What Does AI In Customer Service Mean To Marketers?

The latest statistics show that current AI technology can boost business productivity by up to 40%. How exactly?

We live in a world where chatting to a bot is normal and expected. Pretty bizarre, isn’t it? I feel like the way AI chatbots are perceived is somewhat similar to third-party cookies. Us marketers love them but as for the consumers on the receiving end, it really depends.

However, AI does not just limit itself to chatbots. By definition, Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. AI has seamlessly integrated itself into our everyday lives through Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, self-driving cars, or even Netflix recommendations. Whether we like it or not, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is dominating almost every industry it finds itself in.

AI In Customer Service

In this age of digitalization, AI is no longer just images of futuristic or sci-fi inventions found in movies. It is utilized in our everyday lives and customer support is a great example of it.

We have all encountered AI on some level when we needed some questions answered about a product or service. Do you remember the automatic phone machine voice or instant messages on websites’ chatboxes asking you generic questions? That’s AI customer service in action.

No matter how advanced or dominant, AI in customer support, of course, also has its advantages and disadvantages. Check out my infographic on this:

Although the upsides to AI customer service like the incredible speed, 24/7 availability and high efficiency are undeniable, I believe that the biggest and most challenging downside to this is the lack of human interaction.

For a brand to truly connect and resonate with its customers, it is essential to make the interactions personal. Many customers, including myself, want to connect with brands on an emotional level, a level that is only possible with humans and not yet with AI.

How Does This Impact Marketing?

As a marketer, we put consumers at the heart of our executions, and boosting the public relations of a brand is always one of our priorities, which is why to us, customer service is an unquestionably crucial part of marketing.

AI customer support plays a vital role in:

• Providing data-driven case resolution: AI-powered data analytics allows analyzing customer data from multiple channels, providing customer service agents with recommendations based on these insights, and predicting problems that are about to occur to troubleshoot.
• Increasing value of conversations: AI can predict the course of the conversation and create conversation patterns in a timely manner as it is backed by pattern recognition and self-learning capabilities.
• Collecting data: The conversations collected by AI are valuable sources for brands and marketers to understand their customers, make customer-oriented decisions and create customer personas for marketing purposes.
• etc.

Artificial Intelligence has been and still is shaping the future of marketing. Not only does customer service AI help retain customers with great speed, 24/7 availability and high efficiency, but it also retains customers’ data to help marketers target products more accurately and profitably.

In marketing, good brand image and high customer satisfaction are essentially two of the most important goals and AI customer support helps make them more attainable.

So yes, the latest statistics show that current AI technology can boost business productivity by up to 40%, and that is how.

Feel free to share any interesting or impressive interaction you have had with AI, I would love to hear it!