Generative AI

Generative AI in Customer Service Front Office

Generative AI is revolutionizing customer service by automating routine tasks, such as answering FAQs and providing personalized product recommendations. It enhances customer experience by offering instant responses, reducing wait times, and generating tailored content. Additionally, generative AI enables agents to focus on complex issues, improving overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Podcast Audio Transcript

Mimi: Hello listeners, this is Mimi; thank you for tuning in to yet another exciting and informative podcast from us at Infosys BPM. Today, we are discussing about Generative AI in Customer Service Front Office. And to talk about this, we have here with us, Mahesh CN, Principal Consultant – Digital Transformation at Infosys BPM. Welcome Mahesh. How are you?

Mahesh: I’m doing great Mimi. Thank you for inviting me to this podcast.

Mimi: It’s our pleasure, Mahesh.

Mahesh, it’s interesting that the customer expectations continue to rise, don’t they? And a way to continue to satisfy them is to adopt technological interventions such as Generative AI. What’s your take on this?

Mahesh: That’s totally true, Mimi. Customer expectations continue to rise as businesses face increasing costs. The quest for efficiency, experience and effectiveness keeps growing.

It’s an absolute fact that Generative AI is giving promise to help businesses get through these challenges. However, the stakes are high for getting it right. As we stand at the doorstep of a completely transformed way of doing business, it's a crucial time to check in a couple of things: What do customers want right now? And How can organizations responsibly implement Gen AI to build trust?

Customers demand fast, consistent, and personalized interactions every time they get in touch with a customer service contact center. Customers are loyal to companies that offer exceptional products and services. With customer loyalty at stake, this is a pivotal moment for businesses to thoughtfully use generative AI to supercharge the seamless experiences their customers expect.

I believe that Generative AI is the future, and businesses that use it strategically and ethically will come out on top. According to Gartner, Gen AI user interface will continue to evolve and change the way customer queries are handled. We at Infosys are in the journey to provide innovative digital solutions that can give an edge to our clients and partners to cater to their customers needs by leveraging digital solutions like Gen AI.

Mimi: I agree to that. Technologies like Gen AI are definitely the turning point for customer experience.

Talking about the contact center experience, do you believe that the transformation should be beyond the simple contact center of today?

Mahesh: Yes Mimi. The customer contact center or the customer service front office as we call it should undergo a total overhaul. Let me mention some of our guiding principles in this change.

• First of all, find ways for contact elimination. What we mean by this is upstream upgradation of product and services based on the voice of the customer, thus enabling the customers with information and data on their fingertips, periodic and proactive engagement via automated outbound calls, messaging, alerts, notifications, so that they can get things done on their own.
• Secondly, we need to find ways for deflection and automation. We can do this by implementing hyper automative virtual agents powered by Gen AI. And actively promoting digital channels over IVR, chatbots, mobile apps, etc., to handle simple and medium queries. Omni-channel interaction enables the customer to choose his preferred channel and allows him to be self-reliant and empowered.
• Thirdly, we need ways to digitally enable customer service agents. We can enable customer care agents with Gen AI for them to be proactive and predictive in finding the best actions to support their customers. Also in finding the right knowledge base articles, summaries, and guided workflows as per need. Also agents can have automated call summaries, notes, and have a unified desktop with all relevant customer information.
  
  Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of customer service and support organizations will be applying generative AI in some form to improve agent productivity and customer experience (CX).
• The fourth important aspect is insights & improvements. Interaction analytics also known as sentiment analytics is changing the way the voice of customer is captured. It’s live and instant information which helps AI and agents to take necessary actions or course-correct during the interaction to provide a superior experience to the customer.

• According to a Salesforce study, 72% of people who regularly interact with customer service bots indicate that the quality has improved, and dissatisfaction levels have continued to drop. This is indicative of how effectively the Gen AI bots are able to train themselves on customer expectations.
• In another study by BCG, If Generative AI is implemented at scale, it will result in an increase in productivity by at least 30% to 50%. Now, that’s a great boost in productivity, don’t you think?
• In another Hubspot study, they found that 77% of business leaders recognize that offering personalized support experiences leads to increased customer retention.