In today’s fast-paced startup environment, efficiency and customer satisfaction are essential. Forward-thinking companies are adopting an AI-first approach, which benefits customers, support teams, and managers. This isn’t about just adding on AI as an afterthought. It’s about creating a complete system where AI tools work together to improve every step of the customer journey.
This is the third of three episodes in a series called Knowledge is Power, and today I’m covering 4 key components of an AI-First Customer Support Platform.
AI-Powered Chatbot
The first component is an AI-Powered Chatbot which is your first line of defense. A chatbot can handle a significant portion of support conversations immediately, and depending on the software you’re using, it might also be able to respond to emails. I focused on the chatbot on the previous episode called “Introducing AI in Customer Support”, so I’ll jump to the next key component.
AI Assistant for Agents
The second key component of an AI-First Customer Support Platform is an AI Assistant for Agents. This is a personal AI assistant for your support agents that provides quick answers to customer and internal questions. AI Assistants draw from various sources like public help centers, conversation histories, PDFs, and the company’s website or blog.
6 benefits with an AI assistant
- It provides customer-facing answers with clear sourcing, so your agents can verify the information.
- Agents can easily edit and adapt answers to match their brand’s tone before sending, ensuring a personal touch.
- It can also provide answers to internal questions, pulling from your company’s internal knowledge base.
- Onboarding new support agents becomes much easier and it reduces the workload for experienced team members.
- It provides reporting for managers to track how the AI assistant is being used by their teams.
- It supports multiple languages, allowing your team to provide support in the same language as the customer.
Centralized Knowledge Hub
The third key component of an AI-First Customer Support Platform is a Centralized Knowledge Hub. This is a very important aspect of this AI ecosystem. It’s a central hub where all your support content lives. This ensures that your knowledge base is always up-to-date, optimized, and easily managed. You can even designate specific content for use with either the AI chatbot or AI assistant, or both.
AI Analytics Tools
The fourth and last key component of an AI-First Customer Support Platform is AI Analytics Tools. This provides a huge increase in efficiency. AI Analytics give support managers a comprehensive view of their team’s performance, both human and AI agents and will help to optimize the questions and answers in your support system.
The goal is to create a full AI cycle, where all parts of the AI system work in sync, improving your overall customer service experience. You can track how the AI assistant is being used by your teams. Reports include how frequently the AI is used, which teammates use it, the questions asked, and the answers provided, empowering managers to improve content and increase the accuracy of the AI’s answers.
