AI for the Customer Support Rep: the Role of AI in Customer Support

Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, artificial intelligence or AI has been met with both thrilling anticipation and fearful rebuff.

Some organizations were quick to embrace it, while others are still cautious about integrating AI in what is perceived as sensitive processes.

But what’s undeniable is that transferring ‘human’ tasks (and at times decisions) to automated systems is anything but new. Lead scoring, chatbots, ad optimization, or customer segmentation are just a few examples of business activities that have long been automated.

With the recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence, and particularly generative AI (GenAI), areas like customer support and service are experiencing more substantial transformations, fuelling the debate on the extent to which AI can or even should replace human tasks.

So what is the role of AI in customer support and how will responsibilities be divided between employees and AI in the workplace of tomorrow? We dive in.

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A day in the life of a customer support rep augmented by AI

So let’s have a look at a practical vision of a customer support rep (we’ll call her Emma) - what it might look like with AI assistance.

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Emma arrives at her desk in the morning and logs in to the support ticketing system. Her AI assistant pops up with an overview of her most recent open tickets assigned to her, organized by priority.

As she scans through the list, she notices a customer whose case she previously handled, around two months before. The customer is again experiencing issues with their product - but Emma isn’t sure if this is caused by the same reason as before.

She quickly opens the AI chatbot that sits in the corner of her support inbox. She asks to search all previous conversations with this customer that took place over the past 3 months and were marked ‘resolved’.

She immediately realizes this is a new issue, likely caused by a recent product update that she hasn’t been briefed on yet.

She has the chatbot search and summarize information from the company’s knowledge hub related to this update.

To see if other customers are experiencing this problem, she then asks the AI assistant to find all other support tickets, from all her teammates, related to this product update.

With the results in front of her, Emma asks the AI to quickly check the project management tool for any open issues related to the update. This confirms that fixes are in progress and the customer will not be able to use the product for at least another two weeks.

So Emma asks the AI assistant to draft a polite but brief response to the customer, in their own language, informing them of the timeline for a fix and offering a gift or compensation.

From the options provided, Emma decides to offer the customer a free month’s subscription. 

She checks the updated AI response one more time and sends the reply to the customer.

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What would Emma have had to do without AI assistance?

• Search the ticketing system by keyword and sort conversations by date, spending more of her time finding information than deciding how to act;
• Go to the chat app to reach out to her busy teammates, and wait for them to respond;
• Search the knowledge base by keyword, potentially missing out on important information;
• Log in to the project management dashboard and search for open issues;
• Ask her manager to approve an appropriate compensation for the customer;
• Spend time drafting a reply to the customer and risk having it inaccurately translated. 

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Customer support - where does AI fit in?

Artificial intelligence is particularly helpful in reducing the volume of repetitive tasks that are so common in customer support. AI can free up human support agents, allowing them to deal with the more complex inquiries.

As an example, AI virtual assistants can walk customers through basic troubleshooting, handle document verification, or carry out satisfaction surveys.

AI-powered search is another way to help customers by providing contextually relevant answers rather than relying on the traditional keyword search.

In other applications, AI can help provide support in nearly any language, eliminating the need to maintain translations or hire a multi-lingual support team.

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How AI enhances the work of human customer support

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What are the practical values that AI staff-augmentation can achieve for the business (and customers)? 

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1. Increased availability

60% of customers report long wait times cause the most frustration in a customer service experience. 

AI chatbots and assistants can take over during weekends and at night time to expand support availability to 24/7. This avoids long shifts for the support department, speeds up issue resolution time, and increases overall customer satisfaction.

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2. Service more customers

Support teams can easily become overwhelmed with ticket volume, especially during peak holiday seasons or as a result of specific marketing and sales activities.

AI assistants can handle larger volumes of inquiries at the same time compared to human agents, leaving them time to focus on complex issues. 

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3. Solve requests faster

Not all customer inquiries require live conversations and customers usually prefer to have an issue resolved faster rather than later.

AI agents can guide customers through the knowledge base, propose ‘quick fix’ solutions, or route an issue to the appropriate agent in order to speed up resolution time.

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4 . Less resources spent on staff-training and recruitment

With smaller support teams, businesses can save resources related to staff training and recruitment.

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Every one of these values translates to financial benefits of course.

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Limitations of AI in customer support

Certainly, there are also drawbacks to using artificial intelligence in customer support and service - more than a few, actually.

Maybe one of the most debated aspects is a certain level of pushback from customers, many of whom still prefer to interact with a human over an artificial intelligence system.

Indeed, human customers support reps deliver solutions with empathy and understanding which pre-programmed systems cannot provide. 

Moreover, 59% of support professionals themselves consider the empathy and personalization in human support play a major role especially when dealing with complex cases, and advocate for a mixed human-AI approach.

Beyond the human touch, AI agents may not always understand the full context of complex inquiries and risk offering inaccurate solutions (such as accidental flight discounts in a recent Air Canada case).

Last but not least, AI systems are only as good as the data that is used to train them. Incomplete, inaccurate, or biased data can end up causing more bad than good, and keeping data clean and centralized continues to be a challenge for many businesses.

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What the future holds for AI in customer support

Despite the multiple pros and cons of using artificial intelligence in customer support, it is safe to say that AI cannot (and should not) fully replace human agents. The human touch and emotional rapport remain a critical component of high-quality customer support. 

So what’s next for AI in customer service? We believe AI should be leveraged to supercharge support teams - by extracting insight from multiple data sources in real-time, offering customized solutions based on previous customer interactions, and so on.

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Summing up 

The opportunities AI opens for customer support are endless.

Companies that decide to leverage AI in the support room can finally leave routine, tedious work to technology and have human agents focus on what they do best: make decisions and deliver a compassionate customer experience.