ChatGPT has quickly become a household name when it showed the world how far Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come in recent years. But the truth is, advanced AI has already been a thing in customer service for many years!
Large language models like ChatGPT proved that intelligent chatbots and conversational AI aren’t just nice ideas, they’re real and an important part of modern businesses.
What is ChatGPT and how does it work?
ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot that interacts with users in a conversational way. It’s powered by GPT-4, the largest model ever trained, to produce coherent and context-aware replies.
It was developed and launched by OpenAI, an American research lab, in November 2022. OpenAI was best known for their DALL-E image generator before ChatGPT, which uses a deep learning model to create digital images from natural language descriptions. For example the prompt “Renaissance painting of a person sitting in an office cubicle, typing on keyboard, stressed”, shows a result that might look like a true image from the renaissance.
ChatGPT uses its large data source to process text and learn to effectively perform tasks with a natural language. Since it’s generative AI, it can create new sentences each time you ask it a question.
How do customer support AI chatbots compare to ChatGPT?
An AI chatbot is a software program designed to simulate conversation with human users, usually via text-based messaging interfaces such as live chat, messaging apps or SMS.
AI chatbots use natural language processing (NLP), machine learning and other algorithms to understand and interpret the user input and respond with relevant information or actions accordingly.
AI chatbots can have free-flowing conversations with users and often learn from the conversation, which improves the quality of their replies.
Today, advanced AI chatbots are easier to build and more readily available than ever before. Providers, such as Userlike, can supply customers with customer-facing chatbots that can speak like a human, answer a large variety of support requests and increase customer engagement.
Though GPT-4 is impressive, it’s still in the beginning stages of being adapted for businesses and maturing as a service. There are risks involved with using a bot connected to a large information source that constantly changes its answers. Customer support chatbots that pull information from your knowledge base and are data privacy-compliant are currently the better choice for most businesses.
Not to say there isn’t a lot to learn from ChatGPT. GDPR-friendly solutions, like the AI Automation Hub from Userlike, are exploring ways to integrate the power of GPT-4 but with a focus on practicality and safety for your business first.
Advantages of chatbots in customer service
Chatbots have proved their worth in customer service and businesses using them are reaping the benefits. If you don’t have a chatbot yet, here’s what you’re missing out on!
First, chatbots save time, money and resources by taking over routine tasks and assisting customers with their questions, all day every day.
An AI chatbot is also more pleasant to interact with than standard chatbots, since it uses conversational AI and natural language processing and understanding (NLP and NLU). It understands context and pull answers from a knowledge base instead of relying on a predetermined decision tree.
It also helps with lead generation and personalizing customer experiences. A chatbot can collect data, qualify leads, build customer profiles, make recommendations and much more.
Some of the benefits of using a chatbot
Boosts customer engagement: Your website 20 seconds max to capture a visitors attention. Just like an in-store assistant, a proactive chatbot can immediately reach out to your customers and guide them through your sales funnel.
Qualifies leads: By asking key questions and collecting contact information during a chat, a chatbot can successfully qualify leads and forward interesting ones to your agents for follow-up.
Cuts service costs: Chatbots can’t replace agents, but they can help cut down your business’ service costs by up to 30%. They respond quickly and accurately to customer support inquiries, freeing up time for your human agents to do other important tasks.
Works perfectly with live chat: Using a chatbot connected to your live chat solution makes handovers between chatbot and agent quick and easy. Agents can also monitor the chatbot’s performance and chats directly in the message center so nothing is missed.
Available 24/7: Chatbots can provide instant, real-time assistance whenever it’s needed. If your customers are active after business hours, chatbots can answer simple questions and recommend product pages, blog posts and tutorials.
Gives your company a voice: When face-to-face contact isn’t possible, chatbots can help shape customers’ perception of your company. You have full creative control over your chatbot so you can edit its tone of voice and appearance to fit your brand image.
Easy to maintain: Once you get past the initial setup, you can easily monitor your chatbots conversations and improve its performance based on new insights.
Example of an AI chatbot in customer service
Userlike is the leading provider of live chat, customer messaging and service automation in Germany. Besides a central inbox for all your messaging channels and a modern website messenger, the all-in-one-software also provides an advanced AI chatbot.
Userlikes AI chatbot is a self-learning solution built for customer support. It pulls its answers from your central knowledge base, which grows and improves over time from conversations with users.
It’s an ideal solution for making first contact with site visitors, or helping customers at crucial parts in their buyer journey.
A prime example is German energy company E-Werk Mittelbaden chatbot, EMI. It’s a pleasant-to-use bot that helps with questions about payments, registration and rates.
EMI assists a German customer with switching their energy to a new home address.
EMI understands freely typed questions and follows up with button options to keep the conversation going with the user. It’s powered by an extensive knowledge base, which is the secret behind this level of conversational AI.
If your agents are overloaded with common questions and requests, a chatbot like EMI can proactively answer these chats and only forward the most difficult questions to your customer support team.
The AI chatbot is one module of Userlikes AI Automation Hub, which features a collection of sophisticated automation tools for businesses.
Improve your customer service with an AI chatbot
Feeling inspired? Are you ready to create a chatbot? What if we told you that you can have your own self-learning AI without touching a single line of code.
At Userlike, we made it so the switch to AI automation is a logical and simple step forward for your customer support and lead generation. You’ll find everything you need in the central Message Center: live chat, messaging and many automation features.You can provide instant, personalized 24/7 support without overloading your agents or hiring new ones.
Our AI chatbot uses conversational AI to make sure customers consistently receive high quality service in their communication channel of choice.
Contact us to get to know the product better, we’re experts in the field with vast knowledge involving chatbots and live chat.
Let’s start your journey towards a new future involving chatbots together!
