How Businesses Can Benefit From AI Right Now
Intelligent process analysis/optimization
With this capability, C-level executives will appreciate the ability to keep sales directors focused on managing their staffs and have AI improve on their processes. With predictive process analytics, executives can run tests on potential changes to see which will have the best outcome—enabling them to do more with analysis before disrupting their teams with new activities.
Incorporating AI-charged process analysis leads to faster and more reliable processes optimization; improvement in sales team performance; improved process adherence by sales reps; and greater revenue attainment. Inquire with your CRM provider to see if they offer this capability.
AI for Service
Smarter knowledge management
Most customers just want answers to their questions; they don’t have a preference as to how they get the information. Decades of knowledge management and website search tools still haven’t solved this problem effectively enough, opening up a huge opportunity for AI. Often customers just use the wrong terminology, a problem current AI tools using deep learning and natural language processing can handle more effectively than past systems.
This doesn’t just apply to customer-facing experiences; it can also help service teams find answers to questions faster and more effectively as well.
Therefore, AI-powered knowledge management brings numerous advantages to organizations—always keeping in-house service agents and sales reps up to date; enabling customer service staff to focus on more challenging service interactions; faster time to resolution for self-service and service rep engagements; reduced service head count; and better customer satisfaction scores and Net Promoter Scores.
Intelligent case routing and process management
Routing and handling most services cases is still a manual process for a substantial number of businesses, which is something that AI is poised to improve significantly. Using machine learning and natural language processing, as well as sentiment analysis and predictive modeling, incoming emails, support tickets, chats, and similar service interactions will be able to be read, understood, routed, and escalated automatically.
Implementation of intelligent case routing results in reduced call and issue resolution time; improved customer satisfaction and NPS; shortened customer support cost; reduced service head count; and improved customer experience.
How to Get Started with AI Now
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to getting started as it largely depends on the state of technology in your company. You might want to focus on the most stable and predictable processes first since they will provide a solid baseline and enable you to clearly measure success. Alternatively, you might look to AI to help jump-start digital transformation in your organization and go after the most broken processes first. Either way, start with clearly defined use cases where results will be easy to measure so you can avoid scope creep and over-investment. Find ways to plug AI into your existing platforms to keep from adding to the technology sprawl within your organization. Lastly, look across the organization at sales, marketing, and service to see which team is going to be the best early adopter of AI in your organization and the most willing partner to speed adoption and get a quick win.
Katherine Kostereva is CEO and managing partner of bpm’online (www.bpmonline.com), a leading business process automation platform, focused on accelerating marketing, sales, service, and strategic applications for midsize to enterprise companies. Kostereva cofounded bpm’online 15 years ago as a small European start-up with five people on board without any external funding or venture capital. Today, bpm’online is a global software company with offices around the world and a team of 700-plus engaged professionals dedicated to creating impeccable products.