Leveraging AI and Data Science in Customer Service

Some worry that we have entered a period of significant disconnect between customer service providers and clients who are subject to long wait queues, traversing a maze of impersonal IVR prompts, and enduring unintelligible robotic responses.  With customer dissatisfaction reaching an all-time high due to this wave of impersonalization, corporations paying attention have begun to realize that opportunity exists facing this concerning backdrop.

Such organizations have identified that integrating AI and data science into their customer service strategy is essential in the present and for maintaining relevancy in the future.  This technology can help process large amounts of information from various sources and help organizations develop closer relationships with customers by anticipating and understanding customer needs and desires.  Numerous related tools are emerging to help organizations achieve customer intimacy levels never before imagined.

These tools, along with AI and data science, can help an organization connect with customers and promote brand loyalty in new, efficient, and personable ways bridging the developing service divide.  A return to “attention to the customer” and “the customer is always right” mentality offers a powerful differentiator to the intune organization.

Six top ways to make the best use of AI and data science in customer service

1.  Customer Interaction – Embedding an AI-driven video conferencing API into your company website or platform – This allows for a personal approach to connect with your customers that prefer face-to-face interaction.  Combined with intelligent chatbots and instant messaging, this live support facilitates a unique immersive customer experience that provides immediate gratification and a special connection with your company, service, and product lines.
2.  Understanding your customer – AI and data science can help you understand the behavioral trends of your customers, their wants, needs, and the subtle detail that can elevate your service to new heights.  Further, this technology can facilitate natural language processing (NLP), collect and evaluate customer sentiment (sentiment analysis), and predict future customer trends, offering invaluable insights for inclusion in your company’s marketing tool chest.
3.  Collecting vast amounts of data – AI can capture insights through data mining and recognition capabilities to vastly improve the efficiency in processing extensive collections of customer-specific data.  AI simplifies big data analytics by automating the time-consuming process of data preparation, data visualization, predictive modeling, and various other tasks that go into any modern, accurate analysis that leads to powerful insights, creating a clear and precise customer focus.
4.  Managing high volumes of customer queries – Machine learning (ML) and data science technology allows for processing large quantities of information to identify bottlenecks and increase efficiency.  AI can also support customer service functions by answering questions and automatically scheduling callbacks for customer service agents and sales teams.
5.  Proactively identifying problems before they arise – AI can monitor an unlimited amount of website and application activity and quickly identify customers experiencing issues in real-time. In many cases, it can address potential problems automatically or send alerts for addressing an issue through direct human intervention.
6.  Reach the right customers – AI and data science tools and technology allow companies to analyze and develop new and direct ways to market and sell products and services by targeting the appropriate prospect profile for any given target market.

Additional potential benefits for consideration:

24/7/365 customer service

Rapid response to customer issues or queries

Self-service options for customers

Call centers typically realize significant cost savings

Marketing departments build more robust campaigns

Common AI tools used to enhance Customer Service

NLP  – A system that allows humans and machines to communicate and speak the same language so that companies can automatically analyze voice or written text from their customers to gain insights.

Sentiment analysis – Sentiment analysis is the process of identifying and categorizing opinions expressed within the text from various sources, including social media, websites, articles, reports, journals, reviews, etc., into positive, neutral, and negative or into more granular levels, like very negative, negative, neutral, positive, very positive. By monitoring customer sentiment, companies can stay in tune with their customers’ needs and trends.

Emotion analysis – Represents the use of AI to recognize and interpret human emotions by tracking and analyzing facial expressions, body language, speech, or even emotion or sentiment conveyed in written text. Like sentiment analysis, emotion analysis takes an even deeper dive into how a customer perceives a product or service.

Predictive insights – ML allows organizations to anticipate customer needs and desires, enabling companies to tailor a personalized customer profile to their needs.  Organizations can then present specific products and services to the customer that focus on these needs and desires, creating a better and more focused customer experience.

Patterns and trends toward declining service have developed over recent years.  The bad news for product and service providers is that customers are taking notice.  The good news for product and service providers that are paying attention is that customers are taking note.  By carefully architecting an organization’s response to the customer, companies may obtain a strategic advantage by genuinely connecting with the customer and promoting brand loyalty in these new, efficient and personable ways bridging the service chasm.  A return to “attention to the customer” will set your organization apart from the masses.

By applying the appropriate tools and technology, organizations can elevate their customer service more than ever imagined. Customer service can be quicker, more efficient, and more personalized resulting in happier customers and increased sales and profits.

If you are interested in applying data science and AI to the fullest potential within customer service, email us at intellect2@intellect2.ai.  Intellect Data, Inc. is a software solutions company incorporating data science and artificial intelligence into modern digital products with Intellect ^2 TM. IntellectData^TM develops and implements software, software components, and software as a service (SaaS) for enterprise, desktop, web, mobile, cloud, IoT, wearables, and AR/VR environments. Locate us on the web at www.intellect2.ai.

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