10 AI Customer Service Examples and Strategies for Your Business

Artificial intelligence (AI) has found its way into virtually every landscape—including the customer service landscape. With AI, your business can provide faster, more efficient, and personalized support. Plus, with AI chatbots, you can provide your customers with 24/7 support. Whether customers have quick questions about common issues or need help finding information, chatbots provide that rapid, much-needed service.

Plus, with machine learning algorithms constantly analyzing customer interactions, your business can anticipate needs, personalize experiences, and boost overall satisfaction. With AI tools able to handle large volumes of customer queries, your agents are free to focus on more important tasks.

This ultimately results in more efficiency, lower costs, and a better customer experience, all of which put your business in a great position to meet shifting customer expectations.

Here are some of the greatest benefits of using AI in customer service as well as examples of how businesses have put the technology to use in their processes.

10 Benefits of Using AI in Customer Service

One of the greatest benefits of using AI in customer service is its ability to be used in multiple locations depending on your business’s or customers’ support needs. Whether you’re using AI for customer service or to automate processes, the tool can be placed in virtually any business process.

Some additional benefits of using AI-based customer support include:

Controls Data and Chat Histories

Because AI systems can manage and store massive amounts of data—including chat histories and customer interactions—you can more easily track conversations, understand customer issues more deeply, and provide more consistent service.

Segments Customers

AI can easily analyze customer data to segment individuals based on their behavior, preferences, and interactions. AI’s powerful analysis processes enable you to tailor your marketing and support efforts to these various groups more effectively.

Presents Personalized Experience and Support

Through machine learning and data analysis, AI can help you deliver more personalized experiences and support. With a deeper understanding of your customer’s preferences, purchase history, and behavior patterns, you help customers feel more valued and understood, which boosts their overall satisfaction and loyalty.

Helps You Catch Up-to-Date Information

AI customer support tools ensure your service teams always have the most up-to-date information by continuously updating databases with your latest product details, company policies, and market trends. These support tools ensure your customers receive accurate and timely responses.

Provides 24/7 Availability

AI customer service solutions are available 24/7, so customers get support anytime, anywhere. With 24/7 availability, customer convenience and satisfaction are enhanced as issues are addressed almost immediately. It also helps your business cater to a global audience without adding additional staff.

Enhances Response Times

Chatbots and virtual assistants powered by AI provide almost instantaneous responses to customer inquiries, which keeps wait times low. This immediate engagement ensures your customers feel attended to and valued, which improves their overall experience. Additionally, faster response times also mean faster issue resolutions, resulting in greater customer satisfaction and better customer retention.

Reduces Operational Costs

Using AI in customer service helps you lower your operational costs. For example, because AI systems can handle a large number of routine customer queries without human intervention, it reduces the need for extensive customer service staff.

Improves Consistency in Service

AI ensures your customers receive consistent, accurate feedback every time they interact with your business. Unlike humans who can get tired and make mistakes, AI tools don’t take breaks or change their performance levels. They’re always consistent, which helps you build a reliable brand image and trust with your customers.

Analyzes Customer Feedback

No matter where your customer feedback or data is coming from, AI tools can easily analyze it. Surveys, social media, direct interactions—all that data is captured by AI, analyzed, and reported on. You can then identify insights around customer sentiment or preferences, as well as identify areas for improvement. This insight also helps you make better, more informed decisions on how best to serve your customers or enhance your product or service offerings.

Enhances Scalability

As your business grows, AI tools grow with you. They can easily handle increasing amounts of customer support calls without compromising on quality or speed. This scalability ensures that your customer service process stays robust and effective even in periods of high demand, including during product launches or seasonal sales.

Podium’s AI Customer Service Examples

Now that you understand the benefits of using AI in your customer service strategy, here are some AI customer service examples to help you see how AI could work for you. Podium’s AI Employee is a tool that helps you connect with your customers—here’s how businesses across various industries have put it to good use.

Automotive

Car dealerships have used Podium’s AI Employee to turn more potential leads from social media and website chat into potential sales. Podium centralizes all customer inquiries around available vehicles into a single inbox and sends automated responses to each one. This process ensures sales reps don’t miss out on a single lead.

Med Spa/Healthcare

Podium’s all-in-one lead management platform enables healthcare professionals to improve the patient experience by automating Med Spa front desk tasks (including answering questions around practice services or encouraging patients to make an appointment).

Jewelry

For jewelers, Podium’s AI Employee gets products in front of customers faster and converts them more quickly with streamlined communication, bulk messaging, and more. Additionally, Podium helps turn questions around inventory into meaningful conversations that can result in more sales.

For example, shoppers can easily get in touch with jewelers by sending their names, contact information, and questions directly to the Podium inbox and receive an automated response in return. Human agents can then continue the conversation, increasing the chance of a sale.

Furniture

Those in the furniture industry can better compete in the marketplace by leveraging Podium’s AI Employee. The AI Employee makes it easy to promote warehouse sales or deals with automated messaging. Additionally, Podium stores all customer messages from across channels in a single inbox, making it easy for reps to answer customer questions

Want to see more examples of how to use AI in customer service with Podium? Get more information here.

Other AI Customer Service Examples

Podium’s AI Employee and its uses give a great overview of how the technology is used in customer service. Now, zoom out a bit to see the bigger picture and look at ten additional ways AI-based customer support can be used:

Improve Agent Efficiency and Productivity

Customer service AI tools can assist human agents by handling common customer questions and repetitive tasks. The AI frees up agents to focus on more complex tasks and improves efficiency and productivity. Agents also get real-time suggestions and information about customer problems, helping them solve problems faster and more effectively.

Make Proactive Recommendations to Customers

With an in-depth understanding of customer behavior and purchase history, AI tools can offer customers proactive recommendations. For example, if a customer frequently buys certain products, AI tools can suggest complementary items or notify them of discounts or sales. This process enhances the customer experience and can help drive sales.

Provide Customers with 24/7 Service

As mentioned above, AI-based customer support tools are available around the clock, ensuring customers receive support at any time, day or night. This constant availability improves customer satisfaction by providing quick assistance and resolving issues as fast as possible.

Deliver Personalized Support

AI systems can provide in-depth insights into individual customer data to deliver personalized support. With data around customer preferences, purchase history, and behavior, AI tools can tailor responses down to the individual customer, making interactions more relevant and satisfying.

Gather Consumer Insights

With access to huge volumes of data, customer service AI tools can help agents uncover valuable insights. These insights help your business make data-driven decisions to improve your products, services, and overall customer experience.

Create Powerful Intelligent Workflows

AI tools help you create powerful, intelligent workflows that automate manual processes and ensure tasks are handled efficiently. These workflows also ensure information flows seamlessly between different parts of the organization which results in a more cohesive and effective customer experience.

Offer Multilingual Support

AI-powered translation tools and multilingual chatbots can provide support to customers who speak different languages. This multilingual support allows you to cater to a global audience and break down language barriers.

Enhance Self-Service Options

To reduce the load on human agents, AI customer service tools provide self-service options such as interactive FAQs and virtual assistants that help customers solve problems on their own. This tool allows customers to find quick solutions to questions without needing direct assistance.

Automate Customer Interactions

From initial inquiries to follow-up communications, customer support AI tools can automate several customer interactions. Additionally, these tools can handle a huge volume of interactions all at once, ensuring customers get fast, consistent responses.

Monitor and Analyze Customer Sentiment

AI tools can analyze customer feedback from across your business channels, including social media, reviews, and direct interactions. With this analysis, you can better understand customer feelings around your brand and address any of your concerns more quickly.

Podium’s AI Employee: The Smart Choice for Your Customer Service Strategy

Using AI for customer support enables your business to do so much more with customer service. Automated messaging ensures all customer inquiries are answered quickly and consistently. Interactive elements such as FAQs and virtual assistants empower customers to solve problems on their own, which frees up agents’ time. On top of that, 24/7 availability ensures customers are never without support.

With Podium’s AI Employee, creating a more efficient and successful customer service strategy is easy. Our AI-powered platform sells, schedules, and communicates with customers anytime, anywhere while maintaining your brand’s tone and voice. From sending automated messages to potential customers on the original channel they reached out on to keeping workflows smooth both during and after business hours, Podium ensures your customer service experience is fast and consistent.

Want to learn more about Podium’s AI Employee? Watch a video demo now.