The fear of becoming obsolete should motivate but not be the only reason why you force your customer-facing teams to adapt to AI tools. Most customer-facing teams are adopting AI in different ways - some are using intelligent chatbots while others are automating tasks or simply drawing insights from analytics.
Support can’t function without support agents. No matter how advanced AI becomes, the essence of being human can’t be replaced with anything. But, AI can be leveraged to enhance customer-facing teams and improve how we approach support. This is where AI assistance helps augment team performance through features like ticket summarization, auto-suggestions, and auto-improvements while also keeping in mind customer tone and voice. However, moving towards AI isn't necessarily a frictionless process but it can be made seamless through certain steps and precautions.
A lot of teams are still on the ropes about moving to an AI solution but rather than asking “Should I upgrade to an AI solution?” it’s important to ask “What happens if I don’t upgrade to an AI solution?”.
Even if you’re not convinced about AI, most of your competitors are. And this also affects how users look at your company. If the convenience and leisure of AI-powered proactive support isn’t what you’re offering, users might stick to a product that does. Customer expectations have also become such that they expect you to have great self-serve options and not having that puts you in a difficult position.
Solving repetitive tickets isn’t the most efficient use of your support team’s time. Not only do they have to spend time resolving these tickets but also searching, understanding, and curating personalized answers which leads to additional time spent on things that could’ve otherwise been solved by AI. Eventually, this leads to burnout, larger ticket volume per agent which means longer wait and resolution time, in turn leading to unhappy customers.
The only way to account for the increase in customers and hence tickets, if you’re not using an AI solution, is to scale team size. Which, of course, is not the most cost-effective way to scale support operations. But with a tool that exclusively is built for larger enterprises and customer-facing teams, scaling is not only easy but inexpensive.
Preparing your team for AI integration
Kick off by fostering a tech-savvy atmosphere. Encourage your team to explore AI tools through various learning modes, aiming to build their confidence in leveraging AI for support tasks. It’s crucial they understand and embrace AI's role in their daily functions, starting with getting used to the concept of AI Agent Assist and its benefits in streamlining support activities.
Training and nurturing
Progress to training your team on specific AI tools like Threado AI Agent Assist, which aids in generating responses, refining customer replies, and summarizing tickets efficiently. It's essential to view this as an ongoing learning curve, gradually introducing more sophisticated AI applications and fostering a mindset receptive to technological advancements.
Tailoring AI to your customer journey
Analyze your customer journey to pinpoint where AI can be most impactful, differentiating between situations suited for AI automation and those requiring a human touch. This differentiation helps in effectively deploying AI for tasks like answering FAQs while preserving personalized service for complex issues.
Creating a seamless handoff system
Establish a clear protocol for transitioning from AI to human agents, ensuring a smooth handover when queries surpass AI's capabilities or when a personal touch is necessary. This blend of automation and human intervention should be seamless to maintain service quality.
Integrating AI into multiple channels
Ensure AI integration spans all customer communication channels for a consistent support experience. By deploying AI tools like chatbots across various platforms, you enable your team to manage a broader range of interactions more efficiently, enhancing overall responsiveness.
Personalizing customer interactions with AI
Utilize AI's data analysis capabilities to personalize customer support, tailoring interactions based on individual customer histories, preferences, and behaviors. This personalization enriches the customer experience, making interactions feel more engaging and relevant.
Empowering agents with AI insights
Leverage AI to equip your agents with real-time information and insights, such as relevant knowledge base articles or past ticket resolutions. This support not only speeds up response times but also boosts agents' confidence and efficiency in handling queries.
Embracing continuous learning
Promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning, keeping your team updated on the latest AI trends and tools. Regular training and discussions about new AI developments are vital in maintaining a forward-thinking support strategy.
Evaluating AI performance and customer satisfaction
Regularly assess your AI tools' effectiveness by analyzing key metrics and gathering customer feedback. This ongoing evaluation helps ensure that your AI solutions align with customer needs and support goals, allowing for timely adjustments to enhance service quality.
As we discussed, the process of aligning your team with AI requires a few steps but doesn’t have to be difficult. Threado AI has been designed in a way that makes it easy for you to be able to collaborate with your team and make them comfortable with the tool easily. It’s easy and straightforward to use which gives it an edge when it comes to inculcating a new tool in your stack.
Start by signing up or logging into your Threado AI workspace. Once you’re on the dashboard, you can Add Teammates to allow them access to the workspace as well.
Now, your teammates have access to the dashboard where they can train, ask questions, install Threado AI, and look at analytics to understand how to improve your knowledge base.
You or your team can install Threado AI after it’s been trained. Here’s where you can train Threado AI if you haven’t already - you can train using links, docs, CSVs, and integrate with tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk, Confluence, and Notion.
You can install Threado AI on Slack where it answers automatically when a query is posted. If your team works primarily from Slack, you can install it on a dedicated channel and whenever someone needs an answer quickly, they can post it in the channel and Threado AI responds with the answer in seconds. What’s more, it also gives you reference links for you to read more or verify the answer. You can also continue the conversation by tagging the Threado AI app in the same thread.
You can invite your team to install the Threado AI Chrome extension from the app store. Upon invitation, your teammates will receive an email with the link to the Chrome extension. After you’ve installed the app, the launcher will pop up on the right side of your screen. This extension sits on top of all ticketing tools like Zendesk or Freshdesk. Your team can use it to summarize tickets, get auto-suggested personalized responses, expand or shorten an answer, and make edits for you. The purpose is to help your support agents understand and resolve queries faster without having to search and write answers themselves. Lower resolution time, lower wait time, quicker handling time, and of course, less pressure on your agents to resolve daily tickets.
Your support side-kick
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