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Going into 2024, AI is shaping increasingly elements of our brand experience, including customer support.
Nonetheless, while AI can bring quite a few advantages — from automated workflows to increased productivity amongst team members — there are a lot of potential pitfalls that may harm businesses. Even tech leaders like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Geoffrey Hinton have warned against AI technologies.
So, what missteps do you would like to avoid when harnessing AI for what you are promoting, especially for customer support? And what strategies are you able to leverage to achieve this?
Here’s the total run-down.
1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of AI
To start with, you would like to spend a while developing a comprehensive understanding of AI before you concentrate on deploying it. Many pitfalls originate from a lack of information about what AI actually is and what it could possibly — and may’t — do.
Many businesses see AI as a magic wand to increase their efficiency effortlessly. This impression is fuelled by online hype discourse in addition to the sales copy utilized by providers of AI tools.
To demystify AI, you must familiarize yourself with basic terminology, the importance of coaching data and the differing types of models and machine learning algorithms on the market. This information may even assist you to seriously assess any AI tools you may think about using in what you are promoting.
Related: Does AI Deserve All of the Hype? Here’s How You Can Actually Use AI in Your Business
2. Resist the urge to rush ahead
A second strategy to shield what you are promoting’ customer support from AI-related pitfalls is to resist an urge to rush.
Over the past yr, AI adoption has been rapid in countless sectors of the web sphere. It is easy to get the sensation that your organization can be left behind for those who don’t adopt AI immediately.
To a certain extent, that is true. AI is quickly becoming standard in lots of areas. Nonetheless, it should be implemented with care, especially in external-facing areas like customer support. A botched roll-out of an AI-based customer communication tool, as an illustration, will do more long-term reputational damage than an extended delay in adopting it.
3. Understand the liabilities and limitations of AI tools
Next, you would like to gain a greater understanding of the weaknesses and limitations of customer-facing AI tools.
While the capabilities of generative AI like ChatGPT, Jasper and Bard are actually impressive, it is vital to remember that their performance is predicated on an enormous amount of coaching data and statistics. These models have been trained to recognize patterns and to imitate them, not to be revolutionary, understand nuance or solve problems through creative and interconnected pondering.
As an example, researchers have found that ChatGPT can only solve between 40 and 75% of a set of commonsense questions.
Similarly, generative AI models are liable to misinterpret colloquialisms, neglect cultural context and fail to consider nuances in skilled jargon. All of this will likely be problematic depending in your area of interest in addition to the situation and demographic characteristics of your customers.
A technique to mitigate that is to employ advanced contextual reasoning AI models and models that integrate structured knowledge bases. These tend to perform a lot better at differentiating between literal and figurative language, as an illustration.
Related: Why Are So Many Corporations Afraid of Generative AI?
4. Discover sensitive domains
One other strategy to prevent any negative effects on customer support is to discover domains and situations which can be too sensitive for AI to handle.
As an example, AI chatbots may find a way to maintain routine inquiries resembling scheduling appointments or giving updates on the status of orders. But when a customer has a posh query that requires an understanding of data fragmented across different conversations, it’ll almost certainly require a human agent to handle it.
Similarly, when an upset or agitated customer reaches out, relegating them to an AI agent can amplify these negative emotions, especially if the AI gives responses that, while correct, can easily appear uncaring or callous.
Related: How to Turn an Upset Customer Into Your Company’s Best Advocate
5. Put money into meticulous brand calibration
Finally, one crucial strategy to keep your organization protected while reaping the advantages of AI for customer support is to put money into brand calibration.
Your voice is an important element of your brand identity. The voices of successful brands — the tone and manner through which they impart with customers — are immediately recognizable and consistent. While you implement AI, it’s crucial to make sure that it’s able to reproducing your voice. Otherwise, your customers will notice the discrepancies, leading to brand dilution.
As mentioned above, all AIs depend on training data. Many tools on the market can use brand-specific data to calibrate and adjust the voices and modes of output.
Conclusion
For customer support, AI brings unprecedented opportunities for enhancement, in addition to potentially disastrous pitfalls.
By adopting the strategies above, you may profit from the previous without suffering the latter. With them in mind, fastidiously re-evaluate any tools you employ already and thoroughly assess latest ones before deploying them.