Growth is a critical component of any business, and sustainable growth is impossible without customer service. More clients inevitably means more support. And without the resources to effectively meet the growing demand for support, companies will leave their customers with a poor experience and a strong desire to take their business elsewhere.
Traditionally, striking a balance between enhancing customer service and growing the business has been a challenge. To meet growing demand, the only real option was to increase the number of people on your support team, which was expensive, time-consuming and unsustainable. It was always a catch-22; you can achieve speed, provide a great customer experience, or reduce costs—choose two.
AI is disrupting the linear growth model. Customer service leaders no longer need to grow their teams at the same pace to meet demand. Instead, they can use artificial intelligence tools to deliver a triple-improvement, speed and cost-effective customer experience.
What is the opportunity cost of not adopting AI?
Without AI-driven customer service, you won't be able to reap the benefits of moving away from the traditional linear growth model. The quality of your customer experience will continue to be limited by the size of your support team and the need to recruit, hire, onboard and train staff capable of handling any business growth.
Delaying AI-powered customer service comes with significant costs, including limited business growth and scalability, poor customer experience, and reduced competitiveness. Without AI, your business will be left behind.
From Intended Cost Center to Primary Value Driver
Several strategies can help your organization achieve real success in the new era of AI-powered customer service.
1. Rethink customer service ROI.
The true value of AI-powered customer service goes beyond cost reduction; this improves support, scalability, and overall business impact. Experienced support teams look at ROI from two perspectives: increased throughput and cost-effectiveness.
But how can you quantify the ROI of AI-driven customer service? When you are purchasing or pricing an AI agent, you not only need to focus on price, but also consider the cost per permit. What impacts the bottom line the most and provides the greatest ROI is getting the best resolution and performance. Here's a simple example.
To get a complete picture of your ROI, you also need to consider the total cost of ownership associated with implementing any new tool, such as the cost of implementation and integration with your existing technology stack.
2. Open up value creation opportunities for support teams.
When we think about the new AI economy, it's easy to get caught up in how it impacts the existing customer service model. But one of the most powerful aspects of AI is how it opens up and helps you reimagine what that model might look like in the first place, creating new opportunities for your team and your business.
Instead of getting stuck answering the same questions over and over again, your AI-powered support team will have more time to focus on revenue-generating and value-creating work such as proactive support, customer acquisition, and support premium class – all this takes a long time. – immediate customer satisfaction and loyalty.
3. Rethink success and how you measure it.
With AI-driven customer support, it's not just how you deliver support that's changing; you also need to reconsider how you measure success. Traditionally, support costs (and therefore metrics) have been tied to agent salaries, placing more emphasis on quantity over quality and minimizing average turnaround time.
AI makes focusing on quantity and speed paramount, so teams can instead focus on solving higher-value, more complex problems and keeping customers happy. This shift is positive: it reduces transaction costs, improves first response times and improves customer satisfaction. As a result, companies using AI-powered customer service are moving from volume-based metrics such as ticket counts to holistic KPIs such as customer satisfaction, AI resolution rates, and engagement rates.
4. Get started and get management support.
You don't have to do everything you can on day one – start small and build up from there. AI delivers comprehensive benefits, so every small change helps. Start with a first step, such as implementing an AI agent to resolve frequently asked questions for a small segment of loyal customers. Then gather feedback, test your ideas, and refine your approach before rolling out AI to more clients.
This gradual adoption helps reassure executives that your organization can implement AI without disrupting the business or customers. While AI offers benefits beyond cost savings, sharing back-of-the-envelope ROI calculations and real-world impact can help attract leadership.
Learn more about how to change the perception of your support team from a cost center to a value driver in Intercom's comprehensive guide. The New Economy of Customer Service.
