With the intention to create a terrific buyer expertise, buyer help groups should be environment friendly. The extra environment friendly they’re, the faster they will reply to requests. The faster they reply to requests, the sooner prospects get a decision. And the sooner prospects get a decision to their situation, the happier they’re (usually talking).
For smaller help groups, it’s frequent for many brokers to be generalists, that means they will reply to mainly any request that comes their approach. Nevertheless, as groups develop in measurement, it’s pretty frequent for individuals to start out specializing in several areas. One group of brokers may deal with billing questions and one other the extra technical requests.
As soon as that specialization begins, there’s a brand new ticket administration layer added the place sure requests must get routed to particular individuals and groups. In years previous, groups have addressed this in a couple of methods. Generally a crew member manually triages requests. In different instances they use consumption varieties that assist type conversations. Many help instruments additionally provide workflow options that may route tickets to brokers primarily based on particular key phrases within the message physique or topic line or by one other figuring out characteristic like a crew’s enterprise hours or the sender’s e-mail.
Within the final couple of years, some assist desks have added an alternative choice: AI ticket routing.
What’s AI ticket routing?
AI ticket routing is a course of the place synthetic intelligence kinds requests routinely primarily based on elements like sentiment or matter. AI might be preferable to an answer like an automatic workflow as a result of it doesn’t solely depend on key phrases. As a substitute, it makes use of pure language processing (NLP) to not solely determine the subject of a buyer message but in addition its intent. By way of machine studying, the AI may also get higher at recognizing patterns in several request varieties and make fewer sorting errors over time.
What are the professionals and cons of AI ticket routing?
Buyer help is a tricky job, plain and easy. It’s no surprise groups are intrigued by AI ticket routing, which can assist make issues a contact simpler. Nevertheless, whereas automated ticket routing definitely has the flexibility to make a optimistic distinction, there are a few potential pitfalls. Listed below are some execs and cons to AI ticket routing.
Professionals
Sooner responses for purchasers
With AI ticket routing, groups can assign tickets to the precise individuals in seconds. Due to that, brokers get requests sooner and prospects obtain a response extra rapidly as effectively. For instance, if a buyer reaches out a few billing situation AI might acknowledge and route that request on to your billing crew. Or, if you happen to’re utilizing an consumption type and a buyer selects the improper division, AI might probably catch that and rectify the difficulty by sending it to the precise spot. This additionally means you may get extra granular over time with the way you type requests (ex. routing not solely to the proper division but in addition to the particular person in that division most able to resolving the difficulty), serving to your crew be much more environment friendly.
Much less stress for human brokers
Anybody who’s been on queue triage obligation is aware of it may be a bit monotonous. By outsourcing request sorting to AI you save a human agent from doing the work. This implies fewer rote duties (that are usually those that put on individuals down most) and additional time to deal with extra rewarding work. As a substitute of wanting by every request individually, brokers can merely monitor the queue, rerouting something that occurs to return to the improper inbox. As AI sees these corrections, it will get a extra refined understanding of the place every sort of request ought to go, that means routing errors will drop over time.
Cons
It may be costly
Chopping-edge tech often doesn’t come low-cost, and AI ticket routing software program isn’t any completely different. Not all assist desks provide AI-powered ticket routing, so the characteristic might require including one other software (and subscription payment) to your help stack. For those who do, it’s usually relegated to the highest-cost plans. There are additionally the potential prices related to coaching and organising the characteristic and managing ongoing upkeep. In the long run, greater groups might make the funding again in effectivity positive factors, however for smaller, lower-volume groups, it’s not as sure.
Complicated instances can result in sorting errors
AI may be very spectacular at understanding sentiment and recognizing patterns. That makes it superb at sorting fundamental requests (assume issues like password resets or refund requests). Nevertheless, for issues which are extra nuanced or requests that contain multiple query, it struggles. Which means that it could possibly be extra prone to put these tickets within the improper place, probably extending a buyer’s wait time for a response.
Enhancing the client expertise is at all times prime of thoughts for help groups, and for some, AI ticket routing could possibly be a great way to do this. Nevertheless, simply as it’s with any software program buy, it is best to take time to guage the choices earlier than leaping in ft first.
Evaluating whether or not AI ticket routing is correct in your crew
Figuring out whether or not or not AI ticket routing is a worthwhile funding in your crew comes down to some issues. So, earlier than making any choices, it’s useful to reply the next questions.
What’s your ticket quantity like?
AI ticket routing appears to take advantage of sense for these with excessive ticket volumes. In these instances, the advantage of organizing tickets in a short time outweighs considerations over value or the occasional misrouted dialog.
What number of merchandise do you help?
In case your crew helps plenty of completely different merchandise or corporations, AI ticket routing may be a great possibility to assist maintain issues separate. For instance, if you happen to’re a enterprise course of outsourcing (BPO) name heart or one thing comparable, ticket routing could possibly be actually helpful.
What’s your crew measurement?
Greater groups with extra specialties are often good candidates for AI ticket routing. For smaller groups (most likely any crew beneath 10 or so brokers), the profit is probably not as nice.
Does your present assist desk provide AI ticket routing?
Altering assist desks is a giant endeavor. In case your present platform doesn’t provide AI ticket routing or present a great third-party resolution, it’s most likely not value it to modify to a brand new ticketing system particularly for AI routing alone.
What sort of technical help do you might have entry to?
Although AI ticket routing typically comes as an out-of-the-box resolution, it’s doable it’s going to require some technical help to stand up and operating. In case you don’t have entry to a developer or IT help — or the price range to rent it — including the characteristic could also be tougher.
How do you arrange AI ticket routing?
The setup course of for AI ticket routing largely depends upon the software you employ and the way complicated the routing you’re doing is. Nevertheless, if you happen to plan on utilizing a prebuilt resolution, the method needs to be pretty easy.
In truth, most often, it actually simply comes right down to turning the characteristic on or getting a software program integration in place. Most assist desks or third-party instruments could have the flexibility to coach their AI in your current buyer requests so it has a good start line.
From there, it’s going to tag incoming messages by standards like matter, urgency, or sentiment and route them in keeping with the parameters you’ve set. The sorting is probably not good from the start, however most instruments give you the chance to offer suggestions that may assist the performance develop into extra correct over time.
What are another AI purposes for buyer help?
Together with ticket routing, AI has plenty of different potential makes use of for buyer help. AI help instruments can assist brokers shorten, lengthen, or change the tone of a response. It will probably additionally assist with issues like spelling, grammar, or translating messages into completely different languages.
In some instances, you may even use AI to jot down a complete response. For instance, with Assist Scout’s AI Drafts characteristic, AI reads the request after which drafts a response primarily based on earlier buyer conversations and the content material in your information base. The agent can then overview and edit the draft as wanted, making responding to routine requests fast and straightforward.
Together with writing assist, AI can summarize complete buyer conversations to assist brokers stand up to hurry rapidly on a difficulty. Having a abstract provides brokers context and usually reduces response occasions for purchasers.
AI may also help brokers by suggesting related assist articles to share with prospects primarily based on the content material of their request. There are additionally choices for AI-powered bots and information bases that may work together straight with prospects and assist reply fundamental questions.
Wanting ahead
AI-powered options provide the potential to streamline the ticket routing course of, enhancing response occasions and decreasing agent burnout. Nevertheless, the choice to implement AI ticket routing needs to be rigorously thought-about primarily based on elements like ticket quantity, crew measurement, and accessible assets.
Whereas it holds promise for bigger, specialised help groups, smaller operations might discover the funding much less important. Finally, the purpose is to boost buyer satisfaction, and AI ticket routing is only one software within the buyer help software equipment. By rigorously evaluating the professionals and cons and understanding the precise wants of your crew, you may decide if it’s the precise match for you.
