In this post-pandemic era, it has become a prerequisite for SaaS organizations to realign their business processes with Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI brings several capabilities, such as complexity, scalability, adaptability, and product customization. Not just these, the adoption of AI also helps businesses make data-driven decisions.

While all business aspects have benefited from the adoption of AI, Customer Success has been among the top. AI has significantly impacted how businesses deliver a customer experience, leading to customer success.

Several factors leading to customer success – easy onboarding, quick support, and engagement activities – have become more efficient with the adoption of AI.

Global CSMs have already identified this, and according to them, AI is here to stay and do more for customer success. In this article, we will see how AI is helping Customer Success today and how it will impact the future.

We have carried out a comprehensive customer success survey for 2022 that has helped us provide invaluable insights to you. So, without further ado, let us dig deep into the world of artificial intelligence and the future of customer success.

AI and Customer Success: In the Present

System intelligence is one of the biggest strengths of Artificial Intelligence. “AI collects and analyzes customer data, provides in-depth insights, and thus builds intelligent systems,” says Boris Jabes, CEO of Census. CSMs can personalize their offerings and communication by making these intelligent systems the source. This way, organizations can achieve greater customer success and improve service revenues.

AI applications also ensure that used customer data is not siloed and is distributed easily via a knowledge base among CSM, customer service, financials, and selling systems. Thus, there is very little chance for data-blind spots; with a real-time flow of customer and financial data, it is much more efficient for CSM platforms to have a 360-degree view of the customers.

Further, these knowledge bases also help teams to –

• Use the insights to come up with new and innovative solutions.
• Navigate the relevant customer data.
• Help identify the data/ areas that are no longer relevant.
• Giving recommendations to solve current and future issues.

Customer success automation has been yet another interesting benefit brought forward by AI. “For any business to succeed, it is important that the organization as a whole work towards making all possible efforts to keep its customers happy and satisfied throughout their journey,” says Joey Sasson, Vice President of Sales & Logistics at Moving APT.

A key resource for taking up the responsibility is the CSM. They play an intermediary between the organization and the customer, ensuring that the customers face no issues with the product or the brand. They keep monitoring customer actions at different touchpoints, from customer onboarding to post-purchase feedback and renewal of the product.

Additionally, CSMs are also responsible for crafting and engaging customer experiences that will foster positive and long-term customer relationships. This is a time extensive and also demands a lot of effort and dedication. The CSMs need access to data from almost all organization departments, including marketing and sales, product departments, finance, etc.

Artificial intelligence walks in to make this job much easier while also enhancing its productivity. For instance, it derives proper patterns from customer data and helps understand what exactly a customer needs and desires. It also shows potential data gaps and provides options for how to fill them.

So far, we have discussed AI’s ability to collect and analyze data. However, its abilities to predict future actions is also worthy of mentioning. Along with data collection and generation of valuable customer insights, AI can predict the customers’ future actions based on its predictive analytics capabilities. Now, this ability is quite futuristic and can help CSMs develop better customer nurturing and gain new customers.

AI and Customer Success: In the Future

When discussing the future of customer success, AI will cast a lasting impression on how services are delivered. As we are already seeing, AI increases the precision with which organizations get in touch with customers. At the same time, it also helps create greater levels of engagement with potential customers.

One of the biggest examples of this is using artificial customer service agents. AI-powered intelligent agents leverage automation to deliver next-level responsiveness. This may not be possible with humans.

Today, we can see that Al agents are already replacing human customer service agents at some levels. However, after a certain point, customers show more confidence in engaging with human executives to solve their issues and resolve queries. This, too, is facilitated by AI – the machine listens to and records discussions in real time and then feeds this information to the human representative. Based on this, the human executive provides appropriate resolution.

This can be a very valuable asset for the future because the scale at which the AI assistants deliver their services is quite fast, something that is not achievable for humans. Therefore, AI assistants and human representatives’ support can make a huge difference in how customer service is delivered.

Self-service is yet another AI capability set to change the future of customer success. AI has made self-service interfaces a reality. We have already seen them, and they will become commonplace shortly. With self-service, customers are empowered to decide their course of action without any intervention. It is also much more convenient and time-saving. Additionally, using the customer data gathered earlier, AI can offer predictions and insights so the services can be personalized for individual customers. CSMs say they have seen a significant increase in customer satisfaction, acquisition, and retention.

Cost efficiency is another benefit of AI. While this is often overlooked owing to other impressive benefits of AI, the cost-effectiveness of AI adoption makes it invaluable for the future.

AI will certainly make self-service interfaces a reality shortly. However, AI can also capture and analyze data to achieve an excellent customer service experience. Al can help identify customer issues, determine preferences based on past choices, and respond with a most-suited solution. Studies hint that personalization will be the key in the future, and AI is a perfect solution to offer personalized offers, solutions, suggestions, and even resolve queries before they arrive.

Here are some of the benefits of AI that although may look superficial may overpower the end results. AI-powered assistants are available 24/7, and at the same time, they automate most of the tasks performed by human representatives. Thus, they save on the expenditure of most intermediatory resources.

Wrapping it up

All organizations, especially the ones offering SaaS products, need to amplify their efforts to satisfy their customers and ensure customer success. AI is a way to do this, especially as the business scenarios become more and more customer-centric.

PS: While AI is definitely an asset to Customer Success, and it is already replacing the need for human agents at certain points, human interferences are still required to operate the tools.  

Author: Jyothi Tulasi is tech-savvy and proficient in technical SEO optimization for various SaaS products. She has profound expertise in outreach. She loves connecting to people and singing in her free time. https://www.smartkarrot.com/.