“Can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I actually enjoyed that chat experience!”
“I prefer to get support over chat than over the phone… so much faster!”
“I definitely would recommend getting help through chat first. It’s right there when I need it.”
This is the kind of feedback that we all dream our live chat can receive. So why is it so hard to meet customer expectations to get their inquiries resolved faster?
Maybe it’s the constant struggle to get all the context you need, or maybe you’ve never had the staffing capacity to manage live chat alongside your other channels.
AI is changing the game for live chat. It’s making in-the-moment support accessible for teams who would’ve never thought they would have bandwidth to manage it. Now, with the all new version of Front Chat, teams can automate resolutions with AI Answers and give customers personalized support in real time. Our revamped chatbots make handoffs to your service team smoother than ever for a seamless customer experience.
Excited for these updates? So are we. Let’s dive in 🤿
AI Answers: Instant customer service, increased team focus.
Let’s be honest, 80% of your customer inquiries can be addressed by your help center. That means your customers could self-serve their own resolutions faster while your agents focus on the more complex inquiries. But who wants to comb through help center articles looking for an answer?
AI Answers powers up Front Chat with AI responses based on your support content. Customers get their issues resolved instantly—no more searching for answers or waiting for your team to respond. The time saved on these more straightforward inquiries allows your team to focus on the nuanced issues that need their expertise. Wondering how to get started? Setup takes just two simple steps:
Choose what AI will learn from, whether it be your Front knowledge base or any link to your third-party knowledge source (Note: the third-party knowledge source feature is still in beta testing and results may vary while it is refined)
Add AI Answers as a new step in your Front Chat chatbot
AI Answers only references your designated knowledge source for responses, ensuring accuracy and complete control over information being shared with your customers. At the end of the chat, AI Answers will ask whether or not it resolved the question. This feedback, plus performance metrics like AI participation and resolution rate, let you know what help center content needs to be created or improved.
AI Answers is available as an add-on to Front customers on the latest Growth plans and above. Pricing is $0.70 per AI resolution, meaning you’re only charged if AI resolves a conversation without it reaching your team. Pricing reflects licensing costs associated with AI providers we partner with and the value of ensuring faster, more consistent customer service. See how teams are using AI Answers to reduce their workload.
How teams are using AI Answers to uplevel service
Unlocking real-time service without staffing live chat
Structured, a productivity app with over 1.5 million monthly active users, handles thousands of new chats per week without staffing a live chat team. Bot flows direct users to various self-service paths, most of which conclude with an AI Answers step that responds based on their help center content. The team keeps a close eye on their chatbot performance metrics and is constantly refining help center content to improve their resolution rate and overall speed of service.
"AI has enabled new self-service possibilities for our customers, as we don’t staff a live chat team. Instead we offer escalation to our team via email and their workload was cut by as much as 10% within a few weeks of adding AI Answers. We definitely think users are more satisfied with the AI responses as well!"
- Kevin Kimmig, Director of Customer Communication, Structured
Improving client experience with instant resolutions
Boundless Immigration, an immigration services firm helping over 1,000 clients build a global workforce, uses AI Answers to provide faster service to their clients without sacrificing quality. Immigration issues can be incredibly personal and time-sensitive, so speed of service goes a long way toward building trust. Up to 51% of inquiries Boundless directs to AI Answers are resolved instantly, dramatically improving the chat experience for clients.
“Resolution rates have been amazing, but it’s really all about CX for us. We’re just happy customers are getting faster and more consistent resolutions in chat.”
- Erik Finch, Director of Operations, Boundless Immigration
Fast tracking live chat by offloading basic inquiries to AI
Enchanted Fairies, a portrait studio franchise with over 40 locations, knew the top two reasons their clients would start a chat: to clarify the location of the nearest studio or to update their appointment time. All the details about each location are contained in their help center, so AI Answers was able to handle the majority of those requests. That freed up their team to make appointment updates faster and improve service to clients.
"AI Answers has reduced the workload for our team by hundreds of chats per month and made my team’s life a lot easier managing our chatbot and help center. We’ve been incredibly happy with the accuracy of AI Answers, with 50% of chats that reach the AI resolved instantly.”
- Christopher Rensink, Founder & Chief Revenue Officer, Enchanted Fairies
The one-way ticket to efficiency at scale
When chatbots do the heavy lifting collecting information and routing inquiries efficiently, teams feel the impact—and customers notice the difference. Check out the latest improvements to chatbots and Front Chat’s team experience that will keep those 5-star reviews coming in.
Chatbots just got more personal
Asking customers to provide the same information again and again is a frustrating experience. Especially for complex requests, the last thing any customer wants to do is to click through a bunch of steps.
To help you streamline this experience, chatbots are getting a whole lot smarter with dynamic variables that power more personalization. Now you can branch or respond with visitor data from their web activity, browser, device, or related contact and account CRM records.
By building visitor data into the flow itself, chatbots only need to ask for essential information and can resolve inquiries more efficiently. The result is a better experience for customers and more context for teams.
Customer data can be integrated from your CRM like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Microsoft Dynamics. Here are just a few ways teams are building more delightful experiences:
Customize chatbot flows by time of day
Route chat visitors based on their preferred language or IP location
Separate chatbot flows to qualify new prospects or troubleshoot existing customer inquiries faster
Provide billing and status information unique to each contact or account to automatically resolve inquiries
Dynamic variables for chatbots are progressively rolling out to customers in the coming weeks. Contact [email protected] to request early access and keep your eyes peeled 👀
Easier than ever for teams to use
Live chat is the bridge between instant service and more complex interactions with your team. To manage live chat well, teams need to have all the context, channels, and internal collaboration easily accessible.
With the revamped Front Chat user experience, efficient internal collaboration is crucial to help move live chat conversations forward. Conversations that can’t be handled in real time can easily transition from chat to email for seamless follow ups with “Reply via email”.
Any plan can get started with Front Chat, and our brand new onboarding experience walks you through the channel and inbox setup, chat widget deployment, and AI chatbot development.
Replacing phone support with live chat decreased our support costs by 14%, saving an estimated $100k per year. We were more efficient after consolidating all of our channels into one platform—plus, Front Chat was so quick and easy to set up!
- Elizabeth Sanchez, Senior Customer Support Manager, Spruce
The key to exceptional service? An empowered team.
In this new age of AI, instant responses to straightforward inquiries will become the norm — where businesses stand out will depend on how they handle the complex, nuanced interactions. Those who get it right will outshine the rest because of better coordination across teams, more accessible context, and consolidated channels.
Front is the best-in-class platform for teams to collaborate around customer communication. With the next generation of Front Chat, we’re excited to help businesses efficiently deliver exceptional service.
Ready to give Front Chat a whirl? Sign up now or head over to the help center if you’re already a customer. Happy chatting!
Written by Mike Hill
Originally Published: 16 April 2024