How to Take Full Advantage of AI Technology for Better Customer Support?

One extraordinary achievement of Salesforce is its improvement of customer support through the integration of AI, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP). This combination, with conversational AI and sentiment analysis, redefines the customer service experience.

The benefits of artificial intelligence are clear. For instance, it provides various tools that simplify the real-time resolution of cases and customer inquiries, such as chatbots. It also facilitates systems that optimize customer service teams, contact centers, and knowledge bases. In other words, the integration of AI in customer service enhances interaction, operational efficiency, and the overall user experience.

Customer service: an evolving concept

While a few years ago customer support was exclusively associated with post-sales support, it now goes beyond solving specific problems. Organizations are now focusing on a customer-centric approach that emphasizes redefining customer interactions before, during, and after purchases. This has made customer support a strategic function for organizations.

In fact, customer support is now referred to as the new marketing because customers are looking for more than just quality products, they also seek positive experiences and personalized treatment. Therefore, customer support must be proactive, immediate, and effective to ensure building strong relationships, retention, and loyalty.

Not only does providing excellent service from all areas promote customer satisfaction it also meets current needs, which leads to positive feedback, recommendations, and loyalty. This significantly contributes to marketing and the construction of a positive brand image. Thus, support agents take on the role of customer advocates and brand ambassadors in an increasingly competitive market.

Salesforce’s Customer Support Pillars

Salesforce recommends 7 pillars to ensure excellence in customer support. These are:

AI in Salesforce

Salesforce was the pioneering CRM in incorporating AI into its processes. This incorporation constituted a qualitatively superior leap for the CRM’s functioning and, by extension, for all companies that benefit from its features. As a cloud-based customer relationship management platform, it operates as software as a service (SaaS) that expands its capabilities with the integration of AI.

The use of AI in business processes enables agents in any area to predict and plan future actions based on real-time data analysis. This makes the decision-making process more agile and efficient. With the strength of AI, Salesforce transforms its regular customer support into an intelligent experience. Additionally, this extends to all company business processes, allowing for a qualitatively superior level of service.

AI-Driven Capabilities for Customer Support

Since its launch in 2015, Einstein has been the flagship AI technology of Salesforce. It currently leads the technological revolution and is the trusted AI of the CRM. With a conversational user interface, Einstein seamlessly integrates into all applications and workflows. Thanks to its set of customizable and secure tools, it adapts to the specific needs of each user.

The past Dreamforce 2023 marked a turning point in this regard. Under the approach Data + AI + CRM + Trust, Marc Benioff assured that the new evolution of Salesforce would turn anyone into an Einstein. Although he spoke metaphorically, the reality is not far off if the full potential of the CRM is leveraged.

Thanks to this mega-event, we learned about the brand-new Einstein Platform 1, which merges Data Cloud technologies and AI innovations, transforming the user experience. It provides reliable AI technology for businesses, allowing the creation of low-code applications, and offering completely renewed CRM experiences.

Conversational AI assistant Einstein Copilot is integrated into all Salesforce applications, improving productivity by providing data-safe answers in natural language to user queries. It also takes proactive measures, such as offering recommended action plans or checking order status thus enriching the user experience. Lastly, the Einstein Copilot Studio is where you can experience all the magic. This powerful tool amplifies Einstein’s capabilities by creating efficient and reusable workflows.

The Einstein Platform 1 is the expression of the highest AI technology achieved at the moment in service of the organization. But how can AI optimize customer support? AI has a set of capabilities and tools that can be used by all areas of the company, including those directly related to the customer.

Benefits of AI Technology for Customer Support

Salesforce’s prioritization of customer support significantly improves with the integration of AI into the CRM. Einstein provides various tools, solutions, and capabilities that enhance the effectiveness of customer support, demonstrating its positive impact on companies.

Teams interacting with customers experience increased efficiency in managing task volumes, showing the benefits that AI brings. To be more specific, AI optimizes customer support before, during, and after the purchase in the following ways:

• Reduces response time: Process automation with chatbots or AI assistants significantly reduces response times, ensuring quick attention and improving customer satisfaction.
• Enhances accuracy: Provides agents with relevant real-time information based on a comprehensive customer view. This improves response efficiency and reliability, reducing potential errors.
• Offers personalization: AI, thoroughly understands each customer, facilitates personalized actions according to their preferences, and significantly contributes to customer satisfaction, retention, and subsequent loyalty.
• Ensures 24/7 support: It is available at all times, providing constant responses and attention, ensuring that customers feel attended to without time restrictions.
• Reduces costs: Optimizes time and allows savings in labor costs, reducing the need to hire additional staff for customer support.
• Provides valuable insights: AI analyzes large volumes of data to offer precise insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends, allowing anticipation of future needs and requests.
• Optimizes agent time: Automation of simple responses allows agents from all areas to focus on more complex situations, ensuring continuous support for all customers and addressing special cases promptly, whether it’s a potential customer in the case of sales or a case requiring human support.
• Enhances agent efficiency and productivity: The integration of AI into customer support processes boosts the efficiency and productivity of agents, improving service quality. It also reduces fatigue and work stress for agents.
• Ensures customer satisfaction and retention: All contributions of AI directly impact customer satisfaction, promoting long-term retention and ultimately, loyalty.

AI is undoubtedly a competitive advantage for customer support. It not only provides benefits to customers, as they receive the treatment they expect and deserve, but also to the agents responsible for interacting with them. If you want to enhance customer support in your organization through the capabilities of AI technology, we recommend reading our extended article on the blog.