Augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) have started changing the customer service game over the past few years. Both AR and AI as customer service support offer both companies and customers plenty of benefits. The biggest advantage that these technologies have over human customer service agents is the ability to make decisions more efficiently and course correct mistakes more accurately. Both of these technologies are known for making decisions based on logic — and not emotions.
AR is a game changer when it comes to customer support. The ability to learn about a product or store layout by simply holding up a smart device not only betters the customer experience, but it can also save companies both time and money.
Stores don’t need to manually update their signage anymore with AR. Instead of paper signage in stores, customers can simply use a handheld device to see pricing, sale pricing and store layouts. They’ll be able to look for similar products themselves and find product information more easily.
With AR, stores no longer need to hire customer service specialists. Customer can find products themselves by searching on their smartphones or tablets; to find the products, they simply need to follow the virtual signs on their devices. Instead of finding a customer service associate for product information, they simply need to ask the app their questions.
Customers can easily find answers to their questions once they have purchased a product. They can use their devices to send diagnostic information to service centers. They can also use AR to find product information, such as model numbers and serial numbers. They might even be able to fix their own products themselves by simply holding up their smartphone to the product. If the customer should need to send the product back for repairs, the repair process will be much smoother.
AI is extremely different from AR. AI essentially is a machine that can make decisions much faster and much more objectively than a human can. While AR allows customers to solve problems themselves, AI can solve problems for customers — effectively replacing human customer service agents.
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to customer service is training agents on making decisions. Companies spend billions of dollars and hours of time ensuring customer service agents make the right choices when it comes to customer satisfaction. Yet AI can change all of that. AI can make significantly better decisions at the drop of a hat than humans ever could. AI can also learn from its past interactions — getting smarter with each customer.
Analyzing customer data is extremely time consuming and tedious. Yet AI can analyze data in a short amount of time. AI can look at customer interactions, determine if the overall result was positive or negative and make better decisions going forward. It can also determine if its getting better at handling customer service calls — or if it needs to reevaluate some or all of its process.
Possibly one of the best features of AI as customer service is that there’s no reason to set office hours. AI can conceivably take calls and chats at any time of the day or night. Customer service offices in Asia can be open during normal business hours in the US.