Every time customers interact with your business, they compare you to the best customer experiences they’ve ever had. No pressure. But that means, no matter your size, you’re constantly competing with the “big guys.” You know — the brands with seemingly endless resources, immediate recognition, and established reputations. How do you stand out and be disruptive against that competition?

The answer lies in your customer support.

According to a report from CX expert Shep Hyken, 76% of customers are willing to go out of their way to find better customer service. And 50% would pay more if it meant they’d receive better service. So, when you invest in your customer support, you’re investing in your bottom line. And you’re building a customer experience that can outperform your competition.

So where do you start? Try AI.

AI customer support tools can transform service teams of any size into a competitive, top-performing customer experience machine. These tools help you gain a competitive edge, improve customer and employee experience, and boost revenue.

Enhance Convenience with Virtual Agents

The sheer volume of inquiries that flow into a contact center can be overwhelming. How can you ensure each customer gets help fast? With virtual agents — like IVAs and chatbots — you can enhance convenience, expand self-service options, and give customers the immediate attention they crave. These tools integrate into your existing channels to field simple tasks and questions. This relieves your human agents and improves your resolution rate.

How Virtual Agents Drive Customer Satisfaction

A national study found that 64% of people say the speed of service is as important as the price. The same study found that 85% of consumers are more loyal to fast and responsive brands. In other words, speed and availability matter if you want to improve customer satisfaction. Virtual agents help you offer both.

These AI customer support tools answer simple customer questions at all hours of the day. This means you can enhance convenience through expanded self-service and give customers instant responses when your agents are swamped.

How Virtual Agents Drive Employee Satisfaction

Virtual agents help with simple queries — you know, those repetitive, routine questions that add volume and stress. This reduces workloads by lowering the volume of incoming tickets. It also frees agents to handle more complex tasks that need the human touch. Typically, these more complicated customer problems are more challenging and demand more brain power and skill, supporting better job satisfaction.

Deliver High-Value Service with Workflow Automation

Workflow automation (WFA) uses AI customer support technology to streamline and automate repetitive tasks and processes. This helps ensure efficiency, consistency, and accuracy in your operations.

How WFA Supports Customers

Errors and inaccurate information erode customer trust. And, whether we like to admit it or not, human agents are more prone to errors than AI tech. By automating repetitive tasks and processes, WFA ensures consistency and accuracy.

With workflow automation, customers benefit from a seamless experience. WFA leads to fewer hiccups in customer interactions. This reliability builds trust since customers know they can always depend on your business to deliver high-value service.

How WFA Supports Agents

Tasks like logging tickets and entering data are tedious. Too much monotony, and you’re looking at a whole lot of burnout. Without engaging and challenging work, agents grow disengaged. Pretty soon, they start looking for jobs elsewhere, leading to costly turnover. But WFA helps.

Like virtual agents, WFA reduces the tedious tasks on your agents’ plates. This lets agents focus on higher-value work. They’ll not only be more productive with each customer interaction, but they’ll also grow more engaged. And more employee engagement means better outcomes. Better outcomes mean higher CSAT. (See how it all works together?)

Discover how to know if you’re adding the right AI tools for your team.

Optimize Your Ops with AI-Powered Workforce Management

Let’s say you have a call center with 50 agents. Each agent works a six-hour shift. Every agent sends you their preferred schedule with vacation requests. Now, how do you turn that info into the ideal schedule for every agent while ensuring you’re adequately staffed during peak times and have the best skills available throughout the day? Give me a second while I grab some Advil — I feel a headache coming on.

Manual workforce management (WFM) is headache-inducing. But with integrated AI customer support tools, you can optimize your workforce to support your customers and agents.

How WFM Supports Customers

AI-powered WFM uses intelligent scheduling and forecasting to ensure customers get support anytime. It lets you anticipate customer needs. Then, you can staff your team to match needs with agent skills. Imagine it: every time a customer calls, they’re automatically routed to an agent who is fully equipped to answer their unique question.

That perfect balance in operational flow results in higher FCR, shorter wait times, and better CSAT.

How WFM Supports Agents

Poor staffing leads to two extremes. Agents are either overwhelmed by a barrage of work or bored out of their minds. Optimized WFM means your team experiences balance. You can accommodate a work-life balance, allowing agents to work when they prefer. And you can find that perfect balance during the work day, limiting stress and burnout and maximizing your team’s strengths.

Get your guide to finding the right WFM tool for your team here.

Empower Agents with Agent Assist Tools

AI agent assist is an AI customer support tool that integrates with your existing contact center platform. Then, as your agents interact with customers, agent assist uses data from your platforms to help agents improve the interaction.

Using analytics, generative AI, and automation, agent assist gives tips, summarizes conversations, flags issues, and automates tasks. This helps agents do their best work.

How Agent Assist Supports Customers

Agent assist tools are designed to help agents help customers. Sentiment and tone analysis paired with CX analytics gives agents deeper insights into what customers really want (and need).

With these tips, agents can create personalized interactions that are accurate and consistent. Agent assist also improves efficiency, leading to faster service. Sounds like a recipe for more customer satisfaction!

How Agent Assist Supports Agents

Agent assist gives employees information and tips on handling interactions successfully. AI can pull data from knowledge bases, customer profiles, and past interactions. This provides agents with context and recommendations on finding solutions that meet customer needs.

Agents can navigate sticky situations with text, speech, and sentiment analysis. Plus, they’ll feel empowered to say the right thing at the right time. These tools enhance performance and confidence and, ultimately, improve agent satisfaction.