AI vs. Humans: Striking the Perfect Balance in Customer Support

AI-powered support and chatbots represent an essential tool to elevate your customer service strategy, provide an even better experience to retail customers, and ultimately remain competitive in today’s fast-changing market.  

But how can you strike the perfect balance between automation and the human touch? For clients all over the world it is still essential to be able to get in touch with a human customer service agent who will help them with their queries.  

Fortunately, there is a lot that you can do to ensure that you are investing in the right technologies without compromising on the quality of your customer support. In this guide by Futr AI, you’ll find all you need to know to use AI to deliver stellar customer care. Let’s dive in.   

Implementing AI Customer Support Solutions: What You Need To Know 

AI-powered customer service solutions – such as customer service chatbots – are an essential arrow to have in your quiver, especially in this era of profound digital transformation. Thanks to artificial intelligence chatbots with live chat capabilities, you’ll be able to improve your customer service, reduce costs, and streamline time-consuming tasks, without compromising on the customer experience.  

At the same time, understanding what aspects of your customer support may benefit from AI and which one should be fully run by your trained agents can be difficult. Below, we’ll look at the strategies to combine these two assets.  

The Benefits of Combining AI and Human Agents for Your Customer Services 

Using AI tools correctly isn’t always straightforward. Here are some tips to strike the perfect balance.  

Customer Support Live Chat Capabilities 

Firstly, the best live chat apps and chatbots will have live chat features. This means that customers will be able to interact with the chatbot as if they were communicating with a human customer service agent.  

The chatbot will be able to provide relevant, human-like answers to complex questions. However, your chatbot may not be able to handle all of your customers’ queries. In this case, it is possible to escalate the issue to trained agents who can take the matter in their own hand and offer a more personalised response.  

Automating Time-Consuming Tasks 

A great way to take advantage of AI-powered customer service chat is to use them to automate repetitive, tedious, or time-consuming tasks. Thanks to chatbot automation features, this AI-powered tool will be able to answer standard questions and resolve common problems, thus freeing up your customer support team’s time and adding incremental capacity. 

Multilingual Customer Care 

Another important aspect in which AI can assist your customer support team is by providing multilingual functionalities. This is an excellent tool you and your team can take advantage of to natively communicate with customers from around the world. In terms of efficiency, the ability to effectively interact in over 120 languages can support your team, while helping you stick to your budget for labour expenditures, whilst catering to customers native communication needs and preferences.  

Reducing Time and Costs of Customer Support With 24/7 Self-Service Assistance 

Tasking your customer service team to work during weekends or after-hours is never easy – and it certainly comes at a cost (both financially and in terms of job satisfaction). Fortunately, a chatbot can fill in any gaps and provide uninterrupted service to clients, in any time zone, and at during any time of the day. With 24/7 self service capabilities, you can provide troubleshooting services in real-time without putting an excessive strain on your customer support team.  

Designing Great Customer Experiences 

When it comes to designing a stellar customer experience, a lot comes down to the people in your customer service team and their expertise. However, AI-powered chatbots can go further in supporting them.  

A chatbot with chat survey capabilities can gather customer feedback in real time and in an engaging way. Thanks to the data and insights you’ll be able to collect using this tool, you can help your customer service team improve the customer experience they are aiming to bring to life.   

Will Customer Services Be Replaced by AI? What You Need To Know 

The world seems to be divided between those who see AI as a threat to their job and those who can’t wait to make the most of this emerging technology. So, what’s the truth? Just like in most other situations, it is all about balance. Yes, AI-powered chatbots can take care of those time-consuming tasks that are draining your customer service team’s productivity. At the same time, this tool can help gather customer feedback, provide assistance to customers around the world, and deliver quick answers to standard questions.  

On the other hand, it is important to keep in mind that, according to a PWC survey, 75% of customers are craving the ‘human touch’ during their customer experience. Because of this, it is important to leverage AI as an assistive tool for the highly-trained professionals in your team.  

Choose a Custom AI Solution for Your Retail Business 

When it comes down to introducing AI tools within your retail business, keep in mind that no two companies have the exact same needs or goals. Because of this, you’ll need a custom solution that can truly elevate your customer service strategy and support your one-of-a-kind team. For all of this and more, start by getting in touch with the experts at Futr AI or book a free demo today.