‘AI Agent’, the word has been gaining momentum with the widespread use of AI in customer experience. The word reached 12,100 Google searches in June alone. It’s quickly becoming the industry’s new jargon.
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The Techbook definition of an AI Agent is – software that studies its environment to automate processes, make decisions, and take actions to achieve goals. These AI agents perceive the environment with sensors, process it with algorithms, and then take actions – like interacting with customers. When we say sensors, we don’t mean vision or touch, but rather the agent’s ability to reason and reach conclusions.
If you’re wondering how an AI agent differs from a chatbot, remember that one is autonomous software and the other is not. Simply put, AI agents can work without much human intervention. This lets them make and act on decisions independently. Chatbots and AI agents have different capabilities, while chatbots are built to assist humans, AI agents are built to complete tasks independently.
The decision-making and autonomous capabilities make AI agents a great fit for customer service. They provide quick support without involving a human. However, when a human agent is needed, an AI agent can give a handoff and suggest actions that reduce resolution times. And since AI agents can resolve all kinds of customer requests on any channel, it helps teams manage a high volume of tickets.
It’s also interesting to note how AI agents learn and develop themselves. They take feedback from a human agent or another AI model and evolve its processes. What happens to AI agents who receive no feedback? They analyse and track their own work, like customer responses or a ticket journey. After which they identify things that went wrong or could have been better – and learn from such mistakes.
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These qualities have made AI agents an integral part of businesses and a common jargon in customer service. Here’s why:
- Revenue Generation: With AI agents, your customer care centre becomes a revenue machine. When AI has access to customer data and buying preferences, it upsells and cross-sells seamlessly during a support interaction. It recommends products that align with the customer’s needs. The more data an AI agent has access to, the better it tailors its suggestions. Thus turning your overheads into revenue.
- Customer Satisfaction: Faster response times, personalised responses and complete resolution boost your CSAT score. It understands your customers’ needs and proactively takes steps to enhance their experience.
- Automation: Human agents don’t have to spend time analysing the history and conversations of each customer. AI agents summarise, process, and suggest the next steps for the live agent. An AI agent also captures the sentiment of the customer and suggests necessary actions, thanks to the decision-making capabilities we spoke about.
- Staffing Strategies: Apart from customer service, AI agents also track the number of live agents and tools a business needs. For example, if it observes a dip in customer queries post-festive season, it tracks the trends and indicates the staffing requirements.
- Guidance For Live Agents: An AI agent provides insights into a customer’s background, and prepares the live agents for the interaction. It generates and suggests responses, reducing time and effort for the live agents. Additionally, the insights provided by the AI agent go a long way in retaining customers.
The AI agents at Germin8 generate responses based on conversation history and suggest rephrasing options. Our 24/7 availability is due to the AI agents deployed in the Trooya tool. We are also in the process of using AI agents for automation, which will increase productivity and reduce response times.
With AI agents at your disposal, you can entrust the agent with your customers’ happiness without the need for human intervention! Thus leaving their human counterparts to focus on more complex customer issues!
