Customer support is one of the most challenging cost centers in business. It’s a requirement for a positive customer experience, but it’s labour intensive, repetitive, and has historically been resistant to automation. (Especially for business customers, an FAQ just doesn’t cut it.)
That’s why customer support is such an exciting opportunity for generative AI. You can get the ready-information benefits of an FAQ, a fast and friendly interface, escalate to a person if needed, and an incredibly cost-efficient scalability that simply isn’t available any other way.
Last week, we discussed the incredible results of Klarna experienced by automating some of their customer support work: 25% drop in repeat inquiries, 85% improvement in resolution speed, and $40M profit improvement – all while maintaining customer satisfaction. OpenAI recently published another case study in the customer support space, this time from GenAI firm MavenAGI. MavenAGI uses generative AI to deliver incredible customer support results, and the proof is in the numbers.
How to use Generative AI for Customer Support
Before talk MavenAGI, let’s discuss how Generative AI fits into the customer support system.
For many of today’s companies, customer support is usually tiered:
- Level 1 support handles basic and common inquiries.
- Level 2 support has more experience with the company’s systems and a higher level of discretion.
- Level 3+ support are the most experienced with company systems, have a high level of discretion, and may be tied into other business functions (sales, services, etc.) to offer exceptional service for challenging issues or high-value customers.
Escalation from one level to the next is based on many factors like customer importance, complexity of the inquiry, authority needed, etc.
The challenge here is that there’s a Pareto distribution among the work. The majority of the labor is concentrated in Level 1, where the solutions are easiest, fastest, and most routine. The cost of serving a Level 2 or 3 ticket is certainly higher than a Level 1 ticket, but has a lower total cost due to the difference in volume. Companies have tried to address this imbalance with an array of self-serve solutions (FAQ’s, simple chat bots), but the results have been underwhelming.
This is where Generative AI comes in. Given their need for flexibility and authority, Level 2+ support areas are best suited for people, not AI. But, if you could have an AI provide Level 1 support, where the work was purely information or tightly defined, you could potentially offset a significant amount of boring, brutal, repetitive human effort with a low-cost AI.
It’s automation in a nutshell: let humans do what humans do well, and have machines do the rest.
MavenAGI’s approach to Customer Support
MavenAGI‘s goal is “solving enterprise customer support with our AI agents.” Their systems offer two services:
- Connecting a wide range of information sources into a single, fast search tool, available to all support levels
- An AI powered chat interface to handle Level 1 support activities that can escalate to a person if needed.
Along with the power of their system, they also highlight the quick ROI you can expect from this automation. From their website:
“One of Maven AGI’s standout features is its rapid time-to-value. The platform is ready for deployment within hours, trained in days, and integrates seamlessly with existing support systems. This quick implementation allows businesses to see immediate improvements in customer support efficiency and satisfaction.”
While they have been in stealth mode until relatively recently, they claim Tripadvisor, Clickup, and Rho as customers.
Results: 80% decrease in cost per ticket + more
Just like with Klarna, the results of generative AI-powered customer support have been incredible. Some details from the OpenAI blog:
- “Answering 93% of customer support questions autonomously
- “Reducing the average time to resolve customer issues by 60%
- “Improved customer service representatives’ productivity by 2X, providing more time for human interactions and spending less time finding the correct response for customer questions.
- “Decreased the cost per ticket from $40 to $8, an 80% reduction.”
Klarna reported similar numbers, in particular 67% of chats handled by AI, 85% decrease in resolution time, and 25% decrease in repeat questions.
While not every company may see exactly the same results, even gaining a fraction of these benefits offers a terrific cost-saving opportunity. When it comes to customer support, generative AI is proving that it can both save costs and revolutionize the way you connect with your customers.
Many thanks to OpenAI and MavenAGI for the case study!
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