How to train your support team to work alongside AI

Preparing your team for AI integration

Cultivating a tech-friendly environment is the first step. Encourage curiosity about AI tools and provide access to training resources that demystify AI functionalities. Whether it's online courses, workshops, or hands-on training sessions, the goal is to make your team comfortable and confident in using AI as part of their toolkit.

Introduce them to the idea of AI Agent Assist and how can it benefit them when it comes to everyday support functions like resolving tickets, talking to customers, understanding problems, and more. Before being comfortable with working with AI, your agents should be comfortable with the idea of working with AI. There has to be acceptance towards AI Agent Assist and that will only come from educating agents about the benefits of AI in their existing processes and forcing them into change that’s unnecessary or they’re not comfortable with.

Training and nurturing

The next step towards AI integration is training and honing your team to become comfortable with working with AI. This stage is also where you need to introduce certain tools for AI Agent Assist to familiarize your team with the AI technology that they will use.

Threado AI Agent Assist, for instance, helps with -

AI-generated responses: Once trained, support agents can input questions and receive auto-generated customer replies, complete with source references, via the Chrome extension. This enables them to respond to customers swiftly.

Refinement of customer replies: Support agents can refine their draft replies by rephrasing, expanding, shortening, and auto-improving them in seconds, leading to an enhanced customer experience.

Summarise tickets: Summarise every ticket concisely so agents don't have to spend much time understanding the context of each ticket.

Works across top helpdesk tools: Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Salesforce, and many more!

Training your team to work with AI is not a one-off event; it's an ongoing journey. Start with the basics of operating AI tools and gradually move to more advanced applications, such as using AI for customer sentiment analysis. Alongside technical skills, focus on nurturing a mindset open to technological evolution. Regular updates on AI advancements and open discussions about their implications on support roles can help in this regard.

Tailoring AI to your customer journey

Understanding your customer journey is crucial in identifying where AI can make the most significant impact. Analyze each touchpoint to determine where automation and AI can speed up resolutions and where human intervention is essential for a personalized touch. For instance, AI might be perfect for answering FAQs on your website but less effective in handling complex billing issues that require a nuanced understanding.

Self-service has become an integral part of support in recent years, especially since the advent of AI and automation. This has led to customers relying on self-service options or what can be called Level 1 support such as bots and knowledge bases to resolve their questions on their own. Because of this, customers prefer self-service over speaking to support agents but for critical issues, they still need to speak to support directly. This is where AI Agent Assist can improve how agents interact with customer tickets and improve these interactions immensely.  

Creating a seamless handoff system

One of the critical components of an AI-assisted support strategy is ensuring a smooth transition between AI and human agents. This involves setting clear parameters for when and how a conversation should be escalated from an AI tool to a human. Automating this handoff process requires sophisticated AI capable of recognizing its limitations and knowing when a human touch is needed, based on the complexity of the query or the customer's frustration level.

Integrating AI into multiple channels

Customers interact with your business through various channels, such as live chat, chatbots, Slack channels, social media, phone calls, and more. Integrating AI across these channels ensures a consistent and efficient support experience. For instance, an AI chatbot can be deployed not just on your website or within the product but also on community platforms like Slack, or social media platforms.

Your agents should be prepared to handle support coming from various channels and be active on these channels to be able to now miss them. This can be further made possible by helping agents make more efficient use of their time through AI Agent Assist tools that significantly cut down the time taken to resolve a ticket. Therefore, agents can remain active on various platforms more often and resolve queries faster.  

Personalizing customer interactions with AI

AI can analyze vast amounts of data to provide personalized experiences for customers. By leveraging customer data, AI tools can tailor responses based on past interactions, preferences, and behavior. This level of personalization makes support interactions feel more relevant and engaging, enhancing customer satisfaction.

Empowering agents with AI insights

AI can act as a powerful tool for support agents by providing them with real-time information and insights. For example, AI can suggest relevant knowledge base articles or previous ticket resolutions to help agents respond more effectively. This not only speeds up resolution times but also helps in building an agent’s confidence and efficiency.

Embracing continuous learning

The AI landscape is continuously evolving, and so should your support team. Encourage a culture where learning is part of the daily routine, and staying updated on AI trends is the norm. This could include regular training sessions, newsletters, or even AI-focused team meetings to discuss new tools and techniques.

Evaluating AI performance and customer satisfaction

Regularly assessing the performance of your AI tools is essential to ensure they meet your customers' needs. This could involve analyzing metrics like resolution time, customer satisfaction scores, and the rate of successful handoffs between AI and human agents. Customer feedback can also provide invaluable insights into where your AI tools excel and where they might need improvement.

It’s easier said than done

By developing a comprehensive AI-assisted support strategy that considers these elements, businesses can create a support ecosystem that leverages the best of both worlds: the efficiency and scalability of AI and the empathy and adaptability of human agents. This strategic approach not only enhances the customer experience but also empowers support teams to deliver their best work.

Of course, it’s not always smooth sailing. Despite how much you try to remove friction from the process, it can be challenging to ensure your entire team is on the same page about things. Furthermore, there are other challenges like budgeting constraints, resistance from your team, technical limitations, etc. In all this, moving towards an AI Agent Assist tool can ease things, and the impact is felt almost instantaneously which is an even more significant factor for the acceptance of AI and even more so the transition towards it.