Customer Care Teams Have Much to Gain Using Generative AI

Since going mainstream less than two years ago, generative AI has transformed daily operations for multiple business functions. According to a recent global survey conducted by McKinsey & Company, 65 percent of respondents said that their organization regularly uses generative AI—a data point that has more than doubled in less than a year. An earlier study from McKinsey, looking at the economic potential of generative AI, estimated that the emerging technology could automate work activities that account for 60 percent to 70 percent of an employee’s workday. Among the business functions that would see the most value from generative AI, per McKinsey’s research: customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and research and development.

There is no doubt that customer operations, and specifically customer care teams, have much to gain by adopting generative AI tools. In fact, in 2023, McKinsey estimated that the technology could drastically propel productivity for customer care teams, “at a value ranging from 30 percent to 45 percent of current function costs,” while reducing the volume of human-serviced contacts up to 50 percent. Such a high estimation might have felt like a pipe dream, but today savvy customer care leaders are already seeing massive results from a wide array of generative AI solutions. 

The Generative AI Solutions Empowering Customer Care Teams

Once upon a time, sophisticated AI-powered CX solutions were reserved for enterprise organizations with unlimited technology budgets. But the explosion of generative AI tools during the past year has democratized access to some of the most groundbreaking technology available to business leaders—empowering teams of all sizes (and varying budgets) to rapidly scale their efforts and drive productivity.

Exactly how customer care teams are implementing generative AI solutions depends on their organization’s CX goals and the customers they serve. One of the more common generative AI use cases within the customer care organization is the adoption of customer-facing chatbots that go far beyond pre-scripted responses. Today’s generative AI-powered chatbots are more knowledgeable and much more conversational than their predecessors, able to interact with customers in a natural way to provide a seamless customer experience. 

What’s most fascinating about the chatbots powered by proprietary large language models (LLMs) is that the more questions the chatbot answers, the smarter it becomes.

Another prime example of generative AI tools driving productivity across the customer care organization: AI-powered solutions that can quickly summarize customer service cases and provide succinct, detailed notes on each customer inquiry. It’s a great example of how generative AI is giving back time to customer care agents so that they can focus on more important work versus spending hours of their day writing up customer service calls. Generative AI makes it possible to transcribe conversations between agents and customers, analyze the primary issues, and create thorough call reports.

Customer care analytic tools have also been supercharged by AI, providing sentiment analysis and social listening solutions that give brands deep insights on their customers and target audiences. The addition of generative AI to these analytic platforms allows customer care teams to quickly identify any gaps in the customer experience and course-correct customer issues before they turn into major problems that put the brand’s reputation at risk or negatively impact customer loyalty trends. 

Last but not least are the customized LLMs that enable automated customer engagement workflows, making it possible to scale customer communications without sacrificing the brand’s voice, style, or tone.

The Technology Is Cool, but the Results Are Astounding

The customer care leaders who are leaning into generative AI solutions are seeing extraordinary results. Emplifi’s own research found that the teams able to thread generative AI tools throughout their workflow processes are experiencing massive productivity gains by automating time-consuming tasks and accelerating case resolutions faster than ever before. 

One B2C brand—a high-end fresh pet food company with an extremely discerning audience—fully embraced generative AI within its customer care strategies and saw a positive shift in productivity almost immediately. Within three months, the brand was able to reduce call volumes by 40 percent and decrease wait times to speak to a live agent by 29 percent. Even more astounding, the company’s AI-powered chatbot achieved a nearly 100 percent match-rate for customer inquiries (meaning that the chatbot was able to correctly answer customer service questions nearly every time). 

With results like this, it’s difficult to ignore how much of an impact generative AI has on customer care strategies. The technology has proven it can dramatically increase productivity, drive higher customer satisfaction scores, and, ultimately, uplevel the entire CX organization. The most exciting thing about the technology: We have only just begun to see its impact on our most crucial customer care needs. 

Todd McCaslin is chief technology officer at Emplifi. A passionate technologist, McCaslin oversees all technology and technological resources at Emplifi, from vision, to strategy and ultimately execution. He brings 25-plus years of digital marketing and enterprise software development experience, with global businesses like Responsys (Oracle Marketing Cloud) and DigitasLbi. Prior to joining the company, he served as CTO at Selligent Marketing Cloud.