can accomplish these tasks. If you’re looking for a new AI virtual assistant, you should ensure that they can easily break the mold from your typical AI assistant.
Here are some struggles you should be aware of when contemplating an AI customer service tool:
Complex, Multi-Step Complaints
AI works best with simple, well-defined questions with clear answers. This is because the AI will generally pull from information you’ve uploaded to the system and can’t handle complex requests without full context.
Of course, this depends on how much information you’ve sent to the AI. However, it can be dangerous to send all your data to AI since there are security risks if the AI lacks reliable firewalls.
Providing Empathy in High-Pressure Situations
While AI can perform sentiment analysis, it has difficulty conveying genuine emotion. Typically, individuals experiencing grief, anger, or crisis respond poorly to AI responses. When customers escalate situations, calls should route to a call representative immediately.
Possible Hallucinations
Hallucinations can occur when the AI doesn’t have an answer for the question posed. It will do its best to answer questions based on the context it has. However, if it’s unsure or has false information, it will confidently provide a false answer.
This can be remedied by providing the most accurate, up-to-date information and creating safeguards against questions it can’t answer with the data it has.
Adding AI to Your Customer Service Workflows
Adding AI to your customer service workflows can cause problems if you aren’t setting it up correctly. Adding AI to your workflow shouldn’t be immediate; you should start slowly and expand as needed. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself when investing in an AI customer service tool:
- What is your highest ticket request? Is it something that an AI agent can answer?
- Do you need an AI assistant to act as an IVR, or can it handle most of the customer interactions?
- What are you going to measure after implementing an AI agent? This will color how you adjust and improve the AI responses.
If you’re implementing an AI agent safely and intentionally, it should be an asset that enhances your customer experience instead of damaging your company’s reputation.
How Hooked’s Tacklebox AI Assists Your Customer Service Team
Our team at Hooked has created Tacklebox AI, a series of AI customer service tools that enhance the customer and agent experience. It’s a highly efficient AI agent that only pulls information from the documents you’ve uploaded to the CRM and provides live AI assistance by giving suggested responses, live transcriptions, AI call summaries, and automatic CRM updates.
Tacklebox AI seamlessly integrates with your existing workflow and upgrades your customer service team with efficient tools that aren’t confusing to use. Plus, Tacklebox AI is native to the Hooked CRM platform, giving you an all-in-one program that combines AI assistance, CRM tools, and a dialer in one platform. No more switching between windows or uploading information from one tool to another to get the valuable insights you need.
Interested in using Tacklebox AI and Hooked CRM? Book a demo with us today, and we can give you an in-depth tutorial of our program.
