6 min read Several studies and surveys have found that consumers prefer to engage with businesses that offer a superior customer support experience. But good support isn’t just about the timeliness of the service; it’s about the quality of the conversation between the business and the customer – which is harder to read when relying on manual ways to browse through conversations.
This is where AI-driven insights for customer support come in.
Artificial intelligence can help support teams better understand customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. In this post, we share how you can leverage AI-driven insights to make customer interactions more relevant.
Table of Contents
What are AI-driven insights in customer support?
AI-powered solutions have the capability to process thousands of data points in real time. When leveraged in a solution for customer support, this refers to being able to offer insights into customer behavior. This includes being able to understand current trends, predict customer needs, and find opportunities that can help improve the overall service delivery.
What are the types of insights AI can provide to customer support?
Apart from the ability to measure customer support efforts through metrics like response time, customer satisfaction rate, and similar parameters, here are the other insights AI unlocks:
1. Customer sentiment analysis
Automation can help run customer feedback cycles that are purely based on the input one provides. But AI can help analyze customer feedback from more than just surveys. It can look into the nature of the conversation across channels to gauge overall sentiment. The sentiment analysis in addition to metrics like CSAT helps teams understand how customers truly feel about the interaction and what they can do better.
2. Predictive analytics
AI gives customer support teams the ability to examine historical data. This can help them predict future customer behavior, needs, and preferences – allowing them to proactively address potential issues before they escalate. The proactive customer support efforts help also improve the overall experience.
3. Interaction parameters
AI can help track customer interactions across different channels (email, chat apps, phone, social media, etc) to identify patterns. This can help teams identify preferred customer touchpoints, streamline communication, and improve their response times.
4. Performance metrics
Customer support solutions with AI can provide deeper insights into team performance. This includes being able to measure response times, effectiveness, and resolution rates – but more importantly, it helps identify areas of improvement and high-performing agents.
5. Knowledge base optimization
With AI, customer support teams can analyze customer queries to highlight gaps in the resource center. It can suggest new articles and updates to existing resources to enhance self-service options, which helps reduce the overall workload on support agents.
What are the benefits of using AI-driven insights for customer support?
Here’s why we recommend going beyond the usual analytics when it comes to customer support:
1. Better customer insights and segmentation
AI tools analyze large datasets to reveal customer preferences, behaviors, and recurring issues. This enables support teams to deliver more personalized and relevant interactions, and also segment the customers for future engagement.
2. Proactive issue resolution
By predicting potential issues before an escalation comes through, AI enables the business and the support teams to take proactive measures. This helps resolve problems before they even begin, reducing customer frustration and boosting retention.
3. Increased team efficiency
Being able to identify common customer queries and offering solutions in real-time, can help human agents focus on more complex tasks. This helps boost the team’s productivity levels even during high volume or peak timings.
Recommended read: How AI co-pilots enhance customer support efficiency
4. Personalized customer journeys
Being able to analyze customer interactions across multiple touchpoints, AI helps understand how a typical consumer progresses through the funnel. AI can pinpoint areas of friction and suggest improvements, creating a customer journey with lesser drop-off points.
5. Easier scalability
AI customer support tools can help identify and then automate repetitive tasks. The real-time insights and the ability to set up custom workflows make it easier for business to scale their customer support operations.
6. Real-time adaptation
With AI’s ability to learn from continuous data input, customer support teams can quickly adapt their strategies. This includes taking into account their evolving needs, market trends, and service demands to ensure ongoing improvement in the quality of support offered.
Best practices to use AI-driven insights for customer support
AI offers a plethora of data to customer support teams and that can quickly overwhelm agents. To ensure you make the most of it, here are some best practices to follow:
- Integrate AI with existing systems – From your knowledge base to the CRM, ensure that your customer support AI solution is well integrated with the tech stack. The goal is to enable a seamless flow of information to address customer queries efficiently.
- Train your support agents – Ensure you provide training to your customer support staff. They should be able to interpret AI-driven insights to make informed decisions or understand why a hand-off is required.
- Regularly review insights – Schedule regular audits to review the AI-generated insights. This includes identifying trends and adapting your customer support strategies accordingly. Support teams can ensure their approach remains relevant to the current customer preferences.
- Encourage collaboration – Foster a collaborative environment between teams. Share the AI-generated insights with marketing, sales, branding, and other departments for better decision-making.
- Request customer feedback – While AI can help you analyze customer interactions, also ensures you seek direct feedback from them. This can help further improve your support strategies and make them feel truly heard.
Conclusion
Incorporating AI-driven insights into your customer support operations can help improve how you interact with customers. The data-driven approach can lead to enhanced satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, business growth.
Want to know more about AI and automation for customer support? Book a demo of Auralis AI today.
