For better or worse, you’ve probably seen firsthand how AI is impacting the customer service experience. Your own interactions with uninformed and unfeeling chatbots may have left you concerned about the future of customer service as AI moves into more parts of business—and our everyday lives.

Yet, AI is helping customer service agents everywhere in ways you can’t see. Behind the scenes, agents are using AI to serve customers faster and connect with them in more empathetic, human ways. In the best-case scenarios, they’re tapping into AI tools integrated with their company’s customer experience (CX) suite to make strategic decisions across all service channels.

If you’ve had an especially spectacular service experience recently, it’s likely that service agent was being supported by AI. By putting yourself behind the service desk, you can learn a lot about what’s possible right now in customer service. With the help of AI-enabled customer service tools, your day might look something like this.

9 a.m. – Responding quickly to customer service e-mails

Always-on customer service channels have transformed the service landscape by helping customers feel heard after business hours when support hotlines and instant chat options are offline. However, these channels introduce a unique challenge—by the time a service agent reads an e-mail from a customer in need, hours have probably already passed.

When it comes to e-mail support, you need to be able to respond quickly and empathetically to customers who are growing more impatient by the minute. Generative AI can help. You might already be familiar with generative AI’s ability to create text based on your input. Have you ever used ChatGPT to quickly draft an e-mail?

The tools at your disposal in CX are already much more sophisticated than that—they don’t even need you to take the time to type out a prompt for the AI. The right AI tools can pull information from multiple sources, including a customer’s original e-mail inquiry and information from their profile, to write and even format a professional service response in seconds.

11 a.m. – Connecting with customers through instant chat

With the service e-mail inbox cleared, you’re able to shift gears and connect to customers over instant chat. Your business has an AI-powered chatbot that resolves simple requests, such as helping customers check on the status of their order. If the chatbot can’t handle a problem, it gets forwarded onto a human agent. Today, that’s you.

Because routine requests are fielded through the AI, you’re free to focus on more complex customer situations that benefit from your expertise and empathy. But AI is still there to help you. Right in your business application, you’re able to search through your company documentation with a simple question—finding the right answer or solution in seconds. The entire time you’re connected with the customer, AI is hard at work at helping you come up with potential solutions to the customer’s problem.

1 p.m. – Supporting a frustrated customer over the phone

After returning from lunch, your phone rings. A customer service ticket has been escalated to you, and there’s a customer on the other end of the line. You don’t want to frustrate this customer by asking the same questions they’ve probably already answered for other agents, so you’re tapping into the customer’s profile on your desktop and using AI to summarize their previous interactions with support as you speak on the phone.

In this case, the customer is having trouble with a specific product, so the AI provides you with important product information. You never have to leave your customer service tools to hunt down the product or customer details. Then, after some troubleshooting, you realize you’ll need to send the customer a replacement product. Almost instantly, you’re able to check inventory for the exact model and color, view available stock, and organize the delivery.

3 p.m. – Making lasting connections with customers

With the time saved from the day’s customer service engagements, you can spend the rest of the day on more-strategic tasks. For example, you can reach out personally to recently served customers to see if they need any more help. The opportunity for this kind of engagement is particularly useful for B2B companies or luxury B2C brands that rely on relationship building with their customers.

5 p.m. – Setting tomorrow up for success

Before stepping out for the day, you take a few minutes to use AI to set tomorrow up for success. The tools you’re already familiar with using in your daily life, such as AI-powered personal assistants—are already embedded into many CX solutions. Beyond simply setting reminders, they empower you to get an at-a-glance summary of service tickets, serve up the most pressing cases, and much more.

Real wins with AI in CX are very possible right now for businesses of all sizes, in any industry, everywhere around the world. This day in the life of a customer service agent can help you start thinking realistically about this technology and its potential for customer service. Still feeling overwhelmed by the possibility of AI for your business? Visit us online to learn more about getting started with the AI capabilities included in SAP Customer Experience solutions.