When jumping into AI for customer service, many organizations inventory what they’re doing now and look for opportunities to automate. This “fixed pie” thinking can be limiting out of the gate. Those with the best service start first and foremost with customer needs and expectations and use them to guide decisions. In oft-cited advice, Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, put it this way: “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology.”

Use a Framework: So, given all that AI can do, how do you best integrate it into your organization’s direction? How do you ensure that it’s meeting customers’ needs and building your brand? An important part of the answer is to develop and use a service strategy framework. In customer service, this is often referred to as a customer access strategy or just a service strategy.

To apply a customer access strategy to AI decisions, you may find my AI Idea Starter for Customer Service helpful. It takes the ten components of a customer access strategy, defines them, and lists some ways that AI can be applied.

Identify and Shape AI Solutions: There are two ways you will want to leverage your strategy. One is to consider how AI could positively impact ANY of the 10 components. Refer to the table for ideas in each area. Given how fast AI is developing, you may want to have a small team regularly think through each component and how AI can help.

A second way you’ll leverage your strategy is to prepare for the impact solutions you choose to implement will have on ALL components. For example, an insurance company known for great service deployed a chatbot to offer assistance to customers on their app and website. Before the rollout, they thought through the impact on all ten components of strategy. Which customers might need the chatbot’s help? What questions would they have? When would the involvement of a human service agent make sense? And so forth. As a result, they trained the chatbot more effectively, prepared their teams, and updated their planning processes. Implementation has been smooth and effective.

Powertip: Leverage your strategy to uncover untapped AI value. For example, an internet provider intent on tracking customer satisfaction employed sentiment analysis tools that analyze text and speech conversations, social media posts, and other sources of input. By going through their strategy, they realized these tools can also provide insight to many areas of their operation—for example, their training teams are now focusing on issues that matter most to customers.

Using your strategic plan—considering all ten components—helps you see the big picture AND the specifics that help you unlock the power of AI. It’s a powerful tool in your effort to harness the potential of AI. Here’s my AI Idea Starter for Customer Service to help you get started.

Also, if you are looking for training to help your agents make the transition to using AI, you might find my LinkedIn Learning course helpful The AI-Driven Customer Service Representative.