Generative AI’s Transformative Impact on B2B Customer Service

10

October

2023

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Where self-service portals and chatbots dominated customer service for a long time, the next trend, to improve customer interaction and service quality, seems to be set by generative artifical intelligence (GenAI). The application of this emerging technology is increasingly seen in well-known platforms such as Zendesk and Salesforce Einstein, which use AI to enable personalised and more efficient service and improve current functionalities within systems.

The role of GenAI in B2B sales and Customer Service

GenAI is not simply a new technology, but rather can be seen as a collaborative partner. In B2B sales, GenAI strengthens the sales team on sales support tasks and marketing topics, freeing up team members’ hands, improving performance and ultimately generating more revenue (D’Angelo et al., 2023).

Looking at customer service, the application of GenAI will be able to increase productivity by 30-50% over the next three years (Bamberger et al., 2023). However, for now we are still in the third phase concerning the implementation of this technology, human-like self-service. After all, GenAI currently still contains relatively many sensitivities and inaccuracies, requiring human supervision to further train the model. Therefore, to make GenAI work for your organisation at this stage, a good balance and interaction between GenAI and team members is very important to ensure the reliability of the output.

Insights and Personalization

Another big advantage to GenAI will be enabling personalised customer experiences on a large scale. For instance, GenAI will not only make it possible to provide answers or suggestions to a customer or customer service agent, but also analyse data and come up with strategic insights (Kudyba, 2018). Based on these insights, the organisation can recruit strategic insights to understand their customers even better and recognise trends. One industry where GenAI is already deployed in this way is the financial sector; within the sector, personalised solutions and strategic choices measurably increase customer satisfaction. In this case, GenAI is not just a tool but the instigator when it comes to permanently changing customer contact through a far-reaching personalised experience.

Tools and applications

As described earlier, GenAI still needs to take some steps to provide complete support for every challenge. Nevertheless, organisations today can already benefit from the technology in applications such as Zendesk. The AI within Zendesk enables customer service agents to send AI suggested empathetic responses or offers (Mitchell, 2023). In doing so, Zendesk rests on the most fully trained AI currently available, namely ChatGPT, to further improve its own technology and get the most out of the Zendesk platform. The ultimate goal here is not to replace the agent’s work but rather to complement it and thereby improve the overall customer experience (Siggelkow, 2023).

Catching on to Zendesk’s vision, the integration of GenAI into B2B Customer Service seems inevitable, but also essential to provide improved, personalised and more efficient customer interaction.

References

Bamberger, S., Clark, N., Ramachandran, S., & Sokolova, V. (2023). How generative AI is already transforming customer service. BCG Global. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-generative-ai-transforms-customer-service

D’Angelo, S., Gauch, B., Hawks, A., & Ward, M. (2023). Get your B2B sales team ready for the power of generative AI. BCG Global. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/how-genai-can-transform-b2b-sales

Kudyba, S. (2018, July 24). Machine learning can help B2B firms learn more about their customers. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/01/machine-learning-can-help-b2b-firms-learn-more-about-their-customers

Mitchell, C. (2023). Zendesk expands its generative AI capabilities, announces new safeguards & controls. CX Today. https://www.cxtoday.com/crm/zendesk-expands-its-generative-ai-capabilities-announces-new-safeguards-controls/

Siggelkow, N. (2023, April 4). Create Winning Customer Experiences with Generative AI. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/04/create-winning-customer-experiences-with-generative-ai

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Digitalizing Mid-Size Companies: harnessing the power of Microsoft Power Automate and ChatGPT

3

October

2023

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The past pandemic has accelerated digitalization within the business (Amankwah‐Amoah et al., 2021). Not only was there an explosion in online sales (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023), but more and more organizations were using platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Slack to collaborate digitally (Zaveri & Gould, 2020). As the pandemic came to an end, all kinds of companies of various sizes and industries faced their next challenge – a shortage of staff (Randstad & Randstad, n.d.). Digital skills and a strong digital foundation are now more important than ever to stay competitive.

To support organizations in this, Microsoft jumped into an important gap. With its far-developed ecosystem Office 365, now better known as Microsoft 365, manages to support both SMEs and Multinationals in its operations. A platform such as Microsoft Power Automate is a low-threshold empowering hand from Microsoft to accelerate digitization and thus efficiency. Power Automate, formerly known as Microsoft Flow, is a Cloud-based service that allows users to automate time-consuming (repetitive) business tasks and processes within and outside the Microsoft ecosystem in a practical and easy way (Microsoft, 2023). Examples of these tasks include, for example, automatically saving attachments from emails, sending push notifications within teams, or creating flows for approvals (Microsoft, 2023).

Of course, Power Automate cannot be left behind when it comes to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). So, in September, Microsoft announced an integration with ChatGPT (MatoW, 2023). The Power Automate plugin for ChatGPT makes it possible to create direct cloud flows based on a conversation within ChatGPT (MatoW, 2023). To take advantage of this feature you need to have a subscription to OpenAI, ChatGPT Plus. To make ChatGPT work for you, you need to start a prompt with creating a flow or automation and clearly stating what you want to achieve. Then ChatGPT can create a flow in your own environment (MatoW, 2023).

(MatoW, 2023a)

Besides using it to create new flows, you can also use the plugin to lose possible errors in your own built flow and use ChatGPT as a tool. Personally, I have used the latter application myself during my work to extract XML files from an automated mail from another department, save it to a SharePoint environment, and then merge it into a weekly total file.

The integration between Microsoft Power Automate and ChatGPT makes it possible for anyone to become an expert in process automation and thereby speed up business operations. In particular, the technology will be able to make a difference within mid-size organisations that can automate a high number of repetitive tasks to save their resources.

References

Amankwah‐Amoah, J., Khan, Z., Wood, G., & Knight, G. (2021). COVID-19 and digitalization: The great acceleration. Journal of Business Research, 136, 602–611. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.08.011

MatoW. (2023a). Create a Flow Power Automate – Chat GPT. Microsoft.

MatoW. (2023b, September 21). Use the Power Automate plugin for ChatGPT – Power Automate. Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/use-chatgpt-plugin

Microsoft. (2023). Power Automate | Microsoft Power Platform. https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/

Randstad & Randstad. (n.d.). Randstad. www.randstad.com. https://www.randstad.com/workforce-insights/talent-acquisition/why-there-a-global-labor-shortage/

U.S. Census Bureau. (2023, June 12). Annual Retail Trade Survey shows impact of online shopping on retail sales during COVID-19 pandemic. Census.gov. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/04/ecommerce-sales-surged-during-pandemic.html

Zaveri, P., & Gould, S. (2020, May 2). These charts show how use of Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom has skyrocketed thanks to the remote work boom. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-teams-slack-zoom-usage-charts-increased-remote-work-pandemic-2020-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T

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