Elevating customer case management with generative AI

With the rise of instant gratification culture, customers are becoming impatient, leading to a change in the way they interact with businesses. Technological advancement leads to high customer expectations, a deviation from which results in the erosion of their trust in businesses.  Most companies look to investing in customer service, rather than infusing heaps of dollars into just marketing or sales. Research revealed that around 93% of customers are likely to make a repeat purchase to companies offering exemplary customer service.

Customer retention starts at the very first stage (see image below) when a customer reacts with a business. A conversational interface when a query is received serves as an outstanding use case for the application of AI, with virtual agents or chatbots being put to use.

After a query has been received, a robust customer case management, that reports, routes and resolves customer problems with collaborative staff and supporting technologies, ensures proper handling & management of issues, leading to effective customer retention. Self-service, virtual agents, machine learning, workflows, external data, and company specific tools are some tools that can effectively support case management.

Customer case management offers several key benefits that significantly enhance both customer satisfaction and organizational efficiency:

Improved customer experience: By streamlining the support workflow, customer case management ensures that issues are resolved quickly and effectively, leading to higher customer satisfaction, and reduced costs. According to Forrester, investing in a customer-first operation can yield up to an ROI of 700% in over 12 years.

Efficient resource allocation: By assigning the right cases to the right people, it ensures that each issue is handled by the most qualified team member, within the right team. A Zendesk study highlights that 73% of consumers will switch to a competitor after bad customer handling experiences while 3 in 4 consumers will spend more with businesses that provide a good customer experience, hence increasing return on investment.

Enhanced tracking and analysis: Case management systems provide detailed analytics and insights into customer issues, allowing businesses to not just proactively handle said issues, but also identify root causes of recurring complaints and subsequently initiate an enhancement to improve their products, policies and processes.

Reduced human error: With a structured approach to handling cases, the risk of human error is minimized. Human error leads to a cascade of data issues. One of the IBM study's key findings was that human error contributed to 95% of all cybersecurity breaches. Proper case management ensures that all necessary steps are followed, and nothing is overlooked.

Better workflow management: It simplifies task management and ensures that all activities related to a case are tracked and managed efficiently, leading to better team collaboration.

Real-time visibility: Case management tools offer real-time visibility into the status of each case, allowing for better monitoring and quicker resolution.
 

Generative AI & case management

Whether they are “just browsing” or already a loyal customer, the way that people engage with brands throughout the shopping and post-purchase experience is set to dramatically evolve with generative AI (Gen AI). With answers becoming more seamless and appetite for content noise decreasing, customers will expect personal, intuitive, adaptive touchpoints that understand and serve their needs.

With Gen AI taking the center stage, new technologies to improve customer service have emerged:

• Virtual agents: Generative AI empowers conversational AI chatbots and virtual assistants to efficiently manage routine customer inquiries. This technology provides immediate responses, allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues. 

• Customer pattern analysis: Utilizing generative AI to identify patterns in customer interactions and inquiries. This proactive approach helps address customer needs more effectively and highlights areas for improving customer satisfaction.

The urgency to innovate and integrate generative AI in customer case management stems from several key factors:

• Competitive advantage: Early adopters of generative AI in customer case management can gain a significant competitive edge. By offering superior customer service, they can attract and retain more customers, enhancing their market position.
  
  
• Scalability: Gen AI allows businesses to scale their customer service operations without a proportional increase in costs, particularly important for companies experiencing rapid growth or seasonal spikes in customer inquiries.
  
  
• Improved customer experience: Gen AI can provide personalized and timely responses, improving the overall customer experience. It can interpret conversations, suggest appropriate responses, and even predict customer needs, leading to higher

The US-based airline, JetBlue, has implemented a packaged generative AI–enabled solution to drive the automation and augmentation of its chat channel, helping its contact center provide customer service. As a result, the contact center has been able to save an average of 280 seconds (about 9 minutes) per chat—which yields a total of 73,000 hours (about 8 and a half years) of agent time saved in a single quarter and means that agents have more time to serve customers with complex problems.

Another North American technology company is progressively deploying a generative AI “sidekick” that helps customers and support engineers complete technical support requests, gain access to product information, and automate routine tasks. The initial version of the tool will provide support on the relatively simple requests that make up about 30% of total support tickets, such as how-to guides and basic product configuration information.

Everyone wants to jump in and innovate. New research shows 67% of senior IT leaders are prioritizing generative AI for their business within the next 18 months, with one-third (33%) naming it as a top priority.

Just because something can be automated does not mean it should be. Generative AI tools are not always capable of understanding emotional or business context, or knowing when they are wrong or damaging:

• Bias or fairness: If the training data for Gen AI contains biases, the AI perpetuates or even amplifies these biases, leading to unfair treatment of certain customer groups.
  
  
• Lack of human touch: Despite advancements, Gen AI lacks the empathy and nuanced understanding that human agents provide. This is particularly problematic in handling sensitive or complex customer issues.

Striking the right balance between the powers and limitations of Gen AI in case management is where businesses need to excel. Keeping the end goal of improving customer service, while reducing costs and improving efficiency, is what is needed to drive decisions to automate.
 

Cognizant’s application of generative AI to customer experience

Gen AI enabled customer service and case management leads to a new realm of efficiency and personalization. Cognizant empowers businesses with knowledge in automating the necessary areas.

Cognizant’s generative AI offerings

1. Generative customer experience navigator enables the deployment of AI-powered conversational assistants for seamless customer interactions and personalized support to enhance engagement, automate processes, and drive customer satisfaction.
   
   
2. Generative enterprise knowledge navigator offers generative AI for comprehensive knowledge management and semantic search to unlock valuable insights, accelerate information discovery, and enhance decision-making.
   
   
3. Generative process optimizer streamlines operations through AI-driven automation, optimizing efficiency and reducing manual efforts. The solution helps clients streamline workflows, achieve process excellence, and improve productivity.
   
   
4. Generative development lifecycle navigator fuels developer productivity with AI-driven tools and resources, enabling faster development cycles and improved code quality and helps accelerate innovation, streamline workflows, and enhance collaboration.

To shore up employee and customer trust, and fully participate in all generative AI has to offer, businesses need to think about striking the right balance by enabling humans with technology and bringing their best foot forward to not blindly automate but prioritize customer experience. Generative AI will change how companies do business and even the business they are in.

Customer case management is the first step in which businesses can gain customer trust by using technology to personalize their experience, find and fix faults and human intervention to forge a trust compact and solve complex issues. At Cognizant, we not only personally cater to each business' needs, but also prioritize customer experience. Contact us to learn more.

Additional Contributor:
Stefano Montanari, Head of Retail and Consumer Goods Consulting