AI PowerUps: Working Smarter with AI

Increased employee productivity

A global survey by Slack's Future Forum found that ~ 80% of employees who use AI are already finding that their productivity is improving. Specifically, case studies show that AI-enabled customer service agents ~14% more customer inquiries per hour able to handle. This productivity gain comes from the fact that AI supports employees with daily CRM tasks such as creating tickets, preparing responses, and manually entering data. By working smarter with the help of AI, you improve and accelerate customer interaction, giving you more time for more complex things.

“Case studies show that AI-enabled customer service agents can handle ~ 14% more customer queries per hour.”

Save time and reduce manual actions

One of the most tangible benefits of AI copilots in CRM is the significant time savings on administrative and repetitive tasks. Tasks such as creating tickets, writing emails, making translations and preparing interview reports can (largely) be carried out or prepared by AI, saving employees valuable minutes per task. This means, for example, that a customer contact center using AI only takes ~3 minutes to compose a complex email instead of 8 minutes, because the AI provides an initial setup and wording.

AI features also save a lot of time in call centers. AI can summarize an entire customer conversation in seconds. This saves KCC employees manually working out notes after each call. Five9 reports that such AI summaries save up to 40% of a support agent's time. In addition, the average processing time (AHT) per customer is declining. Thanks to AI-generated summaries and auto-filled call tickets, the AHT was seen with 27% decrease. This means that customers are helped faster and KCC employees can handle more cases per shift.

Improve job satisfaction and employee satisfaction

When tedious tasks are alleviated by AI, employees find that their workday becomes more fun and meaningful. Because AI takes “the boring work” off your hands, employees can focus on the human aspect: thinking creatively, developing customer relationships and solving complex problems. As a result, many organizations see a positive effect on job satisfaction and staff engagement. In a global Zendesk study, 78% of HR leaders say that AI tools increase employee productivity and job satisfaction. This is consistent with the experience that employees are happier when they are supported by smart tools and spend less time on routine tasks.

Practical examples confirm this picture. For example, a customer contact center found that using an AI assistant not only increased efficiency, but also reduced employee stress. This is because AI helps to provide consistent, friendly answers and absorbs peak loads, which reduces the pressure on front office employees. Employees experience more peace and confidence, knowing that a “co-pilot” is watching or giving them suggestions. In a broad sense, the following applies: no one gets happy from monotonous routine work. By automating that with AI, people keep more time left for work that gives them energy, which improves the working atmosphere.

AI at Dutch housing associations

Dutch housing associations are also noticing that the use of smart AI tools is increasing. This also translates to better customer experiences and more efficient services. For example, AI accelerates the processing of tenant questions and maintenance requests, which tenants experience as better service. Self-service portals with AI (e.g. smart knowledge base or self-service scenarios) enable customers to find answers 24/7, so routine questions are less likely to end up at the counter or phone. This gives employees space to focus on more complex cases, which makes both the tenant and the employee more satisfied.

Doing more with less

According to Aedes, corporations need to work smarter and more efficiently, including with digitization and deployment of AI to make processes cheaper and more scalable. This has to do with the austerity challenge that lies in the Netherlands. AI seems to make this possible. AI applications can provide cost benefits. The table below provides a brief overview of some of the measurable benefits that have been reported in research and practice when using AI tools in CRM:

More and more corporations are opting for AI

In the Dutch housing association sector, the adoption of AI tools has accelerated, especially for these types of support tasks. Where in 2021 only ~ 10% of the corporations used AI, by 2024 this had risen to 43%. This growth is mainly due to the availability of low-threshold generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot) that are easy to apply in daily work. Corporation employees, for example, use AI to write letters to tenants or to prepare standard emails and policy documents.

AI PowerUps: Make Your CRM Even Smarter

Embrace CRM includes all the smart AI features described in this article. Also check out the interactive e-learning below, to click through the software yourself. At the time of writing, the following features are available:

• ‍Automatic chat, email, and conversation summaries: Briefly writing down what you just discussed is no longer necessary. Every chat conversation is summarized into a short text by AI, so you no longer have to spend time on a good, clear summary for the customer card.‍
• Generate tickets based on call history: with the push of a button, you can process the above information into a ticket! ‍
• Automatic customer card summarization: With the short message at the top of the customer card, you immediately know what is going on. The timeline with all activities, such as payments and changes, is automatically summarized by AI. This way, no one has to look for the most important points that have happened to a customer recently.‍
• AI translation: Incoming calls in another language are translated into the language in which you work. Outgoing messages can be typed in your own language and translated into the language in which the customer communicated.‍
• Generate and editing emails to customers: Always based on the conversation with the tenant and the information in your knowledge base.

Also view the e-learning below with an overview of these functionalities.

Resources

The figures and examples mentioned are from recent studies and case studies, including publications by CRM vendors (Zendesk, Salesforce), independent studies (MIT, McKinsey), and sector reports (CorporationNL, Aedes). come here learn more about AI at Embrace!