What is a virtual AI assistant and how does it support customer service?
A virtual AI assistant is an intelligent script that can hold natural conversations with customers at any time. See how it takes the load off your team and shortens response times.
What exactly is a virtual AI assistant?
The term AI assistant covers a wide range of intelligent tools designed to hold a natural conversation with a customer without a live person necessarily being involved. Equipped with knowledge specific to your company, it can give expert advice and reply instantly at any time, on any day of the week.
The main types of assistant
- Chatbot (text assistant): A widget on your website or a script that handles your company’s Facebook/WhatsApp. It doesn’t rely on rigid “decision trees” that irritate customers, but genuinely understands questions and explains the issue naturally.
- Voicebot (voice assistant / agent): An advanced artificial intelligence model connected to the telephone network. It can take a call on your helpline, log a service request and even… call the customer back to let them know their order has been completed and ask for a review.
- Email assistant: A system that reads, with great accuracy, the dozens of messages your company receives every hour. It recognises recurring questions, routes important sales enquiries to the CRM for follow-up and automatically drafts polite replies, leaving them in your agents’ outboxes.
Who is it for, and what are the benefits?
The biggest beneficiaries of virtual assistants are companies struggling under a flood of routine requests, whose staff are “stuck on the phone for hours” and constantly lose valuable working hours to repetitive questions. Smooth scaling means shorter waits for customers to get a solution and a huge reduction in customer service costs for the business.
