Abstract:
We’ve analyzed AI usage across millions of customer support agents sessions using Wordtune. According to our findings, it is possible for organizations to save up to 2 hours everyday and up to $5,700 yearly per CS agent.
Read the 5 insights we’ve uncovered and start implementing them for your customer success team today.
In this article, we look at data from customer success and customer support agents using Wordtune, an AI writing platform that helps CS teams improve communication with clients. Our analysis uncovered five key insights for team leaders, including what features and tools agents find most useful when communicating with customers and how to leverage AI writing tools to improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) and increase agent efficiency.
Challenges in customer support for offshore agencies and their partners
Great customer support can make all the difference between a satisfied customer and a disgruntled one; a brand ambassador and an outspoken critic; a loyal shopper versus a one-time patron. The impact this difference can have on business is incredible.
As you know, to balance budget and meet demand, many companies choose to outsource customer support. This decision often brings with it a new set of challenges, including ensuring a high level of communication among non-native English speaking agents.
Customers expect concise, natural-English responses that address their concerns with empathy and authenticity. Support Agents need to be confident in their tone, speak with empathy, and use this not only to deliver the best customer support possible but also to upsell, cross-sell, and help move the needle on revenue. Communication is the one tool Support Agents have, and they need to take it to the next level if you want your business to excel.
Managers working with offshore partners need to ensure this is the case, and that their customers are receiving support that conveys trustworthiness and sympathy.
We analyzed usage data from millions of Wordtune sessions, using product analytics software Amplitude, to help customer service providers and their partners better understand how to meet these challenges, support their agents, and lift CSAT scores.
Agents save up to 2 hours perday using an AI writing tool
The average email contains about 10 sentences. Out of these, anywhere from 50–80% will be rewritten in the course of responding to a customer.
Doing so manually takes time—even if agents are able to spot all their mistakes or unnatural language.
In fact, we’ve compared manual email reviews from a control group to average session length for customer service agents and found that using Wordtune saves users three minutes per email on average.
Use data from Wordtune also shows that customer service agents of B2C companies with 1M+ users answer around 40 emails per day.
This means that agents can save over 2 hours per day using an AI writing tool.That translates to 10 additional tickets per day or a 25% increase inefficiency, allowing for hourly rates paid to agents to go even further.
For example, assuming an average salary for offshore customer service agents of around $12 per hour, this translates to a savings of more than $5,700 per agent per year.
How much you can save using AI
Manual self-editing also leaves more room for errors that might slip through the cracks and negatively impact CSAT.
At the same time, fully automated responses can negatively impact CSAT in a significant way.
Our data suggests AI writing tools allow customer service agents to strike the right balance between automation and authentic, highly personalized responses.
Agents who utilized AI use it an average of 70 times a day
It’s clear that AI tools have a great impact on the everyday work of support agents. By using AI, agents can respond faster, allowing them to respond to more requests while improving the quality of the response. This shows that AI is an invaluable tool for agents, and is significantly increasing their productivity.
Using Wordtune an average of 70 times a day is another example of how muchAI has become a vital part of the everyday lives of employees across industries.It's becoming increasingly common in all industries and across all job roles to use AI as a tool to enhance the abilities of professionals.
A single AI phrasing suggestion is insufficient for customer support agents
(66% choose between the 2nd and 10th suggestion)
When a user selects text in Wordtune and hits the Rewrite button, they are presented with a number of different options. This allows agents to quickly choose the right wording and tone to really get through to the customer.
Our data shows that 66% of customer support agents choose between the2nd and 10th Rewrite option, underscoring the importance of having a variety of options to choose from to ensure success.
In other words, agents use their understanding of context and the customer to select the best option for the situation. This kind of flexibility allows agents to ensure the tone, choice of words, and content are all appropriate for the customer and ticket in question.
Customer support agents use56% more platforms thanother professionals
(making integration key when considering an AI writing solution)
Due to the growth of multi- and omni-channel support, and to overcome the unique challenges associated with them, customer service agents work with a wide variety of tools and apps. These include email clients, ticket management platforms like Asana and Jira, customer relationship management (CRM)platforms like Hubspot, and more.
In fact, 51% of customer service agents use three to four apps to solve customer issues, and over one-third use more than five apps to do so.
Our own data supports this, too. Customer Service Agents use Wordtune in 50% more platforms than the general public.
Finally, research by ZenDesk reveals that 93% of customers will spend more when they can use their preferred channel to engage with customer service.
Thus, tools that work on multiple websites and platforms are essential to both customer support agents and the customers they serve.
These results help underscore the vital need for managers to provide tools to agents that work seamlessly with the platforms and software they already use, ensuring a streamlined experience for customers across touchpoints.
Number of applications used by customer service agents
Keeping responses short and using the right tone improve CSAT scores
Striking the right tone is essential to maximizing customer satisfaction. For example, 78% of respondents in one survey said that using a casual tone while denying their request would negatively impact their level of satisfaction.
And according to a survey of 15,000 individuals by PwC, nearly one third of customers say they’re willing to leave a brand after one bad experience.
This means that getting customer service experiences right the first time around is fundamental—the name of the game is using the right language.
We analyzed data from customer support agents using Wordtune to adjust sentences and found that, while a more formal tone is used in emails, agents opt for a casual tone and shorter answers communicating with customers via multi-channel messaging suites like Zendesk and Intercom.
We’ve already used these insights to improve our own customers’ experiences.
Using the right tone and keeping your messages short and to the point can have a significant impact on your CSAT, and make your customer’s experience better.
Conclusion
Great customer service is key to business success.
The data presented here demonstrates that the right tools can help customer service agents, whether in-house or offshore, to reduce costs and improve outcomes, including CSAT scores.
Our goal is to continue leveraging this unique and large dataset with our industry knowledge in writing and communications to help businesses overcome the challenges they face on a daily basis.
To this end, please feel free to share with us which data you’d like to see to improve business decisions.
You can also look forward to learning about additional insights as we uncover them, plus practical information on how Wordtune can help you in your role.
To learn more about how Wordtune can help your team, book a call with our sales team , or start your free trial today.
About Wordtune
Created in 2019 by AI21 Labs, Wordtune is an industry-leading AI-powered platform focused on writing and knowledge consumption. Winner of theChrome Extension of the Year Award (2021), Wordtune allows users to rephrase text, adjust the tone of content, and generate text using AI. With more than 15million users worldwide and valued at 1.4B USD, it’s one of the most popular AI writing platforms today.
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