{"id":253665,"date":"2023-03-06T16:23:14","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T21:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/?p=253665"},"modified":"2026-01-12T15:54:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T20:54:02","slug":"generative-ai-applications-for-customer-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/blog\/generative-ai-applications-for-customer-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Generative AI Applications for Customer Support"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n

Generative AI technology can create useful types of new content in audio, graphical, and text formats. With the right instructions and knowledge inputs it can write code, produce music, and author narratives.\u00a0 So why not apply the same basic premise to have generative AI produce things that we need to support customers.<\/p>\n

For Customer Support in particular, there are many potential applications of this technology, however there are three that stand out as \u201ckiller\u201d use cases:<\/p>\n

The first is providing customers with <\/em>the contextually relevant<\/strong> answer to their specific needs.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second is detecting customer risk and developing alerts and a customized remediation plan<\/strong> to mitigate this risk.<\/em><\/p>\n

The third is delivering intelligent proactive support<\/strong> by creating customized support journeys and plans to indicate the type and intensity of support needed to help customers before problems occur. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Each of these three applications will rely on generative AI to recognize the specific context of customers\u2019 needs and develop an action or answer specifically crafted to meet the unique circumstances.<\/p>\n

Scaling Human Intelligence<\/h1>\n

We can deliver these support use cases today, but it requires human intelligence to understand and synthesize a customer appropriate response.\u00a0 Human intelligence works, but it does not scale.<\/p>\n

Imagine an artificial intelligence emulating human intelligence to understand needs and context with the ability to formulate a \u201cpersonal\u201d response to each customer.<\/p>\n

AI enabled technologies can be trained to perform these functions and taught to generate useful content.\u00a0 AI can perform at massive scale.<\/p>\n

Tech-Touch and Personal Engagement<\/h1>\n

The detection of customer needs and generation of a responses \u2013 the answer, a risk mitigation plan, or proactive customer journey \u2013 may be delivered through fully digital means directly to customers or as a roadmap prepared for human delivery by a Support rep, Technical Account Manager, or CSM.<\/p>\n

As AI determines the need and generates a response it can also decide how best to deliver a response to a customer.\u00a0 Not every interaction will require the direct involvement of humans so many support events will be fully digital.\u00a0 Human resources will be reserved for the most important interactions.<\/p>\n

Beyond Traditional Search<\/h1>\n

The top application of support technology today is search.\u00a0 Search is the foundation for internal knowledge access, customer-facing self-help applications, and overall federated search across multiple knowledge repositories.<\/p>\n

Good search sitting atop good knowledge repositories can return effective results.\u00a0 But most search applications provide lists of links to curated knowledge.\u00a0 The list of documents is dynamically generated, but the underlying knowledge presented is not.<\/p>\n

The advantage of generative AI over today\u2019s \u201ctypical\u201d search-based applications is that each response will provide the<\/u><\/strong> answer based on the specific context of the question asked and any other information known about the user (e.g. product used, environment, previous questions asked, etc.).<\/p>\n

From Risk Detection to Risk Mitigation<\/h1>\n

Customer support is needed when something goes wrong, or when a customer needs \u201chow to\u201d assistance.\u00a0 Reactive support interactions often indicate situations where customers can lose data, diminish productivity or worse, put people or equipment at risk.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to mitigate risk begins by interpreting signals that portend imminent issues.\u00a0 The frequency of issues reported, the language used by customers, and even telemetry received from products provide useful clues that an issue may occur or escalate to become more serious.<\/p>\n

It is impossible for any one individual to detect risk from the patterns in the data received from customers, but AI enabled tools can.<\/p>\n

Generative AI can process the signals to create proactive notifications and may be able to create a plan for preemptive risk mitigation.<\/p>\n

Intelligent Proactive Support<\/h1>\n

The ideal scenario for Support is to prevent issues before customers need help.\u00a0 Proactive support is the zenith of support efficiency. \u00a0Too often, however, Support teams are consumed by reacting to customer needs and have little time to engage customers in an intelligent proactive manner.<\/p>\n

Getting proactive begins the \u00a0moment you land a new customer.\u00a0 You need to consider how best to help customers adopt new products, apply them successfully, and take action to minimize obstacles that may inhibit their ability to realize value.<\/p>\n

Proactive Support Begins With A Plan<\/h1>\n

As with risk mitigation described above, generative AI can help support teams be proactive by defining recommended actions to help the customer on their journey to adopt and apply products or by avoiding circumstances that can cause future issues.<\/p>\n

An AI generated plan can identify the stage of the customer journey and offer prescribed support, training, or adoption activities that will help the customer the most.\u00a0 Generative AI may also suggest the best approach to help a customer upgrade out of date technology.<\/p>\n

Recommendations formulated by generative AI can be sent directly to customers through digital channels or delivered as guided assistance from Support reps, Technical Account Managers, or CSMs.<\/p>\n

Start Planning Now<\/h1>\n

It is never too early to consider how you can apply the next generation of technology to support customers.\u00a0 Building a truly effective support application takes time and planning.\u00a0 Here are a few things to consider:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Define your top use cases for Generative AI – what problems will you solve?<\/li>\n
  • Prepare a vast repository of knowledge to allow AI to understand your business and customers\u2019 needs.<\/li>\n
  • Keep your knowledge repository fresh \u2013 Consider how inputs from product generated telemetry, logs, new case records, community discussions, and other customer or product generated signals can be used.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Generative AI is not a silver bullet but will be a promising foundation for building intelligent, scalable, and proactive support delivery infrastructure for the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    \n
    \n
    \n
    \n
    Want to chat about this \u2013 drop me a note.<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Generative AI technology can create useful types of new content in audio, graphical, and text formats. With the right instructions and knowledge inputs it can write code, produce music, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":253668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[46,50,14],"tags":[69,52,53,37,294,55,94,57],"class_list":["post-253665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-support","category-scale","category-technology","tag-automation","tag-chat","tag-chatbot","tag-customer-support","tag-generative-ai","tag-knowledge-base","tag-knowledge-management","tag-self-help","post_outcome-adopt-best-practices","post_outcome-deliver-support-effectively","post_outcome-scale-delivery-capability","post_activity-automate","post_activity-customer-success","post_activity-knowledge-management","post_activity-self-help","post_activity-self-help-and-automation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253665"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254831,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253665\/revisions\/254831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servicexrg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}