Customer support is fundamentally about offering timely resolution to customers no matter where they are in their journey. The reality, however, is that it can frequently be long-winded and dysfunctional.
It’s only human to become engulfed by emotions (frustration, anxiety, impatience, etc.) as customers wait in the queue of pending support tickets.
This process neither helps customers nor the support team. Customers have a bad experience causing them to lose trust in the brand’s ability to offer timely resolution to their queries or issues.
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The support team, on the other hand, grapples with a growing backlog of support tickets and struggles to address each one within acceptable timeframes. Agents become stressed and overworked, which leads to talent churn.
Chatbots, which were once the primary solution to improve customer support, have shortcomings such as a lack of contextual understanding, needing extensive training, and poor scalability. Generative AI provides a more effective solution. Powered by large language models (LLM), Generative AI is transforming customer support by making it more streamlined and efficient. One of the ways it does it is by reducing the creation of tickets.
Customer Self-Service
AI Assistants powered by Generative AI understand natural human language and provide instant and insanely accurate responses to both simple and complex queries. With their 24/7 availability, AI offers real-time support to customers and thereby alleviates the need to create support tickets to resolve queries and concerns. If it’s an FAQ such as “How do I reset my account password?” or “What’s your return policy?”, AI-powered Assistants enable customers to resolve issues autonomously.
RELATED: Why AI Chatbots are Essential in Customer Self-Service
Proactive Resolution
Let’s say a company rolls out a new software update. Under normal circumstances, this might lead to a large volume of support tickets as customers potentially encounter issues with adapting to the new changes.
In this scenario, Generative AI identifies issues that customers are more likely to face during transition and prepares for them. Thus, it creates preemptive responses that address customers’ concerns even before they are raised. So, by using Generative AI, businesses can preempt and address potential issues before they escalate. AI-powered systems are able to identify emerging issues and offer proactive solutions, which help customers from encountering the problem in the first place and removing the need for them to raise support tickets.
This also results in customer delight as customers recognize the company identified their possible issues and sought to address them proactively.
Automated Troubleshooting
Customer queries that fall under technical issues are often resolved through step-by-step guidance, driven by Generative AI. The technology helps automate the troubleshooting by instructing customers to address problems on their own. Such a hands-on approach to query or issue resolution helps prevent the raising of unnecessary tickets while making the support process more efficient.
RELATED: How Generative AI Is Transforming Customer Service
Interactive Knowledge Base
Generative AI helps transform conventional knowledge base articles into interactive and conversational guides, which help customers seamlessly find the necessary information in real-time. This eliminates the need to create support tickets while improving customer experience.
Moreover, the advantages extend beyond just prevention of ticket creation.
It helps customers get access to personalized and accurate solutions without having to wait for an agent’s response. The interactive guides enable customers to navigate even complex topics with ease.
Personalized Support
Generative AI systems collect high-quality data when they interact with customers, helping them understand the specific context. The data offers insights about past purchases, inquiries, and behavioral patterns.
With this understanding, Generative AI helps support teams to offer personalized recommendations and solutions that cater to the unique needs and preferences of a customer. This way the technology reduces the possibility of confusion and frustration for customers, who thereby are less likely to create support tickets.
Take, for instance, a shopper who’s had an issue with a recent purchase. The AI system will not only address their immediate concern but also take into account purchase history, issues faced, and more that are relevant for each individual customer’s journey. This not only improves the customer experience but also builds trust and loyalty.
Final Thoughts
Generative AI, despite its exceptional contextual understanding and issue-resolving capabilities, recognizes the need for human touch. By gathering relevant customer information and delivering it to human agents, it ensures that every ticket contains the essential details required for rapid and seamless problem-solving.
Interested to explore more or want to try out a chatbot of your own?
