If you watch any movie depicting Artificial Intelligence (AI) as superhuman and wonder why, just know that it’s because AI is actually super at doing what humans do.
Your next question might be, “Why do we need AI in customer support?”

Well, according to 90% of customer service leaders, customer expectations are at an all-time high. So you need some superhuman ability to meet that demand.
In this playbook, we’ll give you everything you need to use AI properly to provide the best customer service and support results.
You’ll know what AI tools are available for daily use cases while supporting your customers. You’ll also learn how to use the tools for the most benefits.
Make your customers feel more connected to your business. Use the TelebuSocial chatbot builder to create happy customer support experiences on WhatsApp and other social channels. Get started with a FREE trial. Or Get a demo. |
What is AI, and why is it a game-changer in customer support?
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. I believe you already know that.
But as far as definitions go, let’s stick with Britannica, which says, “Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.”
So, think of Artificial Intelligence as a smart, computer-based helper that can learn from data, understand language, and perform tasks without human intervention.

Cool right?
And if you choose to use AI for your customer support, it can provide faster, more personalised, and cost-effective customer support for your business.
Let’s go into more detail about these benefits.
Check out: best customer experience platforms.
What are the benefits of AI for your businesses and customers?
Your business and customers get 5 main benefits from AI in customer support:
- 24/7 availability: Unlike humans, AI can provide support around the clock, catering to your customers in different time zones or late-night shoppers. You get a 24/7 available “employee” while your customers get support whenever needed.
- Speedy responses: AI chatbots can instantly answer your common customer queries. No more long holds for your customers to get a response to their queries.
- Personalisation: AI can analyse customer data and offer recommendations that suit their preferences and behaviour. This can make your customers feel special.
- Cost-efficiency: With AI handling your routine tasks, you’ll need a smaller support team, which means you’ll save business costs.
- Data analysis: AI can quickly crunch through tons of data to spot trends that’ll help you understand your customers’ behaviour nd help you serve them better.
With these mouth-watery benefits in mind, you must wonder how to start using AI to support your customers.
Learn: how to enhance customer experience.
Getting started with AI-powered support
Let’s jump straight into it.
It starts with choosing the right AI tool.
We created a playbook for customer support agents to equip them with the skills they need to put smiles on your customers’ faces. Check it out and share it with your team.
How do you choose the right AI tools and technology?
Like Bill Gates said, “AI is your friend”. And there are over 10,00 AI ‘friends’ for more than 2200 tasks – so choosing one may be difficult.
Check out :
- Best chatbot solutions in the market
- Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions (50+ Customisable Templates)
- How to Enhance Customer Experience in Your Company: 7 Ways According to The Experts
But with a guide, it shouldn’t be a hassle.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right AI tools for customer support:
- Define your goals: State, in fact, write down what you want to accomplish. Do you want to improve response times, handle more inquiries, or enhance personalisation? Decide.
- Assess your needs: Look at your current customer support processes and identify the time and resources you spend on providing support. This will help you narrow down your options.
- Budget considerations: AI solutions vary in price. Determine how much you’re willing to invest.
- Scalability: Choose AI software that can expand and shrink to your business needs. You don’t want to outgrow your AI solution quickly.
- User-friendliness: Consider the tech-savviness of your support team. Complicated systems can lead to frustration.
- Integration: Check if the AI tools can easily integrate with your existing systems and software. Seamless integration saves time and effort.
- Trial runs: Many AI providers offer trials. Take advantage of this to see if the tool fits your needs.
- Reviews and recommendations: Research what others in your industry use.
- Customer support: Ironically, make sure the AI tools you choose have good customer support. You might need help along the way.
You may need to stitch AI with your existing support software and flow. Let’s talk a little bit about how to do that effectively.
Learn: how to measure customer experience.
How do you integrate AI with your existing support systems?
Here are some tips to make the process smoother:
- Evaluate your current systems: Begin by assessing your existing customer support systems to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
- Choose the right AI tools: Select AI tools with integration capabilities (like APIs and plugins) that can work with your current systems.
- Data integration: AI thrives on data. Ensure your AI system can seamlessly access and analyse data from your existing systems.
- Start small: Don’t attempt a complete overhaul at once. Start with a specific task, like using AI chatbots to handle common queries. Once that’s running smoothly, expand to other areas.
- Training and familiarisation: Train your customer support team on effectively working with AI tools. They should understand how AI complements their work.
- Monitor and fine-tune: Keep a close eye on how the new AI tool performs. Regularly monitor its effectiveness and gather feedback from your support team.
- Customer communication: Stay transparent with your customers about introducing AI. Let them know how AI will improve their experience and how they can still reach a human agent if needed.
Remember, AI integration is not a one-time task – it’s an ongoing refinement and optimisation process.
Now, let’s discuss what exactly you can do with AI.
9 AI customer support use cases
Let me show you 9 ways you can use AI for customer support.
1. Answering predefined questions
Handling FAQs can be more delightful for your business and customers, especially when AI is involved. This can drastically reduce your operators’ calls by about 40%.
Let me show you the difference.
Providing customer support without AI
When a customer asks a question, your support team gets to work.
They probably read the question and start digging through your company’s knowledge base to find the correct answer.
Once they’ve found the answer, they’d craft a reply before sending it to the customer.
This method can be time-consuming, especially when loads of similar questions flood in.
Plus, the quality of responses might vary depending on how busy your support agents are.
And let’s not forget, your support team works only during business hours, which might not match up with when your customers need help. If you have customers in multiple time zones, you also get the gist.

Providing customer support with AI
Here’s where AI speeds up the entire process.
AI systems, like TelebuSocial AI chatbot, use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand your customers’ questions.
Then, in seconds, they grab the right answers from your predefined list of FAQs and docs and immediately send them to your customers.
The best part?
AI customer support systems can tackle many questions simultaneously without breaking a sweat. And they’re available 24/7 to answer your customers’ questions pronto.
So, whether it’s 3 PM or 3 AM in any time zone, your customers quickly get the help they need.

AI adds more speed and efficiency to your customer support and keeps those smiles on your customers’ faces.
Understand: customer experience from A-Z.
2. Answering general customer service inquiries
So, how do you deal with questions outside the scope of your predefined list of FAQs?
Let’s look at both scenarios.

Answering queries without AI
Your customer support team receives a barrage of inquiries.
As each question lands in their queue, your agents look at the question and check the list of FAQs to be sure that none of them answers this question.
Then, they check other documents in your knowledge base to write a fitting response.
This process can sometimes take a while, depending on the complexity of the question. As a result, the customer might have to hang on for minutes or hours before getting an answer.
Plus, sometimes your team doesn’t catch every detail, leading to occasional inconsistent responses.
Answering queries with AI
Now, imagine you’ve got AI-powered customer service tools at your service. They can decipher customer questions, no matter how they’re phrased. This is possible due to NLP.
An AI-powered customer support system can swiftly sift through your knowledge base and find the perfect answers in a few minutes.
Then, they’ll send these answers back to your customers. And with each new question, your AI system becomes better at this task and faster at producing the answers.
If the question is too complex for the AI to understand, it’ll alert one of your human agents to take it up.
Just think of how ChatGPT and all the GPT-powered AI assistants work. You can have the same to help your customers use your products better.
3. Helping operators as a reply assistant
Let’s assume you don’t trust AI to handle itself. But you want to ease the work process for your operators.
Here’s how AI can help you in this scenario.
Searching through folders and manuals or searching through their knowledge base to find the right responses can be time-consuming.
During peak hours, the risk of human error increases.

Helping operators with AI
AI assistants are quick learners. They observe how your operators respond to various queries and learn from their interactions.
Over time, they become pros at understanding customer questions and suggesting the most fitting responses.
So, when your operators are flooded with questions, the AI reply assistant can instantly present them with well-crafted responses based on what it’s learned.
Your operators can then review and send these responses with a simple click, saving time.
Remember auto-suggestion on your keyboard when typing? It’s just like it, but way more powerful.
TelebuSocial is a good example of an AI tool that provides this service. TelebuSocial provides the chatbot service and the chatbot builder on all channels. It is used mostly for automated customer support and sales qualifications.
These AI chatbot assistants maintain consistent response quality and can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, ensuring no customer is left hanging even during peak periods.
4. Analysing and predicting customer behaviour
If you can anticipate your customers’ needs, more will stay with your business.
This task can seem daunting for human support operatives but not for AI.
Predicting customer behaviour without AI
Without AI, analysing customer intents can become labour-intensive and time-consuming.
Your team would manually review many customer interactions, such as emails, chats, or calls.
They’d have to identify patterns, keywords, and the context behind each interaction to determine customer intents. This process is not only slow, but it might lead to missed insights.

Predicting customer behaviour with AI
Now, an AI-driven customer service system with natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning can swiftly analyse all those customer interactions. It can detect patterns, keywords, sentiment, and context accurately.
Here’s how it works: AI algorithms continuously learn from the data.
They recognise common phrases, questions, and emotional cues that indicate specific intents, such as customer inquiries, complaints, or praise.
AI can categorise these intents, providing valuable insights into what your customers are looking for or concerned about.
GPT-powered AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, Gemini, Replicant, etc, can help you analyse customer messages to understand their sentiments.
I used ChatGPT to analyse a long list of customer comments to understand their sentiments.
This is the prompt.

This is part of the comments I sent to ChatGPT.

Here’s the output.

ChatGPT also has an API so that you can do all of these in your own customer service software. No need to copy and paste every time.
With AI, you gain a real-time dashboard that displays trends and the most prevalent intents.
AI takes the heavy lifting out of intent analysis, freeing your team to use these insights to enhance your products, services, customer experiences, and support strategies.
5. Segmenting your customers
Categorising your audience enables you to provide personalised experiences.
Many of your customers will likely leave if they don’t get a personalised experience from your business.
So how do you segment your customers more efficiently?
Let’s explore how the process typically plays out with and without AI assisting.
Segmenting your audience without AI
Traditionally, audience segmentation involves manual processes and analyses. Your team would need to collect and sift through large datasets from various sources.
Depending on the size of your business, this process can be time-consuming and may not uncover all relevant segments.
And if you get it wrong, you could miss opportunities for targeted marketing and personalised customer experiences.
Here’s what a segmentation dashboard looks like (from a random software).

Segmenting your audience with AI
Now, here’s how AI can transform audience segmentation:
AI can instantly analyse vast amounts of customer data, identify patterns and trends within your audience, and continuously update segments based on evolving behaviours.
This ensures your targeting remains current.
Furthermore, AI facilitates A/B testing on segmented audiences, enabling you to fine-tune your strategies continually.
In essence, AI makes audience segmentation smarter and more dynamic.
It enables you to understand your customers on a deeper level, anticipate their needs, and engage with them on a personal level.
You can use AI tools like Yellow.ai for this.
6. Giving tailored recommendations
Giving recommendations to your customers cannot be a hit-and-miss activity. You must be precise, or you’ll lose your sales opportunity.
So how does it work?
Providing tailored recommendations without AI
Traditionally, tailoring recommendations to individual customers or segments involves reviewing each customer’s purchase history, preferences, and browsing behaviour.
You can’t escape these tasks, and your human team is limited in its ability to process large datasets effectively.
Providing tailored recommendations with AI
On the other hand, AI can quickly process vast amounts of customer data. It can detect what products are often bought together and uncover customer preferences.
Also, AI doesn’t stop at a one-time recommendation. It continuously adapts and updates recommendations based on each customer’s evolving preferences and behaviour.
AI can identify opportunities for cross-selling related products or upselling higher-value items, increasing your average order value. Businesses like Amazon use it to get you to add more items to your cart.

If your business includes articles or videos, AI can recommend the most relevant article or video to each user, increasing engagement and retention.
What am I saying here?
AI takes the guesswork out of tailoring recommendations. It uses customer data to provide customers with precisely what they’re looking for, often before they even realise it themselves.
You can use Cresta to do this for your business.
7. Onboarding customers
You only get 7 seconds to make a first impression on your customers.
Yes, you read that right, 7 seconds!
So, how do you make that count?
Onboarding customers without AI
Traditional customer onboarding can be resource-intensive and a drag.
Your team may need to collect and verify documents, set up accounts, and manually guide customers through the steps with back-and-forth communication.
This not only takes time but can also lead to errors and delays.
But you can provide a seamless and efficient onboarding experience with AI-powered chatbots or virtual assistants.
Onboarding audience with AI

Here’s how it works.
Chatbots answer common questions, provide step-by-step instructions, and offer personalised recommendations based on customer data.
They are available around the clock, accommodating customers in different time zones or those who prefer self-service outside regular business hours.
AI can also automatically scan and verify customer-provided documents to ensure accuracy and security. It simplifies data entry by extracting relevant information from forms and documents, reducing the need for manual input.
If you don’t need an agent to onboard every customer 1-on-1, your onboarding process will be way faster.
What does this mean to your business?
More onboarded customers, fewer resources.
You can use TelebuSocial to set up an onboarding chatbot on your website, WhatsApp or any other social platform.
8. Tracking orders and deliveries
Your customers must remain constantly updated about the status of the products they have ordered.
That’s why the easier you make the tracking process, the better it will be for you and them.
Tracking without AI

Your customers probably track deliveries by relying on periodic email updates, SMS notifications, or visiting a carrier’s website to check the status of their package.
The process requires constant monitoring and often leads to frustration due to delays or lack of real-time information.
This results in increased customer inquiries about the whereabouts of their deliveries, tying up your support resources because 96% of your customers are tracking their orders.
Can you handle that manually? Maybe.
But at the expense of losing customers due to bad customer service
This is where AI comes into play again.
Tracking with AI

AI-powered chatbots or virtual assistants can send real-time updates and notifications via the customer’s preferred communication channels.
These AI assistants can track shipments, monitor their progress, and provide customers with accurate and timely information via chat.
AI’s ability to anticipate and address delivery issues makes this even more powerful.
Take this for an example.
The AI system can automatically notify the customer if a package encounters unexpected delays.
AI can also apologise for the inconvenience and provide alternative solutions or delivery options.
This reduces frustration and frees your support staff to focus on more complex customer issues.
You can use the TelebuSocial AI chatbot to set up chatbots to help your customers track their orders anytime.
9. Processing product returns
This isn’t any business’s favourite, but it comes up more often than we want.
And how you handle product returns is almost as important as how you handle deliveries.
It’s all about the customers’ experience.
So, how is it different to handle returns with and without AI?
Let’s find out.
Handling returns without AI
Your customers may start the process through your website or contacting your customer service team. They’ll try to understand your return policies.
Then, they’ll fill out forms and wait for shipping labels.
Your support agents would review the requests, assess the condition of the items, and decide whether to process refunds or replacements.
This manual method comes with several challenges.
It can cause delays in processing returns, misunderstandings, and customer frustration.
Moreover, it consumes much of your support team’s time, diverting their focus from more essential tasks.

Handling returns with AI
In the AI-enabled approach, your customers initiate returns through a user-friendly interface on your website, app or social media chatbot.
AI-driven virtual assistants or chatbots guide customers through the process step by step.

The system can answer questions, provide clear instructions, and explain your return policies clearly.
AI chatbots can instantly generate return shipping labels, sparing customers from waiting for emails or physical labels. It can also help customers assess whether their return meets your criteria for a refund or replacement.
For example, it can analyse images of the returned product to determine its condition.
AI can automatically approve returns and initiate refunds or replacement shipments in straightforward cases.
Learn Expert Tips on How to Effectively Manage Customer Support Agents
And in more complex situations, AI can escalate the issue to one of your human agents, ensuring that every return receives the necessary attention. Beyond streamlining the return process, AI also provides valuable data analysis capabilities.
It can analyse return data to identify trends and reasons for returns.
This information can be invaluable for improving product quality and customer satisfaction. By implementing AI in the return process, your team will reduce the time and effort required for returns, leading to faster resolution and happier customers.
And if you think this isn’t so important, you should know that 92% of your customers would buy again if the return process is easy.
You can use the TelebuSocial AI chatbot to help your customers track their orders anytime.
AI tools to help you serve your customers
Below are some of these AI tools you can use for your business.
AI tool | Use case | Pricing tiers | How to get started |
TelebuSocial | Customer onboarding, responding to questions, 24/7 customer care via chatbots | Free trial and affordable packages. | Sign up for free to start right away |
Amelia | Responding to predefined questions, general customer care, and agent assist | Not made public | Amelia: Conversational AI for Customer Service |
Cresta | Agent assist, customer recommendation | Not publicly available | Cresta Agent Assist Overview |
IBM Watson Assistant | Agent assist, responding to predefined questions, general customer care | Lite – Free, Plus – $140 monthly, Enterprise – customised | Getting Started with IBM Watson |
Replicant | Customer intent analysis, customer recommendation, customer onboarding, delivery tracking, self-service | Not publicly available | Replicant Interactive Demo |
Yellow.ai | Processing returns, customer segmentation, onboarding customers, general customer care | Free, Enterprise – customised | How to get started with Yellow AI |
Crisp | Agent assist, responding to predefined questions | Free, Pro – $25, Unlimited – $95 Monthly | Crisp Unleash |
Moveo | General customer support | Pro – from $100 monthly, Enterprise. | Môveo. AI Guides |
User Evaluation | Customer segmenting, Customer recommendation | Free, Personal – from $39, Plus – from $209 monthly | User Evaluation Guides |
The future of customer support
AI customer support’s future looks promising based on current trends and emerging technologies.
Below are some specific predictions for the future of customer support AI.
Discover customer experience trends you need to know.
1. Human-like assistance
AI will be able to understand and respond to customer inquiries more naturally and in a human-like way.
This will be due to advances in conversational AI and machine learning.
2. Predictive customer support
AI will be used to develop more personalised customer support experiences. AI can currently recommend products or services to customers based on their preferences.
In the future, AI will also be able to proactively identify and contact customers likely to churn.
3. Account management
AI will be employed to develop virtual assistants that regularly help customers manage their accounts and subscriptions.
These virtual assistants will be capable of assisting customers in changing passwords, updating billing information, and placing, cancelling, or modifying subscriptions and orders.
4. Enhanced self-service
AI will help in developing more sophisticated self-service tools.
This will allow your customers to resolve their issues without contacting one of your customer support agents.
No long waits for your customers, and your agents remain free to do other urgent work.
5. Agent support tools
AI will help improve the efficiency of your customer support teams.
For example, AI can automate the routing and scheduling of customer inquiries. AI can also provide customer support agents with real-time insights and recommendations.
Check out:The Complete Customer Support Agent Playbook (A-Z Guide)
AI is poised to transform the customer support landscape in the coming years.
Get AI-ready with TelebuSocial
With the 9 use cases highlighted above, we’ve seen how AI speeds up every customer service process, making everything easier. This benefits not only your customers but also your operators and agents.
All you need to do next is select an AI tool such as TelebuSocial that provides easy-to-build and deploy chatbots on your website, app, WhatsApp and other social media channels.
TelebuSocial enables you to integrate AI into your communication and customer service easily.
Sign up now or book a free demo to see the benefits of using TelebuSocial for your customer services.
Meaning of words used
- A/B Testing: Comparing two versions of a webpage, email, or other content to determine which performs better in achieving a specific goal, like higher conversion rates.
- Agent: A customer support representative who provides assistance to customers.
- Average First Response Time (AFRT): The average time a customer support agent takes to respond to a customer inquiry.
- Average Handle Time (AHT): The average time a customer support agent takes to resolve a customer issue.
- Chatbot: A computer program or AI-driven application that can simulate a conversation with human users, often used for customer support or information retrieval.
- Churn Rate: The rate customers stop using a product or service over a specific period, typically expressed as a percentage.
- Crisis management: Handling and mitigating negative situations, such as customer complaints or public relations crises, to protect a company’s reputation.
- Cross-selling: Offering customers related or complementary products or services based on their current purchases.
- Customer Experience (CX): A customer’s overall impression and perception of a company, shaped by all interactions and touchpoints with the brand.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A strategy and/or technology for managing and analysing customer interactions and data.
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): A measure of customers’ satisfaction with the products or services they have received. CSAT is often measured through surveys or feedback forms.
- Customer service: The broader concept that encompasses all interactions and experiences a customer has with a company, including support, inquiries, and problem resolution.
- Customer support: Assistance provided to customers before, during, or after they purchase a product or service/
- Empathy: The ability of customer support agents to demonstrate understanding the feelings and perspectives of customers.
- Escalation: Moving a customer support issue to a higher level of authority or expertise when frontline agents cannot resolve it.
- Feedback: Information and comments provided by customers about their experiences with a product or service, often used for improvement.
- Help desk: A department or team within a company that provides customer support.
- Knowledge base: A collection of information about a company’s products or services that customer support agents use to answer customer inquiries.
- KPI (Key Performance Indicator): A measurable value used to evaluate a company’s success or a specific aspect of its operations, such as customer satisfaction or response time.
- Omnichannel: Providing a seamless and consistent customer experience across various channels, including online, in-store, mobile, and social media.
- Personalisation: Tailoring products, services, or interactions to meet individual customers’ preferences and needs.
- Self-service: The ability of customers to resolve their issues without contacting customer support. Self-service tools can include knowledge bases, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides.
- SLA (Service Level Agreement): A formal commitment regarding the level of service a customer can expect, including response times, issue resolution times, and support availability.
- Ticket: A record of a customer inquiry or issue tracked by a customer support team.
- Tiered support: A system of customer support where customers are routed to different levels of support depending on the complexity of their issue.
- Upselling: Encouraging customers to purchase additional or upgraded products or services beyond their initial purchase.