Embracing the Power of Next-Generation AI for Exceptional Customer Experiences

How AI helps businesses respond to customer demand for better services

The customer experience landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by the advent of next-generation artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) along with customer demand for more effective and efficient services. These cutting-edge technologies are already changing the way businesses interact with their customers, providing more opportunities for personalisation, efficiency, and engagement.

At the forefront of this revolution are conversational AI and generative AI models like ChatGPT, which leverage the power of LLMs to produce human-like text or voice responses. These models can understand and respond to customer queries with remarkable accuracy, providing contextually relevant and even empathetic interactions.

The Transformative Potential Across Industries

The applications for generative AI and LLMs span various sectors, each with its own unique challenges and opportunities. A few examples are below:

Housing Associations: Imagine a virtual assistant capable of guiding customers through complex housing procedures, answering queries about maintenance requests, rent payments, and community resources. With an AI Assistant providing customer self-service, housing associations can offer 24/7 support, reduce call waiting times and increase tenant satisfaction.

Insurance Companies: Navigating insurance policies can be daunting. LLMs can simplify this process for customers by providing clear explanations, answering questions, and assisting with claims processes. Customers can receive personalised guidance tailored to their specific needs and circumstances.

Local Government: From inquiries about local services, like recycling or planning, to requests for information on community events, LLMs can serve as virtual representatives for local government departments. They can address public queries promptly, freeing up valuable resources for more complex tasks.

Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs): Limited resources often restrict SMEs' ability to provide comprehensive customer support. With an AI Assistant, SMEs can offer round-the-clock assistance, handling routine inquiries and escalating more complex issues to human agents when necessary.

Keeping AI On-track: The Importance of Guardrails

While the potential of generative AI and LLMs is huge, it's crucial to ensure that these technologies are implemented responsibly. In addition to having a set of guidelines and constraints that help maintain consistency and appropriateness in AI-generated responses it’s also important to consider how an AI Assistant or Chatbot might be managed and how you also monitor their performance.

Examples of guardrails include:

·       Maintaining brand, voice and tone guidelines

·       Applying content moderation and filtering rules

·       Ensuring ethical and compliance policies are adhered to

·       Subject matter expertise and applying knowledge boundaries

By implementing specific guardrails, businesses can optimise AI while maintaining control over the customer experience, ensuring that interactions remain on-brand, respectful, and aligned with their core values.

In terms of monitoring and managing the performance of your AI Assistant, there are many parallels with how you might manage a human agent in terms of their performance.  You’ll want to gain insights into how well your AI Assistant is performing, provide training or knowledge updates where needed – and make use of conversation transcripts to identify trends and to help business decision making.  

Getting started with conversational AI for customer service

Realising the full benefits of conversational AI requires expertise and careful implementation, this is where partnering with experts can be invaluable. Conversational AI experts bring deep knowledge and experience in natural language processing, machine learning, and conversational design.

Here are 5 considerations to help you plan and launch a successful AI Customer Service Assistant:

1.     First, define your business needs, identify the best interface, channels and messaging formats for your AI Assistant.

2.    Consider if you might need to integrate an AI Assistant into your existing customer service workflows and channels, and if so which ones.

3.    Review available language models, and consider which are best suited for your specific domain and use cases.

4.    Plan how you will monitor, manage and refine the AI's performance, ensuring accurate and relevant responses.

5.    Think about how you can use multi-modal experiences that combine text, voice, and visual elements for a truly seamless customer experience.

By collaborating with conversational AI experts like converse360, businesses can accelerate their adoption of next-generation AI technologies, mitigate risks, and deliver exceptional customer experiences that surpass expectations.

Learn more about the trends impacting customer service in our eBook ‘Reshaping Customer Experiences in 2024 and beyond’

Contact us on 0333 6000 360 and get ready to elevate your customer experience.

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