Hi there,

As a customer support leader, you’ll know that customer expectations around personalized support have increased – as confirmed by 82% of customer support leaders in our Customer Service Trends Report for 2023.

But what does this mean in a world of AI-assisted customer service? Machines aren’t known for their personal touch, and chatbots have traditionally been viewed as an obstacle to a high-quality customer experience.

In a recent Intercom webinar, our VP of Customer Support, Declan Ivory, and Merchant Support Manager of Zapiet, Sam Forde, explored the areas where AI has some catching up to do in the personalization department. Things like how AI can access institutional knowledge and draw from the experience of support reps in certain situations, or how to keep the tone fun and engaging in some contexts, and apologetic and helpful in others.

AI is rapidly becoming more advanced, so we have no doubt these things will soon be possible. But by personalized customer experience, we don’t just mean knowing your customer’s name. We’re talking about an end-to-end, data-driven strategy that accounts for customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviors, and delivers relevant experiences throughout the customer journey.

That’s where AI is making a real impact. Here are just some of the ways AI is allowing teams of all sizes to deliver a personalized customer experience at scale:

24/7 support: AI bots can handle queries across every customer’s timezone, around the clock. There’s no such thing as an out-of-hours query when an AI bot can offer a near-instant response, or direct the question to the appropriate team and set expectations as to when it will be addressed.
More effective routing: As a customer, being passed from team to team while answering the same questions on repeat is a distinctly impersonal experience. AI bots can triage queries and immediately pass them to the correct team with all the context they need to get started. A seamless experience for your customer – and your team.
Deeper conversation insights: AI tools can carry out conversation analysis at scale to provide you with invaluable insights. Where your team’s quality assurance used to rely on spot checks and small samples, you can now take learnings from every customer conversation to improve the next.
More attentive human support: With AI bots taking on the simple queries, support reps have more time to dedicate to thoughtful, personal customer service. AI can help ensure that your reps have the time and space to utilize their expertise where it matters most.

Make your personalization smarter, not harder,

Niamh OConnor Editor Intercom Content team

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