Integration of conversational AI platform with the customer service tools allows businesses to attain economies of scale and better customer interactions. We look at how customer service integrations benefit your company and common tools you should integrate.

Customer service is a key point of differentiation that exists in the business world. With changing business scenarios and customer demands, companies need to integrate their customer support and service platforms with various tools that can provide delightful customer service.

To meet customer demands, companies are looking to adopt conversational AI. And why not. Forbes suggests that 70% of millennials report positive conversational AI experiences. 

Without a doubt, the two are connected. But understanding the importance of customer service integrations with your conversational AI platform and finding the appropriate tools is a must. 

In this article, we will cover:

1. What is customer service integration? 
2. Why are customer service integrations important for businesses’ success?
3. Why should you integrate your conversational AI platform with other tools?
4. 5 prominent categories for customer service integration
5. Customer service integration with conversational AI: the future of business

Let’s take a look. 

What is customer service integration? 

It is the integration of customer service tools with another platform to get a unified view of all customer data in one place. It ensures a personalised and convenient customer experience. 

The most common categories under customer service integrations include CRMs, ticketing platforms, payment channels, marketing platforms, messaging channels, etc. 

One must understand the importance of customer service integrations before adopting the tools to do so. Though there are multiple tools available, we must compare and contrast them to get a result that works both for the business and the customer.

Why are customer service integrations important for success?

Customer interactions are changing these days. With the rapid digitisation of communication, messaging channels are increasingly being adopted. Chatbots will reach a 90% success rate in customer service interactions by 2022, Juniper Research suggests. 

But these aren’t your regular flow-based chatbots that we are talking about. Your business will see this result if you are using a conversational AI chatbot that is integrated with your tools to provide a seamless and personalised experience. 

“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.” – Ken Blanchard

The integrations depend on what your customers are asking for in their journey. To ensure a positive experience, companies need to pay attention to their demands. As Salesforce research suggests, 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience.

If you are looking for more reasons to give customers what they want, Bain & Company’s research showed that improving customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by between 25–95%. 

The crucial reasons why customer service integration decides the success of a business are:

• Saves time and money by reducing manual work
• Facilitates automation of repetitive tasks
• Offers the opportunity to access information seamlessly, for example, during a live chat
• Boosts personalised messages by customising information
• Improves overall productivity by reducing to-and-fro from one platform to another
• Increases customer satisfaction by providing quick and personalised information
• Builds the loyalty of customers and employees

Suggested Reading: Faster, Smarter, Better — AI is Improving Customer Service

Why should you integrate your conversational AI platform with other tools?

Aimed towards offering a high degree of customer satisfaction and building loyalty, customer service integrations with conversational AI offer multifold benefits to the business. SalesForce reported that 66% of customers are willing to pay for seamless digital interactions, which emphasises its high demand.

Integration of conversational AI platform with the customer service tools allows the business to attain economies of scale and better customer satisfaction. Streamlining various processes in the business, customer service integrations with conversational AI offer the competitive advantage of reach and accessibility as well.

Though the benefits of customer service integrations are real and manifold, selecting the best tool is equally important. In the next section, we look at 5 categories of tools you should integrate your conversational AI platform with. 

5 prominent categories for customer service integration

Statista reported that 34% of retail customers feel comfortable chatting with customer service through an AI chatbot, rather than live chat. To build an efficient customer service integration strategy with conversational AI, one can adopt any of the following tools for visible results:

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System and Ticketing Platforms

One of the finest and most important customer service integrations is the CRM tool. A chief aim of businesses is to build and manage customer relationships, for which the CRM tool is crucial.

Keeping a record of customer interactions, their current dealings, and queries can help the business to offer customers the most appropriate solutions. A one-stop solution to track all generated leads, CRM systems help businesses grow.

Some examples of CRMs and ticketing platforms are Salesforce, HubSpot, Freshdesk, Zendesk etc. 

By integrating with your CRM and ticketing platform, you can pull in relevant information about the customer and personalise the communication. It also empowers agents by giving them a unified view of the customer, reducing their time to toggle between tools. 

Another advantage of integrating your conversational AI platform with your CRM is that new customer data gets automatically synced. This eliminated the post conversation time agents used to spend. 

2. Marketing management system

Marketing management systems are specialised tools for each marketing discipline, such as demand generation, email marketing, marketing automation and analytics.

When integrated with chatbots or conversational AI, it helps get direct feedback from the customer and optimise the marketing strategies required for improved reach.

Examples of marketing management tools include Clevertap, Capillary, WebEngage, ipdata etc. 

For the marketing function, this integration helps gather more customer information. It gives them more visibility into customer behaviour. The more you understand the customer the better strategy and data-driven targeting/segmenting you can create. This way, you can maximise your ROI and get started with conversational marketing. 

3. Payment channels

An integrated payment channel helps optimise and streamline business processes involved in making payments. They can be tailored to the business and customers they serve. 

As a modern mode of payment, integration of your payment gateway with your conversational AI platform offers a robust payment experience during the point of sale. 

Razorpay, CCAvenue, Xendit, PayPal, Faspay, Cash U are some examples of payment gateways. 

The benefits of integrating your payment platform with your conversational AI platform is that speeds up the process provide customers with completing their payments without changing the communication channel (like WhatsApp) and personalises their experiences. This improves customer satisfaction. 

Suggested Reading: Level-up CX by Integrating Payment Gateways with Chatbots

4. Messaging channels

Customers are looking for an omnichannel experience. They want to communicate with businesses on different messaging platforms. And there are many benefits of being available for your customers where they are. 

You see higher engagement, interactive communication, faster response and resolution of issues, among other things. 

Messaging channels could be anything from instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Viber to social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram. 

Integrating your customer service conversational AI platform with your messaging channels help you get closer to your customers and expand your reach.

Not only are the customers happy, but the agents are also happy with this integration too. They don’t have to log in to different platforms to respond to customers. For them, they get a unified customer query view with the benefits of conversational AI. A win-win situation for your business. 

5. Others

There are many other integrations that you could benefit from. If your conversational AI platform doesn’t provide analytics and a dashboard, you can integrate with a tool that does and track the performance. 

A product analytics system analyses user interaction with products to focus on features that deliver the most engaging and useful experience.

Integration with employees’ engagement system collects feedback to determine job satisfaction, employee engagement and motivation. This customer service integration help to train better, facilitating employee growth.

These tools can also depend on your industry and requirements. Some examples include Shopify, Magento, Clearbit, Core Banking Solutions (e.g. Finacle), Google Maps, etc. 

Customer service integration with conversational AI: the future of business

As businesses move ahead in the competitive environment by focusing on various integrations and development, the use of customer service tools with AI has increased exponentially. Offering meaningful insights about multiple areas and helping the business respond effectively have improved profitability. 

SalesForce has reported that 66% of companies see increased tickets and service requests from digital channels. At the same time, chatbots are projected to save $0.70 per customer interaction, suggests CNBC.  

To improve the overall customer service integration, it is important to implement successful and seamless conversational AI. Customer service integration using conversational AI and digital tools to manage the business and customers effectively will drastically improve the customer experience.