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The Role of Generative AI in Social Media Customer Service
In this article, Ilenia Vidili, CX Thought Leader, emphasizes how generative AI, especially in social media, is revolutionizing customer support by providing real-time, personalized responses. The integration of AI not only enhances customer satisfaction but also streamlines the workload for human agents, ensuring a more efficient and effective service experience.
From the first customer support team in the 1760s, after the Industrial Revolution, to the first-ever call center in the 1960s, the customer service department has evolved significantly. As technology evolved, so did customer expectations, which led to shifts in the mechanisms for customer support and reshaped the way customer queries are handled. In the past, businesses weren’t intentionally focused on customer service as a differentiator and prioritized product quality and price. Fast forward to today, when the customer service department has progressed from manual switchboards to multichannel operations, savvy companies understand that customer service is a source of competitive advantage.
More than 5 billion people across the world use social media for social interaction and communication. However, the new generation of customers, including myself, interact with companies via social media for troubleshooting, complaints, and general inquiries. Regardless of industry, offering, or geographic location, we expect quick answers and quick issue resolutions whether on social media or other channels. However, 80% of millennials favor social media for customer support over other customer service channels, and 59% of customers prefer brands that respond to their complaints via social channels.
Gen AI in Customer Service
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is setting a new standard in customer service and experience, and initiating a new era in how customer inquiries are managed. Generative AI is a branch of AI able to generate new content that mimics the data it was trained on. Integrating generative AI into social media channels not only offers more efficiency for the business but also more satisfaction for the customer.
If you’ve ever interacted with a traditional AI-powered chatbot, you probably didn’t find it particularly helpful. Chatbots provide basic programmed replies to customer queries, whereas ChatGPT, a generative AI model, understands complex questions and generates valuable solutions in real time.
My client, a multinational company in the air transport industry, leverages generative AI to answer customer inquiries across their social media channels. When customers contact the airline via channels like Facebook and Instagram, they are greeted by a friendly ChatGPT-based chatbot that is designed to handle a wide range of customer booking inquiries quickly and efficiently. For example, if the customer asks about the status of their flight by giving their flight number, full name, or email address, the chatbot provides up-to-date flight information from the company's system. If the customer is looking for where and how to do the online check-in, the chatbot provides a step-by-step process of how to do it, as well as screenshots of the webpage and the weblink from which the customer can access and complete the operation. The chatbot can also help with baggage inquiries including weight limit, fees, and allowances for both carry-on and checked luggage. If the customer's suitcase is lost or delayed it can help track it by simply having the baggage claim number.
You might think that all this information could be available on the airline's website - yes that's true - but the difference is that the chatbot acts as an assistant giving real time, personalized, and accurate answers, meaning customers are less likely to need further assistance. Looking for the needed information on the company's website might be time-consuming to customers, especially those less digitally literate who don't know where to look or simply need help straight away. In other words, it solves issues on first contact, personalizes responses, and simplifies complex problems into easy solutions, which significantly enhances the customer experience.
What's in for the agents?
AI-powered Human Agents
In addition, generative AI is highly beneficial to the customer service workforce as it eliminates daunting and time-consuming work for them. It handles a large volume of customer inquiries, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex issues such as changing flights, system problems, refunds, or complaints. When these queries happen, the chatbot seamlessly puts customers in the queue to be helped by a human agent. This results in a frictionless customer service experience. How?
Firstly, it thoroughly understands the context of the customer’s query. Secondly, it goes through knowledge bases and customer data such as purchasing history, behavior, and interaction patterns to give the agent the most relevant information and solutions for that customer. For example, when a customer contacts the airline through social media channels to claim a refund, generative AI suggests a step-by-step process for the agent to follow - expediting the process. As a result, customer service agents enjoy a better work experience, and customers enjoy a better customer service experience.
The airline trained the chatbots to recognize customers’ specific language and terminology making it a wonderful tool for sentiment analysis. It prompts customer service agents in real-time to respond with the appropriate tone of voice and manner to customer queries. This tailored support goes beyond issue resolution or giving recommendations and answers – all of which improve the overall customer experience and enhance loyalty.
Many other companies are using generative AI embedded in their brand mobile app. Booking.com, one of the world’s leading digital travel platforms, launched an AI-based trip planner to enhance the travel experience. This new in-app feature helps users with things like providing travel inspiration based on the individual traveler’s needs and creating itineraries for a particular city or country.
Generative AI is powerful but must be handled with care
Risks of Generative AI
Given the advantages of Generative AI, businesses are rapidly integrating this technology into their customer service operations, notwithstanding the associated risks, challenges, and limitations such as incorrect or nonsensical information. Currently, the most effective way to mitigate these challenges is to ensure AI-generated content is vetted by human agents before it reaches customers. Furthermore, it's essential to adopt the evolution of technology with care so that customer service departments retain the human touch and the ability to empathize.
It’s also worth mentioning that Generative AI alone doesn’t improve the customer experience. Introducing it into an already flawed customer service process will exacerbate the situation, magnify the issues, and intensify the consequences. Savvy companies recognize the importance of designing core business processes with a customer-centric perspective, starting from the outside in. Businesses need to make sure that integrating these customer service tools aligns with the overall customer experience strategy and goals, through planning, implementing, and assessing how these technologies really benefit the customer and the employee. In my critically acclaimed book "Journey to Centricity: A Customer-Centric Framework for the Era of Stakeholder Capitalism", I write that businesses should create the right culture around the technology they use and constantly ask the question of whether it adds real value to customers intending to improve the customer experience.
Generative AI is a very powerful addition to the customer service of today, both for agents and customers; however, it’s those businesses that remember the very essence of serving customers that give superior customer service:
- Minimize effort and friction
- Understand customers’ needs and expectations and fulfill them
- Use technology as an enabler without replacing the human touch
- Design the customer service experience as a reflection of the whole organization rather than that of a siloed department
Interested to learn more about social media customer service? Tune in to CX-Wise podcast episode featuring Scott Monty, who shares real-world experiences from his time leading Ford's social media team, and learn how AI can enhance the human touch in CX. Scott explores the importance of infusing humor and personality into AI-driven customer interactions.
