Artificial Intelligence (AI) has subtly snuck into our lives, not as evil robots trying to destroy humankind as Hollywood touts, but rather to make mundane tasks and routines easier and quicker. It’s impacting every industry around the world today and helping to shake things up in the form of digital disruption. In terms of customer service, AI is making it easier to anticipate your customer’s needs and respond more effectively to their complaints.
Stop wasting time on things that AI can do for you
“AI is currently quite good at taking on boring tasks on behalf of your agents,” explains Mint Group II Practice Executive, Peter Reid. Leveraging AI to perform administrative work can help employees spend less time on menial tasks and more time on connecting with your customers. AI can also assist in addressing customer service questions that come up repeatedly, freeing customer support up to have more time, energy, and attention for higher-order service.
“AI can offer better insight and engage with customers more quickly and easily than a human can,” says Reid. “It has the ability to take customer service to where it was always supposed to be in the first place – where customers and their needs are known individually.
“You might see this with very small businesses where the customers are known on a personal level, but for large businesses, this isn’t easily possible. However, with AI and other tools, we are now able to rectify this.” Because AI assists in optimising your systems and people to work with customers efficiently, it allows you to focus instead on the future of your business “In order to disrupt the market, a business needs to be at a certain maturity level,” explains Reid, “but with the help of AI, you won’t need to fix the engine since AI will assist it to run efficiently, and you can start considering where the new places you can go are.”
Understand your customers better
“AI is also good at picking up and acting on patterns that humans might miss,” Reid says. “Putting AI on top of Microsoft Dynamics 365 will allow AI to understand and predict your customers’ behaviours.”
Based on data, AI can predict when customers are getting frustrated, allowing agents to address the issue more effectively, or are close to making a certain decision, such as purchasing a specific product.
“AI can offer better insight into your customers and engaging with customers quicker and easier than any human can,” Reid adds. AI is providing techniques that were previously impossible, and this will lead to disruption by faster, much more accurate machine-based predictions.
“If you can have predictor models in D365, such as where people are likely to spend their money next, it will completely change your business model,” says Reid. “The more you understand the customer, the better you can offer new services and products in a market that you might not even be aware of – you could give them something you didn’t even know they wanted.”
Reaping the rewards of AI
“Most people are not really that clear on what AI is, especially in a business sense, so it needs to be approached carefully,” warns Reid.
“While it is fantastic in the fields that it works in, it is quite siloed and only really works in those fields. It is a powerful tool that can assist in transforming your business, but it isn’t magic by itself. It is another computer system, and the magic is in how you use it to transform your customer engagement.”
To make the most of AI in your business, Reid offers the following points to consider:
- Have clear vision objectives – It is hard to pick a cutting-edge technology if you don’t know what you want to do.
- Outline a transformation roadmap – What are the steps you want to take to achieve your goals?
- Understand what AI is– Don’t assume it can do things that it can’t yet. You need an understanding of what it is and how it can assist your vision.
- Have the intention to invest in that future vision – You need the means, the time, and the will to head in the direction you have chosen.
- Stay adaptable – You need to be able to see changes in the market and be able to quickly make necessary adjustments.
- Bringing AI to South Africa
Mint’s Intelligent Insights (II) Practice offers a holistic technological solution offering AI solutions to Mint’s customers. “It is based on Microsoft Cognitive Services, so we don’t need to worry about building anything but can instead focus bridging a customer’s problem with AI services.”
“Having AI see, hear, speak, understand and interpret your user needs through natural methods of communication has the ability to completely transform your business,” concludes Reid.
