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Episode: AI Use Case Series: AI in Customer Service [AI Today Podcast]

Author: AI & Data Today
Duration: 00:08:27

Episode Shownotes

in today’s competitive landscape, quality service is crucial for long-term success of any business. In this episode of the AI Today hosts Kathleen Walch and Ron Schmelzer discuss the use of AI in customer service. AI-Powered Offerings The use of AI chatbots and LLMs are having a significant impact on

customer service. Continue reading AI Use Case Series: AI in Customer Service [AI Today Podcast] at Cognilytica.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
The AI Today podcast, powered by PMI, cuts through the hype and noise to identify what is really happening now in the world of artificial intelligence.

00:00:09 Speaker_00
Learn about emerging AI trends, best practices, and use cases on making AI work for you today with PMI hosts and expert guests.

00:00:21 Speaker_01
Hello and welcome to the AI Today podcast.

00:00:23 Speaker_02
I'm your host, Kathleen Mulch. And I'm your host, Ron Schmelzer.

00:00:26 Speaker_02
You know, as you've been using AI, I'm sure there's one thing that you've been doing, and that's you've been interacting now with companies and products and other things using AI assistance. It used to be

00:00:38 Speaker_02
not too long ago where calling customer support, getting help was something you did not look forward to. It still isn't something I think most people look forward to.

00:00:47 Speaker_02
But I think now people are starting to realize that one of the ways they can get better quality help is by interacting with AI-powered chatbots.

00:00:56 Speaker_02
Now, it's still not incredibly common at every organization to have some sort of fully automated assistant. There's still a lot of human involved in the loop. And even with human-based chats, those interactions are not always the most pleasant.

00:01:11 Speaker_02
However, what we are starting to see is we're starting to see AI really, truly transform the whole customer service.

00:01:16 Speaker_02
And the reason why we are talking about it here on the AI Today podcast, for those of you that have been following along, is that we're really focusing on how AI is being applied to all these different industries, in part because people want to know

00:01:28 Speaker_02
how AI is going to impact them, whether they're a user or whether they're someone trying to implement AI systems. There's been a lot of conversation about the benefits of AI.

00:01:36 Speaker_02
And one of the things we're really focusing on is we're going to show you over the course of these many, many episodes, specifically how AI is being applied into many different industries.

00:01:45 Speaker_02
And whether or not you are specifically in that industry or not, as you start listening to these examples and these use cases, you'll realize that there's a broad range of things that AI is being applied to right now that AI is really good for.

00:01:58 Speaker_02
And you can realize benefits not in some far undetermined future, but right now with yourself, the benefits that you can realize as an individual and for your organization.

00:02:08 Speaker_01
Exactly, AI today, not AI tomorrow, which is why we always like to talk about those practical applications.

00:02:16 Speaker_01
So for today's podcast, as Ron mentioned, we're going to be talking about how AI is helping transform customer service and different ways that AI is being applied.

00:02:24 Speaker_01
So one way that we've seen it be applied is with automating routine tasks and also with AI-powered chatbots.

00:02:31 Speaker_01
So if you've ever interacted with an organization, a lot of these organizations now, especially when you go to an online website, will have a little chatbot. But the question always is, is this powered by AI or is this powered by a human?

00:02:47 Speaker_01
And it's not always clear. So an example that I had recently was I had a call a bank for something and I called up their number because I always like to talk to people, but it was a very long wait.

00:02:59 Speaker_01
So I said, you know what, while I'm waiting, I'm just gonna chat with this system. It was an agent. So it was, you know, very neutral, didn't let me know if it was an AI agent or a human agent,

00:03:09 Speaker_01
And it took some time for me to figure out it actually was a human. But this also goes into areas around trustworthy AI. When we talk about this, where do you disclose if this is a human or a bot?

00:03:22 Speaker_01
And actually, it would have been really nice for it to disclose that it actually was a human. Because then I would have known that I was talking to two different humans rather than that bot.

00:03:30 Speaker_01
So these do bring up some of those trustworthy and ethical concepts that we talk about. AI really is being used, you know, if this was a bot, it's being used to help with a number of different things.

00:03:42 Speaker_01
So if you've interacted with a chatbot, you know that they're available 24-7, maybe they can talk in different languages, and they also usually always have, you know, pleasant or neutral tone, which can help sometimes, especially if it's a stressful situation, and they're able to, you know, work tirelessly without having to take breaks.

00:04:03 Speaker_01
So they can handle a wide range of different customer inquiries, such as answering frequently asked questions, or maybe having more of those engaging conversations rather than just answering that section from the FAQ.

00:04:16 Speaker_01
It can assist with basic troubleshooting, and it can also help with response times or with operational costs as well.

00:04:24 Speaker_01
So if you're thinking about using AI chatbots, we always talk about what is that return on investment that you're gonna be looking for?

00:04:30 Speaker_01
And maybe that return is to reduce call times or to alleviate the human so they can have higher value things that they're working on. So chatbots really are being deployed for a number of different benefits.

00:04:44 Speaker_02
Yeah. You know, we've all had this experience, even when we're interacting with a chatbot, where we ask a question and all we're getting, as Kathleen mentioned, was just like some general response from the FAQ.

00:04:54 Speaker_02
It's sort of like the old joke in the back in the day when you're trying to deal with like your internet is out. And I should say back in the day, I think it's still happening now. And the first question is, have you rebooted your router?

00:05:04 Speaker_02
It's like, what? You're not even like listening to my question. It may have nothing to do with it. How can I get access to the latest blah package on my television. Have you rebooted your router? It's like, stop it.

00:05:17 Speaker_02
What they're doing is they're ignoring your question and they're just going down this chain. Make sure they did this and make sure they did this.

00:05:24 Speaker_02
One of the things I'm hopeful for is that when we have real, actual AI conversational systems that are backed by the actual documentation of the systems, the rags we talked about before,

00:05:35 Speaker_02
The retrieval augmented generation tools, you can ask deeper questions and you can even talk to the machine and you can say, hey, look, I've already done this.

00:05:41 Speaker_02
I know it's not that and the machine can say, well, are you sure it's like, well, yeah, I, you know, I tested this out or and even the machine could even say, take a picture of something and because it's got visual.

00:05:51 Speaker_02
you know, recognition, that's nice.

00:05:53 Speaker_02
So I'm looking forward to the day, actually, of getting humans more out of the loop in customer service, because I have this feeling that customer service personnel are mostly trying to get you off the phone or mostly trying to give you generic answers, and they're not really empowered to provide real details.

00:06:08 Speaker_02
And I think this is kind of where we get into these more personalized forms of customer interactions, right? So we talked about, you know, AI chatbots, you know, useful for

00:06:17 Speaker_02
not only customer support, but also helping you find products and, you know, maybe picking the right tool or right thing that's best for you. That's certainly helpful.

00:06:26 Speaker_02
But the bigger thing is, I think, is that AI systems, what makes AI systems better than just generic, you know, IVR, interactive voice response, where you have to press one to do something, the computer version of that, answer this question and go down this multiple choice,

00:06:42 Speaker_02
Same thing, it's not very smart, is that you want an interaction that's already been personalized for you.

00:06:47 Speaker_02
It knows your purchase history, it knows what services you're using, it knows what products you're using, it knows maybe what problems you've had in the past. So it could say, oh, I see that you had this issue two months ago.

00:06:59 Speaker_02
you're reporting an outage, let's say, and instead of asking you, have you rebooted your router? It's the most ridiculous question. You could say, oh, I saw you had a power outage a couple of days ago, or I saw there was a storm in the area.

00:07:10 Speaker_02
It can use other sources of data too. This is what personalization is all about. You don't have to give the same answer to someone who is,

00:07:17 Speaker_02
in a region where a thunderstorm just passed by to the same response to someone who's in some desert where nothing has happened, or some other location where nothing has happened. You could say, oh, I see this has happened.

00:07:29 Speaker_02
This is what I'm looking forward to. I think we're all looking forward to it, because at the end of the day, what we want from customer service, the service part,

00:07:36 Speaker_02
is we want our problems resolved, or we want help buying something, or we want help with some service or product we're using. Or in the case of government systems, we want help with some government application or some government process.

00:07:49 Speaker_02
There's so many things to think about here. It's not just about buying and selling products or some technical support issue. There's lots of different ways. And I think that's what personalization is all about.

00:07:58 Speaker_02
We've had some experiences with various online retail platforms.

00:08:02 Speaker_02
But I think, you know, one of the things we're really hoping for is all of these various systems that can help us, they can look more into our customer history, that can look more into our preferences, the things that we really like, the other products we're using, other services we're using, maybe past issues we've had, both problems as well as things that other people may have had in the region or whatever the other issues are.

00:08:23 Speaker_02
That'll provide a much more personalized and effective overall customer service response.

00:08:29 Speaker_01
Exactly. And I think that another thing, you know, when we talk about personalization is that you have to understand how people want to interact with these systems. I know sometimes it's a generational thing.

00:08:40 Speaker_01
Some people prefer to talk on the phone, but some people don't want to talk on the phone. stresses them out or they don't have the time to do it for a variety of different reasons. And so AI is really allowing for that self-service as well.

00:08:55 Speaker_01
So it's letting customers resolve issues without needing to contact somebody. Maybe, you know, a lot of times people don't like waiting on the phone.

00:09:03 Speaker_01
I know I brought up an example earlier about how I wanted to, but a lot of people in my generation really don't like talking on the phone. I heard this funny meme.

00:09:13 Speaker_01
And it was talking about how back in the early 2000s, people would pay money to have customized ringtones. And now people have their phone silenced and are like, don't call me for any reason whatsoever.

00:09:26 Speaker_01
And it made me laugh because I was like, yeah, times, they are changing. And so now with the help of AI, we really can have more of that self-service. And so AI-driven platforms can provide customers with maybe intuitive interfaces such as

00:09:43 Speaker_01
you know, different interactive guides, really kind of personalize them along that journey and provide the help that they need, because maybe I get stuck on something that Ron doesn't or vice versa.

00:09:53 Speaker_01
And so if you just have this little widget on there showing me different things, it's like, thanks, but I don't need that. Kind of like Ron's example. Well, did you reset your router? Well, no, and nor is that useful.

00:10:03 Speaker_01
So thanks for providing me with these things that just continue to frustrate me more, because if we're talking about customer service here, right, that's not a good experience.

00:10:12 Speaker_01
And so we've seen, you know, different patterns being used, maybe the conversational pattern with natural language processing.

00:10:19 Speaker_01
So it's able to interpret customer inquiries and then direct them to the relevant resources, help guide them through different steps in the process, help them troubleshoot accordingly for whatever it is that it's their unique problem, not just these general troubleshootings.

00:10:35 Speaker_01
And then this also allows for the call center volume to be reduced. And so it frees up human agents to work really on those higher problem issues that really do need you to talk to somebody. Maybe they need to do certain things.

00:10:51 Speaker_01
I know sometimes when you call, they'll like, reset things for you, but they can only do that on the phone or maybe, you know, whatever it is where you really actually need that human involvement and that human conversation.

00:11:05 Speaker_01
So we've really seen this help or this customer service, this self-service, We've also seen it with IT support as well at organizations.

00:11:14 Speaker_01
And so, you know, think about how that's enhancing the customer service there where I'm able to, you know, sometimes people may be a little embarrassed if they need a password reset or if they're having some trouble and they don't want to talk to somebody because they are embarrassed, you know, that they don't know this.

00:11:29 Speaker_01
Well, now with this AI enabled help, they don't need to be embarrassed anymore and they can actually get the help that they need. They seek, we always say don't suffer in silence.

00:11:38 Speaker_01
Well, sometimes people don't like to be called out or known, but now you don't have to suffer in silence. And the AI is the only one that knows what's going on.

00:11:47 Speaker_02
Yeah. I'm still looking forward to more of that in my actual real life. It's nice to be able to ask somebody for some technical help, and you have to wait for them to respond, and maybe they respond. It'd be nice to have automated.

00:11:59 Speaker_02
We know that a lot of tech companies have been working on this for a long time. We even know them by name, the vendors who are working on it, but still, unfortunately, very much in the minority. We haven't really seen it highly common.

00:12:10 Speaker_02
I think that's a good way to sum up some of the other ways that AI is helping with customer support and customer service, and that's, of course, being proactive, where it would be nice if the systems could be aware that you're having a problem

00:12:24 Speaker_02
not wait for you to submit some ticket or some issue or make a call or have a chat or whatever it is. It could realize that you've tried to do, like maybe you're shopping on a site and you've gone in circles five, six, seven times.

00:12:38 Speaker_02
It could say, hmm, this doesn't look like the usual. This is, again, using the patterns and anomalies pattern of AI can detect that you're in some sort of not good place, right? You can also match that up to sentiment analysis.

00:12:50 Speaker_02
If people are typing, things are frustrated, they're upset.

00:12:52 Speaker_02
The system can be like, okay, an automated system, an intelligent system would be better than, say, sticking a human in the loop because you're just going to yell at that person, whether it's online or on the phone or whatever, or in person, if it's a government agency.

00:13:05 Speaker_02
Just whatever it needs to be, being proactive, helping with that. Even on the positive, people don't think about the positive sentiment side. If somebody is really excited and enthusiastic,

00:13:15 Speaker_02
Maybe it's a good time to engage them to do something, you know, like they really love the product.

00:13:19 Speaker_02
Like, Ooh, maybe we should ask for a review or maybe you should ask them to share the product with somebody, or maybe you should ask them, you know, to, you know, suggest something, you know, like maybe you don't always need. people commenting.

00:13:32 Speaker_02
This is the situation with restaurant reviews. You're either going to get five-star reviews from people who love the restaurant or one-star reviews from people who hate the restaurant.

00:13:40 Speaker_02
And people are usually motivated to post when they are feeling the most about something, the most upset or the most happy. But there are people who are like, what you don't get is the majority middle.

00:13:51 Speaker_02
You don't get the people who are like, yeah, that was good. That was cool. That was fine. There's things you can do. These are things you can do. This is all part of customer service. It's not just about handling the complaints.

00:14:00 Speaker_02
It's not just about resolving the problems. That is a lot of it. Trust me. If you don't do those things, you're doing bad.

00:14:07 Speaker_02
But it's also about keeping people happy, keeping people engaged, keeping the business going and growing and flowing, and really helping with all of that aspect of it. And I think that's where we see AI being used today, not in the far future.

00:14:23 Speaker_02
We're not talking about super intelligence or robots, implantable devices and self-driving cars. We're not talking about any of that stuff.

00:14:29 Speaker_02
We're talking about the day-to-day actual real world stuff, which is going to make AI stick and make AI valuable for you today.

00:14:39 Speaker_01
Exactly. We had a recent podcast for our eighth season, which crazy that we're now on season eight, where we talked about, does AI still matter?

00:14:48 Speaker_01
And we talk, we bring this up periodically, especially usually on our anniversary podcasts, because it really is an important question to ask.

00:14:56 Speaker_01
So I'll link to that in the show notes if you haven't listened to it, but we always do like to talk about that. And we talk about the here and now practical applications of AI, because we've been through a few previous AI winners,

00:15:06 Speaker_01
big majority reason for that is over-promising and under-delivering on what AI can do.

00:15:10 Speaker_01
So we want to make sure that you understand what it's good for, what it's not good for, how to apply it, and then how other industries are applying it so that you can learn from that or you can take that and say, okay, how can I apply this to mine?

00:15:24 Speaker_01
And I think customer service is one of those horizontals. It cuts across just about every single industry, no matter what you're doing, if it's it's B2B, if it's B2C, if it's government services, whatever it is, you always need customer service.

00:15:37 Speaker_01
So hopefully you've gotten a lot out of this podcast. We'd love to hear how you're applying AI either at your job or how you've interacted with AI, especially in a customer service setting.

00:15:47 Speaker_01
So definitely reach out to us, comment on our posts that we create on LinkedIn about this. We love engagement from the audience and our listeners. And also if you haven't done so already, subscribe to AI Today.

00:15:57 Speaker_01
We have a lot more podcasts coming up in our AI Use Case series. We also have some wonderful interviews that we have lined up and more. Like this episode and want to hear more?

00:16:05 Speaker_01
With hundreds of episodes and over 3 million downloads, check out more AI Today podcasts at aitoday.live.

00:16:13 Speaker_01
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00:16:26 Speaker_01
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00:16:38 Speaker_01
Check it out at aitoday.live slash list. Music by Matsu Gravas. As always, thanks for listening to AI Today, and we'll catch you at the next podcast.