How can you begin to incorporate AI into your online shop’s customer service approach?
There can be no question about how profoundly artificial intelligence (AI) solutions have reshaped almost every imaginable field of endeavour since the generative AI “explosion” brought by the launch of ChatGPT just a few short years ago.
This is no less the case when it comes to the customer support experience that ecommerce businesses can now provide to their customers. But if you’re a little behind in integrating AI into your own e-tail store’s customer support services, you may be unsure where to start.
Below, then, we will take a closer look at the role that AI is coming to assume in e-tail customer service during the mid-2020s, and how your firm can begin embracing it.
What is the relevance of today’s AI tools to customer service, anyway?
It turns out that the relevance is… quite considerable.
One of the most obvious functions of customer service is the answering of customer queries. Many of these – such as “what has happened to my order?” or “how do I return this item?” – are ones that your human staff are likely to have dealt with many times.
This repetitiveness may have even led to you setting up a “frequently asked questions” section of your website. Many online stores have such a page, addressing routine inquiries that can account for as much as four fifths of the customer queries they receive.
Today’s AI assistants and chatbots, however, are now transforming this occasionally tedious aspect of customer service. They can provide automated and accurate answers to such queries, thereby helping to speed up customer service workflow, streamline costs, and free up resources for the more complicated or specialised queries that a human may have to handle.
5 steps to giving your online store’s customer service an AI boost
So, how can you begin to integrate AI-powered customer support into your online store? Here are the moves we would advise you to make:
- Carry out an audit of your store’s existing customer service workflow
This will enable you to pinpoint those processes that are especially repetitive and predictable, and which could therefore be ripe for AI automation.
- Select the AI tools that best suit your store
Various reputable AI chatbots are available for today’s e-tailers. So, you will need to compare and consider your options in accordance with your business’s needs.
- Give your staff training in how to work with AI tools
You will want the transitions between AI and human-helmed elements of your customer service experience to be as seamless as possible. The right training will help to avoid friction, while enhancing shoppers’ perception of your brand.
- Start small with your implementation, before tweaking and refining
Almost anything in life that is worth doing, is worth doing modestly at first. So, a tentative “pilot” adoption of AI customer service tech is just fine. Be sure to gather feedback from both customers and your own personnel, to allow your initial small-scale implementation to be tweaked, refined, and scaled up.
- Put together and maintain a knowledge base
By giving your AI system access to an up-to-date resource with answers to common questions from shoppers, you can further ensure customers receive accurate and informative responses from the chatbot or assistant.
You could be just a step away from beginning your store’s AI customer service journey
When you put in place AI solutions in ways that achieve the right balance between automation and human involvement, you can ensure customers benefit from the optimal experience, at the same time as fulfilling your own business objectives.
To learn more about how our team at Piranha Designs can work closely alongside you while drawing upon our expertise in website design, graphic design, search engine marketing, and CRM systems in Gibraltar, the UK, and Spain, please contact us.
