Key benefits of AI in customer service for businesses

Customer service today must be fast, effective, and scalable. But investing in teams capable of delivering that can be a burden for small businesses. That’s why so many are turning to artificial intelligence (AI).

The benefits of AI in customer service range from cutting costs to improving someone’s overall experience with your business. Follow along as we break down the core advantages AI has to offer, and how these solutions are changing the face of customer service as we know it.

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The role of AI in customer service

The future of customer service is here, and many businesses have begun implementing AI into their operations to keep up with the latest trends, including

• Increasing customer expectations: According to Salesforce research, 80 percent of customers consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services. That means customer service quality, speed, and personalization have all become more critical than ever for acquiring, retaining, and upselling customers. Through automation and intelligent problem-solving, AI has become the go-to solution for many businesses looking for help matching these expectations.
• The rise of digital-first interactions: The internet is integral to daily life, and customer service interactions are no different. More than 70 percent of the U.S. population shops online, which means many expect there to be a digital option when it comes to customer service. To respond to this, some businesses are implementing AI chatbots to start or entirely handle digital-first interactions.
• The need for scalability: Companies are also looking for new ways to grow efficiently, with scalability becoming a top priority in their business solutions. AI has become a primary resource for meeting these scalability targets, as its versatility and flexibility make it an ideal solution for a business looking to grow on a budget.

What the statistics say

This new frontier has become a key driver for the introduction of AI into customer service. The benefits that AI provides customers and businesses alike are clear, and many companies see it as essential to improving their customer experience. In fact, 60 percent of business owners believe AI chatbots can help improve their customers’ experience — driving a potential 34 percent increase in AI chatbot usage by the end of 2025.

The use of AI tools has also turned into more of an assumption than a surprise among today’s customers. Most buyers (73 percent) expect websites to feature digital assistants like AI chatbots. These solutions offer personalized experiences that can help customers resolve problems without the hassle of drawn-out interactions with a human agent. Some customers even consider AI chatbots a green flag for a brand — more than 96 percent believe businesses that use chatbots take good care of their customers.

However, it’s unlikely that AI agents will become the only customer service offering anytime soon, as around 49 percent of customers still prefer to interact with a human agent. That’s why AI shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for your human agents, but rather a complementary solution to help drive overall efficiency.

Top 10 benefits of AI for customer service

There are as many benefits of AI in customer service for your team as there are for your customers: reducing low-value work, improving performance, and elevating efficiency across the board. These tools make it easier for your team to focus on meaningful work and provide the benefits that your customers (and business) deserve. 

If you’re still on the fence about adding AI to your toolbelt, consider these common advantages to implementing AI in customer service — and how it can take your customer experience to the next level.

1. 24/7 customer support availability

If your business spans multiple time zones or sells online, your customer service can’t get stuck adhering to a specific nine-to-five schedule — customers will inevitably send late-night or early-morning messages that they expect to be answered quickly and accurately. Yet not all businesses can afford to offer round-the-clock agent support. And that’s where AI comes in.

AI customer service solutions don’t need to clock out. They can be available to help your customers at any time of the day or night, rapidly handling basic issues without the need for agent assistance. And even if you have human agents available 24/7, these solutions can reduce their workload and therefore your staffing needs.

2. Reduced response and resolution times

Modern customers don’t want to wait for what they need — and that includes assistance. Through solutions like AI chatbots and self-service tools, customers can get rapid answers to simple inquiries, cutting down on your average response and resolution times. 

Not only can these automated AI solutions handle customer issues themselves, but they can also provide vital information to human agents. Agents can avoid forcing customers to re-explain their issue or rehash past interactions by pulling data from AI tools, providing a more helpful, enjoyable, and streamlined customer experience.

3. Enhanced personalization

Today’s customers are looking for a service experience they can tailor to their specific needs, particularly if they’re repeat customers. While your team can collect and use client data effectively during human interactions, customer service AI is adept at gathering and analysing customer data like 

• Purchase history
• Viewed products
• Past interactions and issues
• Contact form information

Using these data points, AI solutions can create personalized experiences for each customer — offering relevant suggestions, product recommendations, and more to improve customer satisfaction. This can be particularly beneficial for building loyalty and spotting upsell opportunities. AI can identify products relevant to a return customer’s preferences and automatically send offers to drive online purchases.

4. Improved efficiency

Some may see AI as a replacement for human agents, but the truth is it’s more of a partner that can provide your customer support team with the tools they need to succeed at work. That’s because customer service AI removes low-value, routine tasks from your team’s workload so they can prioritize complex issues and improve their overall efficiency.

AI solutions can take over simple, automatable tasks like

• Admin
• Frequently asked questions
• Contact forms
• Feedback collection

AI tools can also provide agents with real-time insight and data into customers during their live interactions. For example, customer service AI can pull up previous conversations or issues during a call with an upset customer to streamline the resolution process and enhance your team’s ability to provide exceptional service. With all the contextual information they need at their fingertips, your team can cut down on unnecessary bottlenecks and improve their service capabilities.

5. Actionable insights into customer behavior

Every interaction is an opportunity to collect valuable information about your customers. What they like, what they don’t like, and what they want more of are all insights that can steer your team’s decision-making and strategy development processes. Agents can glean some of this data, but AI solutions are unprecedented in their ability to extract it.

Through AI, you can gather information, analyze it, and produce actionable insights to guide future decisions. This can include finding new upsell opportunities, identifying problem areas in the customer service process, or even evaluating general feedback. All this can then be used to boost your bottom line and improve your customer experience.

6. Cost reduction

As beneficial as human-based customer service operations are, there are many costs associated with them. From recruitment to training, it can all add up. What’s more, it’s important to consider how your employees are spending their day. You hired them to solve complex issues, so any time they spend on low-value tasks (like answering frequently asked questions, for example) is time that could be better spent.

Customer service AI tools take these simpler, more mundane tasks off your agents’ plates, increasing their value and improving their work life. While AI automates routine tasks, your agents can focus on improving their productivity and providing effective assistance in scenarios that require their expertise.

7. Scalability

One of the core challenges of growing your business is the need to bring on additional staff as you scale operations. More customers mean a higher volume of requests that need to be met with the same quality as before, or else you could risk losing the trust of those that are most loyal to you. But hiring, training, and maintaining an expanding workforce is difficult in customer service.

That’s why AI is so beneficial. AI solutions can easily adapt to handle increasing volumes of customer interactions without compromising the quality of your service. This allows you to grow freely without overburdening your staff, budget, or customers.

8. Consistency in customer interactions

While there may be some consistency in the way your human agents interact with customers, each agent will inevitably have their own way of handling service interactions. However, this variability can create opportunities for one agent’s personal style to rub a customer the wrong way — and with more than half of consumers opting for a competitor after a single bad experience, can you afford to take that risk?

One of the benefits of AI chatbots in customer service is that they can be taught to provide the same experience for every customer. You can ensure your chatbot provides consistent responses to common issues, using your internal data as a guide for AI to follow. This reduces the chances of a poor experience and maintains your brand voice across your channels.

9. Proactive customer service

As your AI customer service solution collects data, it can use machine learning to anticipate and address customer needs before they arise. For example, AI can be used to recognize returning customers and offer suggestions on what they may need based on their buying habits, historical interactions, and more.

This effective use of data can prevent issues from arising and provide each user with their own tailored experience. More personal experiences can lead to a higher level of customer loyalty, repeat buyers, and upsell opportunities for both your AI and human agents alike.

10. Multichannel support integration

Many AI customer service solutions are capable of creating a cohesive connection between the different channels you use to communicate with customers. Think of it as a central hub, sending information received through interactions in one channel to agents interacting with the same customer through another.

For example, if a customer submits a complaint through an AI self-service tool, that tool can inform your team members about this interaction if they call back later. This way, your customer doesn’t have to re-explain their issue and receives a more streamlined, efficient experience — increasing their overall satisfaction with your service.

Elevate your customer service with Jotform AI Agents

For a practical solution that allows your business to tap into all these benefits, consider trying Jotform AI Agents. Jotform’s AI-powered tools provide an enhanced customer experience that can be tailored to fit your exact needs. Custom AI agents can be created in a matter of minutes using Jotform’s drag-and-drop Agent Builder, which lets you design dynamic, conversational experiences without the need for coding.

If you’re looking for a more straightforward way to create AI agents, you can select from over 7,000 available templates in the Jotform AI Agents directory. Jotform has a variety of customer service and support AI agents that are pre-designed to perform specific tasks. This includes the

• Customer Service Feedback AI Agent
• Customer Support Representative AI Agent
• Request an Appointment AI Agent

Whether you create your own or use a template, you can adjust Jotform AI Agents to suit your preferences. These tools can assist your team in offering a better overall customer experience and take simple tasks off your team’s plate — along with providing a variety of the other benefits we discussed earlier.

Embracing AI for superior customer service

The truth is that AI is here to stay, and the benefits that come with it are sure to make the customer service experience of tomorrow unlike anything we’ve seen before. By investing in helpful AI solutions, like Jotform AI Agents, you can get the most out of your team and revolutionize the way you offer customer service. 

Consider how these solutions may fill in the gaps in your service offerings and keep them in mind when shopping for the next addition to your toolbelt.

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