The Future of Customer Support: Zendesk Integrates OpenAI to Power AI-Enabled CX

AI is changing more than just the world around us; it’s also changing businesses.

Eighty-four percent of business leaders predict that AI will help them retain their competitive edge in the foreseeable future.^[i]

As per some more stats:^[ii]

• Currently, 35% of companies use AI, and 42% are considering its implementation in the future.
• AI is an ongoing investment for 91.5% of leading companies.
• AI will increase customer satisfaction by 25% in organizations.

Businesses are heavily relying on AI to automate processes to create a happier and efficient workforce and deliver real-time customer service.

For this reason, they are placing bets on a customer support platform that can keep them ahead of their game. That’s why Zendesk is a stalwart of the customer service realm!

The generative AI technology of ChatGPT has already made waves in the digital landscape, and Zendesk is poised to leverage it.

Its collaboration with OpenAI, an Al research and deployment company, is another step towards powering the customer service operations.

This blog post will give you insights into this collaboration and how Zendesk’s AI-powered offerings are revolutionizing the customer service industry and future-proofing their support operations.

However, before diving into it, let’s first understand how AI is enabling businesses to create an army of more efficient support staff.

Let’s get started, shall we?

How AI is Making Support Agents Smarter, Faster, and Better at Work

To understand how AI is helping businesses create an efficient team of support reps, let’s take a look at AI-powered customer service tools:

AI-Powered Customer Contact Center

Empathy remains a key advantage of the human brain over machines. Whenever it comes to interacting with customers, humans will always play a crucial role.

The machine, however, can help our customer service team serve customers better.

In addition to the obvious advantages of processing a large amount of data, or finding records immediately, this technology has several other advantages as well. The decision-making process (which mimics human intelligence) allows incoming calls to be prioritized, and customer calls can be directed to the right agents. In simpler terms, AI-powered call routing makes it easier to manage incoming requests.

AI Chatbots

A lot of customer service departments are already using chatbots.

A chatbot mimics human conversation on websites and social media platforms. It’s that little pop-up on your screen when you’re booking a holiday.

It says: “Hi, I’m Grizbo, it looks like you’ve been here for a while. Can I help you?”.

However, Grizbo is not a person. Several brands are experimenting with how to use them to handle non-urgent customer inquiries.

What is the benefit of doing this? Your customer support team can focus on more complex problems and add greater value to your customers.

AI-Powered CRMs

The advent of AI in customer analytics has enabled brands to gain nuanced insights about their customers.

Without AI in the picture, data mining can be an uphill task. Using AI-powered CRMs, businesses can now process and analyze vast amounts of data and gain insights, opening up new opportunities.

Furthermore, with artificial intelligence-enabled CRMs, support reps can determine a customer’s emotional state by analyzing their text or voice-based words, tone, and conversation pattern. Thus, they can create customer experiences and interactions that are tailored to their needs.

AI has not only revolutionized the way the customer service industry operates but has also spawned customer service trends. And Zendesk, being at the forefront of these trends, is all set to lead the caravan!

Zendesk’s Armory of AI-Powered Tools

How exactly is Zendesk leading the AI-influenced revolution in the customer service realm?

Let’s find out:

Collaboration With OpenAI

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has gained much traction in the last few months. And Zendesk has jumped into the bandwagon by collaborating with OpenAI.

As part of its collaboration with OpenAl, Zendesk announced new capabilities combining Zendesk’s proprietary foundational models with OpenAl’s.

These features powered by OpenAl include:

Content Summarization: Reduces the time it takes agents to resolve long tickets by instantly summarizing them.
Knowledge Base and Macros Creation: Automatically creates articles using Zendesk’s proprietary system, and allows administrators to create macros to increase productivity.
Expanding Agent Replies: Provides agents with the ability to create robust ticket responses with just a few keystrokes.

While announcing this collaboration, Cristina Fonseca, head of Al at Zendesk said, “Al can help teams be more consistent, better understand customers, and derive insights from data.” ^[iii]

Several Al-powered CX features are already included within the Zendesk Suite, such as conversational messaging, bots, knowledge management, advanced analytics, and self-service tools. To learn how these tools are driving customer success, Read our eBook.

Some of the key features include:

1. Answer Bot: This AI-powered chatbot can help customers find answers to their questions and solve common issues without the need for human intervention.
2. Satisfaction Prediction: Based on previous interactions and other data, this feature predicts a customer’s satisfaction with a support interaction.
3. Content Cues: Based on machine learning analysis of customer inquiries, this tool suggests relevant help center articles or other content.
4. Voice of the Customer: Based on natural language processing, this feature analyzes customer feedback and identifies problems or trends.
5. Explore: Based on machine learning, it helps agents quickly find the information they need to answer customer inquiries.
6. Automatic Ticket Assignment: Based on the content of the ticket and the agent’s expertise, this feature assigns support tickets automatically.

The Bottom Line

Overall, these AI-powered CX features can help companies improve their customer service efficiency and effectiveness, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Want to Raise Your CX Graph With Zendesk? Talk to Us!

Statistical References

^[i] Forbes.com
^[ii] Comptia
^[iii] Zendesk.com