How AI Virtual Assistants Automate Customer Service while Lowering Costs

Unknowingly many people find their answers from bots. They have become substantial support to the companies in providing 24/7 services, which can sometimes eradicate stressful situations.

There have been many instances when a customer has arrived at your doorstep at a point where your chatbot was capable enough to provide the best solution and made the customer happy.

Unlike living customer service providers, AI bots do not require leaves, breaks, or even lunchtime. Neither do they fall sick nor, do they need holidays to restore energy. AI bots can be trusted and can work under any circumstances. They can even be put to business strategy for the customer service center.

You can even program a bot to sell the company's services and products catalog and make recommendations based on the customer's previous orders and preferences. 

Faster Responses with 24/7 Service Availability

One of the global leaders of 3D computer-aided designs, Autodesk designed a Chatbot, with the help of the Watson Conversation platform, to provide excellent customer service throughout the year and 24 hours a day. The bot named AVA is always ready at your service to help you with Tier 1 related queries such as change in address, login issues, payment issues, or any other frequently asked questions. 

Apart from appeasing with efficient productivity and gains, AVA has helped them in other ways -

• 99% improvement in response time. 
• Reduced resolution time from 38 hours to 5.4 minutes.
• The immediate drop in cost per query from $15-$200 to $1.
• Maximized speed and efficiency by answering and resolving 30,000+ customer support queries per month.
• Ability to resolve and recognize 40 different use cases.

Plummet Cost of Interaction 

When analyzed, the cost of an average customer service phone interaction costs around $35-$50. In lieu of calls, chats can be much more cost-effective yet serving the same purpose, which can cost $8-$10 at an average. 

Research by the Juniper Research Center found interaction cost to dip by 70 cents per interaction by 2022with chatbot automation. Other ways you can say that 40-80% customer service inquiries will be diverted to the chatbots. 

Chat is becoming a convenient method to interact for customers who prefer to turn more towards it. According to a Deloitte study, 56% of companies are planning to invest in contact center AI in multimedia and technology industries in upcoming years. 

When interviewed more, around 33% out of 450 industries had planned on investing in AI chatbots for substantial customer service.

Customer experience is the only trait for any business to scale. Poor customer experience can prevent 3 out of 5 customers to abandon making future purchases. Survey says a damaged reputation can bring an annual loss of $240 million in annual sales. 

Technology Support for Cost-effective Experiences

Businesses must realize that upgraded technology can make their business seamless and customer experience better. Chatbot Magazine studied that implementing virtual agents and chatbots can reduce customer service costs by up to 30%.

Every year 265 billion customer support requests are made, which costs around $1.3 trillion to serve. The conversational solutions can significantly reduce cost comparison to the inefficient IVR.

When you have efficient bots to handle the customer experience, you can free up your human agents to address complex inquiries for more efficient service. Human agents can be in addition to the cost of your budget. When you add any resources, especially the frontline employee, it adds $10-$15K to the company.

Replacing employees with bot kick off the extra spendings on hiring employees for the mundane and repetitive calls. Not just hiring staff, contracting services can also cost heavily to any business. Instigating virtual assistants can subsequently reduce costs. 

Autodesk is one of the leading companies that promise to resolve routine calls quickly. With the help of virtual assistants, the first line of queries can be efficiently and quickly resolved, compared to a human agent. Only the most complex once are escalated to human agents. 

AI�s Natural Processing Language Support to Chatbots

The disruptive technology AI plays a vital role in processing the queries raised by the customer. Unlike the antiqued way of addressing solutions to the customer through search terms like drop-down menus, radio buttons, and forms have been upgraded thanks to AI's natural learning ability. Natural Language Processing allows the customer to connect with the company in a more humanly way, no matter the way of reaching.

Recent research from the Juniper Research found that chatbots and NPL will save about $8 billion of customer supporting cost per year by 2022. Chatbots can cut off the average call center handling times on customer service and save as much as $1 million annually.

Autodesk and Staples are the real examples of the rapid adoption of natural processing language with Chatbots to have more interactions with the customers. Their ability to learn from every human representative makes them more efficient and enables both human agents as well as bots together to deliver better services. Improved services foster increased customer trust and confidence in a chatbot, along with human agents. 

Where human to human interaction is necessary, AI from its gathered data can course to the most efficient agent to address customer's concerns in no time. 

In the Nutshell -

A chatbot can leverage the power of AI to address the concerns of the customer no matter what way it has chosen - phone, email, SMS, social media, or website. It can resolve the frontline or Tier issues no time without the need for human intervention. For scaled concerns, it can divert to the right agent, all with the help of data gathered through NPL. 

Efficient chatbots can reduce the cost of hiring human representatives, upselling product catalog, make recommendations based on previous purchases, and 24/7 availability without coffee or other breaks. If you are looking to build a smart assistant for your business, you can refer to an Automation Company.