5 ways AI can reduce customer support tickets - Blog

The relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction often leads businesses down an unexpected path: reducing support ticket volume. It may seem counterintuitive, but fewer support interactions can actually make for happier customers. By focusing on reducing tickets, companies often end up:

Improving their product
Introducing self-service options (or enhancing existing ones)
Improving support handling strategies—creating a better experience overall for customers.

However, companies often struggle to reduce ticket volume without sacrificing service quality. With the help of AI, that battle is a lot easier to win. AI helps fix customer issues before they even become support tickets—kind of like dealing with a leaky tap before it becomes a flood. This reduces ticket volume while keeping response times fast.

From chatbots to automated response systems to self-maintaining knowledge bases, AI is becoming the go-to solution for companies looking to streamline customer support ticket handling.

The Ripple Effect: How streamlining support requests impacts an organization

Beyond the immediate and obvious benefit to customers, streamlining support requests creates a ripple effect of benefits across a company. For example, with fewer tickets to manage, businesses can save on staffing and infrastructure costs. This frees up the budget for other strategic projects.

A smoother support process doesn’t just benefit customers—it makes employees happier too. With fewer repetitive queries, support staff can finally come up for air and focus on more challenging and rewarding tasks. This shift often results in higher job satisfaction and less burnout.

The benefits go beyond the support department, too. Fewer tickets mean other departments can spend less time fixing issues and more time making proactive improvements. Product teams, for example, can use insights from support to improve features and usability. This results in happier customers, which usually translates into more sales.

Quick problem-solving and better customer care come from efficient support systems. Satisfied clients turn into loyal advocates. They spread positive feedback. This growth cuts marketing costs and boosts the brand's image. In the end, it’s a win-win: better efficiency not only improves customer relationships but also positively impacts the bottom line.

Now let’s explore some ways you can use AI to reduce ticket volume for your support team.

Using an AI chatbot as a 24/7 digital concierge

Chatbots are the first point of contact for customer support. Providing instant help 24/7, they're like a digital superhero that never needs sleep. Businesses can use platforms like Chatbase, Tidio or Landbot to create intelligent chatbots that handle customer queries. These AI assistants are trained using existing FAQs and common customer questions. As such, they can give consistent and accurate answers to a wide range of queries.

If you’re looking to build your own solution before investing in software, you can also try creating an AI chatbot with a knowledge source using a tool like Zapier.

The key to effective chatbot implementation lies in natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. Advanced NLP helps chatbots understand customer questions, even when they're phrased in odd or unexpected ways. It allows chatbots to have more natural conversations. Which is great, because nobody likes talking to a robot that sounds like a robot!

Chatbots are fantastic for routine questions. But when things get tricky, it’s crucial to have a clear plan for handing over to a human. This way, customers can always get the level of support they need, whether it’s from an AI assistant or a human agent who can add that personal touch.

Recommended tools:

Building an AI-enhanced knowledge base

A knowledge base, aka a help center, acts like a self-serve encyclopedia for customers. Done right, it allows your users to get answers to their queries and learn how your product or service works—without needing to ask your team.

There are many tools out there that can simplify the process of building a knowledge base. Or you can create your own in a document database tool like Notion. Where AI can really enhance things is by automating the maintenance of knowledge on an ongoing basis. With software like Zoho Desk or Freshdesk, you can create an evolving information repository that meets customer needs.

These AI systems analyze support tickets and customer interactions to identify common issues and knowledge gaps. Based on this analysis, they suggest new articles or updates to existing content. This means the knowledge base remains current and relevant. Also, semantic search features make it easier for customers to find accurate information quickly, even if their search terms don’t exactly match.

The real strength of an AI-generated knowledge base is its ability to keep improving. As it learns from customer interactions and support ticket resolutions, it better predicts and meets customer needs. As a result, the number of support tickets goes down. Customers also start solving problems on their own, fostering a sense of self-sufficiency and that 'I fixed it myself!' pride.

Recommended tools:

Automated, AI-powered ticket triaging

All good customer service teams aim to answer customer inquiries in good time. Even complex issues that will take time to resolve should get a timely response so the customer feels heard.

Many helpdesk software solutions have built-in AI-powered features to automate triaging. These systems can analyze ticket content to judge urgency and direct it to the right team or agent. They also suggest solutions from a database, often solving simple issues without human help. Like Intercom, for example. Amongst many other things, Intercom’s AI agent Fin can solve or route initial customer queries.

Another powerful feature of AI-driven ticket automation is sentiment analysis. AI will detect the emotional tone in messages, flagging urgent issues for quick attention and preventing bigger problems. No one likes a ticking customer service time bomb after all!

While automation enhances support, it's crucial to keep a balance between efficiency and personal touch. A good approach is to let AI handle simple tasks and initial responses. Human agents can step in to tackle complex issues that require empathy and creative solutions.

Recommended tools:

Intercom

Integrating AI-powered help within your product

Proactive help that’s baked into your product can help solve problems before they need support. Like a friendly guide who knows you’re about to take a wrong turn and steers you right. Examples of customer support teams might use include AI-powered widgets like Intercom's Product Tours or WalkMe. These tools use behavior analytics to trigger relevant help content at the right moment. For example, if a user seems to be struggling with a particular feature, the AI can offer a quick tutorial or tip. It can also predict problems and offer help based on past behavior.

The best in-product help is subtle and relevant. AI should provide help at the right moment without being intrusive or disrupting a user’s workflow. As the system learns from user interactions, it refines its approach and gets better over time.

Recommended tools:

The polyglot problem-solver: Multilingual support using AI

In our globalized economy, language barriers can make customer support feel like a game of broken telephones. AI translation services like Unbabel and Lokalise can break down these barriers, allowing businesses to offer support in multiple languages. They make it feel like you're fluent in 20 languages without ever opening a textbook!

These systems use neural machine translation to produce more natural-sounding translations than older methods. They can be integrated into support channels, automatically detecting customer language and translating messages.

While AI translations have come a long way, they're not perfect. This is especially the case if the AI is dealing with technical jargon or industry-specific terminology. So it’s best to combine AI with human review for critical communications. A hybrid approach like this can ensure accuracy while still leveraging the speed and scalability of AI.

Recommended tools:

5 AI-powered tips for customer support success

Let’s recap what we’ve learned today:

1. Offer support 24/7 with an AI chatbot
‍Use AI-powered chatbots to handle common questions around the clock. We recommend tools like Chatbase, Tidio, Landbot or Drif.

2. Create a self-updating knowledge base
‍Build an AI-enhanced knowledge base that grows smarter with time using platforms like Zoho Desk or Freshdesk. The AI will help you update articles automatically based on customer needs.

3. Automate ticket triage
‍AI-powered software like Intercom can help automatically sort and prioritize tickets. The AI will accurately answer customer questions and turn complex queries into tickets for your team to action.

4. Provide in-product help
‍Integrate AI-driven help directly within your product. Widgets like Intercom's Product Tours proactively support users, improving the user experience and reducing support needs.

5. Use AI for multilingual support
‍Break language barriers with AI translation services like Unbabel. This helps you reach more customers without hiring a multilingual team.

Final thoughts

When you invest in AI-driven support, your operations become more efficient and your customers feel the difference.

Follow these 5 AI-powered strategies to transform your customer support system, and make sure you keep improving along the way. Remember to treat AI as a tool that enhances, not replaces, your team's abilities.

Add these 'superpowers' to your support staff, and you'll see more meaningful interactions and happier customers.