What is a Customer Service Virtual Assistant?

A customer service virtual assistant is a key tool in today's businesses. It helps to connect with customers in two main ways:

First, as a customer-facing solution. This type of assistant is software companies use to talk directly with customers.

It's like a digital helper that answers questions. It helps users navigate websites and suggests products.

Often called chatbots, virtual agents, or avatars, they give quick, automated support. This speeds up customer service and makes it more effective.

Second, as an agent-facing solution. This assistant also helps customer service agents.

It provides information fast, handles regular tasks, and boosts the quality of service.

This lets human agents spend more time on complex problems and give more personalized attention to customers, enhancing the overall service experience.

Studies show the importance and effectiveness of these assistants. Servion Global Solution forecasts that by 2025, AI technology will support about 95% of all customer interactions.

The stat shows the increasing use of digital tools in customer service and the changing expectations in a digital age.

Key Functions of a Customer-Facing Customer Service Virtual Assistant

Let's delve into the key functions of a customer-facing customer service virtual assistant or virtual customer assistant. This type of assistant is not just a tool. It's an innovative way to enhance customer interaction and satisfaction.

1. Answer Pre-Sale Questions

A customer service virtual assistant is essential before a sale, helping customers with:

• How a Product Works: It explains product features and how they meet customer needs.
• Product Compatibility: It checks if a new product will work with what the customer already has.
• Shipping and Returns: It provides shipping times, costs, and return policies.
• Comparing Products: It helps compare different products’ features, prices, and performance.
• Product Sizing: It guides on sizes for products like clothes or electronics.

2. Engage Customers & Recommend Products

A customer service virtual assistant makes shopping better by giving personalized product tips in several ways:

• Based on What You Need or Like: It looks at customer needs or interests during the chat. For example, if you're into eco-friendly items, it'll suggest those kinds of products.
• Looking at Your Past Purchases: It sees what a customer has purchased before and recommends products that go well with those. Like, if the customer bought a phone, it might suggest cases or earphones that work with it.
• What's Available Now: It can give suggestions based on what's in stock. If something a customer wants is out of stock, it'll offer similar things that the customer can buy right now.
• Current Sales: It tells customers about ongoing sales and suggests items that are on discount or part of special deals. This helps customers save money and improves conversion.

The assistant helps customers find what you're looking for and even discover new things that match their interests and needs.

3. Hand Off to Live Customer Representatives to Close Sale

In cases where a more personalized touch or expert advice is needed, the virtual customer assistant seamlessly transfers the interaction to a live customer service representative.

This helps in closing sales effectively, especially for complex or high-value products.

4. Collect Order Information

A customer service virtual assistant can collect order information like your shipping address and how you'll pay.

It can alll done in a way that's conversational and less error-prone, making sure customers have a good experience when you buy something.

5. Provide Post-Sales Support

After a customer buys something, the customer service virtual assistant keeps helping. It does lots of things to make sure your customers are happy with their purchases:

• Changing an Order: If a customer wants to change something in their order, like how number of items purchased or the color, the assistant should be able to do that easily.
• Cancelling an Order: If a customer change their mind and want to cancel, the assistant makes it quick and easy.
• About Shipping Delays or Tracking: It gives a customer the latest info on where their order is and when it'll arrive.
• How to Use a Purchase: If a customer isn't to use a new item, the assistant can show them how, give tips, or point them to guides and manuals.
• Warranty Questions: It tells customers what's covered by the warranty and how to use it needed.
• Returning Stuff: If something's not right or no longer needed, the assistant helps customers with returns.
• Talking to a Real Person: For tougher problems or when customers need a more personal touch, it can connect customers with a real person.

So, the assistant is there to make sure everything goes smoothly, even after customers have bought something.

Request a demo of Gleen AI, a leading generative AI customer service virtual assistant that doesn't hallucinate.

Key Functions of an Agent-Facing Customer Service Virtual Assistant

Customer service virtual assistants can also assist your customer support agents, not just end customers.

These assistants, also called virtual assistants for customer service, are all about making customer service agents' jobs easier and more efficient.

Here's what they do:

1. Answer Questions

The assistant quickly finds answers to customer questions from a large knowledge base. This means agents can give customers the right answers quickly. It's great for handling lots of different questions in a snap.

2. Draft Answers

These virtual assistants can create draft answers from the information they find. Agents can then review these, make changes if needed, and send them to customers. This is a big time-saver and keeps answers on point.

3. Learn and Improve

The customer service virtual assistants use AI to learn from the responses that agents edit.

They get better at making drafts because they understand customer questions and the best answers. This learning helps improve support over time and makes customer service agents even more efficient.

4. Prioritize, Route, and Resolve Tickets

An agent-facing customer service virtual assistant could also help make common agent workflows more efficient.  For example:

• The virtual assistant could automatically prioritize which tickets an agent should address when they arrive at work, perhaps using sentiment analysis
• The virtual assistant could analyze customer support tickets and recommend the best team or individual, based on the support issue and/or the backlog of escalated tickets.
• If the agent closes a ticket, the virtual assistant could analyze other open tickets and recommend the agent resolve those tickets in the same manner.

Gleen AI: A Generative AI Solution

Gleen AI stands out as a generative AI solution capable of handling both customer-facing and agent-facing roles.

Here's how it functions:

Upload Knowledge to Gleen AI

The first step involves uploading a comprehensive knowledge base into Gleen AI. This includes product information, FAQs, company policies, and any other data relevant to customer service. This knowledge base forms the backbone of both types of chatbots.

Creating Two Different Types of Chatbots

Customer-Facing Chatbot: This chatbot directly interacts with customers. Its capabilities include:

• Answering all pre-sale questions like product features, availability, and pricing.
• Engaging customers and providing tailored recommendations based on their needs or browsing history.
• Handing off conversations to live agents when a more personalized interaction is required.
• Taking orders if integrated with an order management system, facilitating a seamless shopping experience.
• Answering all post-sale questions, including queries about order status, product usage, or returns.
• Interacting with customers on all support channels, including email support, text response support, live chat, Slack support, and Discord support

Agent-Facing Chatbot: This chatbot assists customer service agents by:

• Searching through the support knowledge base in real-time to find information relevant to a customer's question.
• Drafting responses that agents can review, modify, and then send to customers, saving time and ensuring consistency.
• Learning from agents' edited responses to improve the accuracy and relevance of future replies.

Gleen AI's customer service virtual assistant represents a significant leap in customer service technology.

It provides efficient, responsive, and personalized assistance to customers while also enhancing the productivity and effectiveness of customer service agents.

Gleen AI helps with customer inquiries, product recommendations, and supporting agents with information and response drafts.

Elevating Customer Service with Virtual Assistants

Customer service virtual assistants, especially Gleen AI, are changing how businesses talk to customers and help their agents.

These assistants work both ways - facing customers and helping agents. They're not just digital tools; they're key parts of modern customer service.

The customer-facing assistant improves the whole shopping experience. It answers questions before you buy, like giving details about products and services.

It suggests products that fit what customers' needs. When things get tricky or it's time to buy, it connects customers with a real person.

After customers buy, it keeps helping with changes to orders, tracking, or returns, making sure customers are satisfied.

The agent-facing assistant is a big help in customer service. It quickly looks up info, makes draft answers for customer questions, and gets better over time by learning from what agents do.

This makes the customer service team work better and makes sure customers get the best help.

This AI solution shows what modern virtual assistants can do.

This smart approach uses AI to make sure both customers and agents have the best tools, which makes everyone happier with the customer service.

Overall, virtual assistants like Gleen AI are the future of customer service. They make things run smoother and add a touch of human understanding, care, and personalization to talking with customers.

Request a demo of Gleen AI, or create your own free generative AI chatbot now.