Customer Service vs. Sales: Who Uses AI More?
AI awareness among the sales and customer service professionals is at an all-time high. They clearly understand the importance of using and consolidating their AI usage for various processes within their organization.
If AI doesn’t feature in your discussion on corporate strategy in 2023, you could be losing your competitive streak in the market. Of all the departments within an organization, Marketing, Sales and Customer Service seem to be ahead in their quest for AI adoption.
According to the latest research on how sales and customer service see AI as a formidable support for their campaigns, 79% of respondents said they AI tools positively impact their performance.
But, how do sales and customer service compare against each other when it comes to using AI for their internal purposes?
Do Sales teams perform better by using AI compared to their counterparts from the Customer Service teams?
Let’s find out…
The idea of using AI in customer service, sales, and marketing is gaining massive traction in recent years. According to Dialpad*, a SaaS-based customer intelligence platform, the sales and customer service teams have different perceptions toward the use of AI and its adoption. In most cases, both groups use AI only during the conversation with their customers, rather than leveraging the intelligence before or after interactions. There is a significant lack of understanding about AI’s role in customer service and sales conversations, which seemingly restricts these teams from fully benefiting from the technology. For instance, customer service reps use AI tools to onboard customers and support customers. In sales, AI plays a key role in building the narrative for sales conversations and for prospecting. There is a higher propensity toward AI adoption and its use among the sales teams compared to the customer service teams, according to Dialpad. Therefore, sales teams are likely to invest more in AI tools than customer service teams within the same organization.
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However, there is a slight difference in what ROI sales teams generate from their AI usage.
Skepticism toward AI tools for sales is a few points higher than what customer service reps demonstrate in their daily operations. Due to their confidence in AI, a larger number of team members in the Sales teams believe that the technology actually boosts their performance at work. Assuming that this confidence is consistent across the team, customer service professionals are likely to use AI for broader use in generating real-time insights, and analytics linked to other tools in their service technology stacks.
While the AI adoption trends across sales and customer service are at a peak currently, there are certain barriers that prevent organizations from extracting the benefits from the technology. Dialpad’s survey linked this limitation to budgetary constraints. Small-sized businesses are the worst hit when it comes to AI adoption in sales and customer service despite knowing that utilizing AI would actually make them efficient and cost-effective in the long run.
Skepticism also runs high and deep in smaller businesses compared to their larger competitors.
37% of respondents said lack of budget was the reason AI tools aren’t being used at work.
AI tools such as conversational AI for omnichannel customer support and communications are most likely to be adopted first in any organization, as per the recent Dialpad research.
We spoke to Dialpad’s Chief AI and Strategy Officer, Dan O’Connell.
Dan explained why customer service leaders take such a strong and clear stance in support of AI tools and applications within their organization. Dan said, “Every business is focused on increasing revenue by selling more or churning less. In an ideal situation, it is hopefully a combination of both. We’re at a moment in time where AI can help businesses mine and access data faster than ever before, giving brands the ability to analyze customer conversations like never before, enabling them to identify specific insights and apply categorization to future customer interactions. Implementing AI leads to more efficient, cost-effective, and productive teams, allowing companies to better understand their customers’ journeys to ensure a best-in-class experience.”
In an earlier chat (not connected with the customer service versus sales preference), Rebecca Jones, general manager of Mosaicx
had mentioned the role of AI’s machine learning capabilities in customer service and support management. Rebecca had said, “For years, it seemed like AI development was largely standing still. Now, it feels like years of development pass almost every week. While there are many AI trends to follow, there are a few we believe will impact the immediate future of customer service…”
She continued, “AI-powered recommendations merge personalized service with cost-saving automation. Traditional tools like IVR use lengthy menus to group customers by similar intent. AI tools like intelligent virtual agents (IVA) analyze individual customer data, allowing them to provide personalized assistance and reign in the menus. They also identify opportunities for upselling, cross-selling, and revenue generation. These recommendations benefit human agents too.”
Despite their differences toward AI use and adoption, sales and customer service displayed a fearless attitude. In an era where millions of jobs are at risk due to AI takeover, 70% of sales and customer service professionals don’t feel AI can ever replace them from their jobs. Maybe, this could be attributed to the empathy and emotional connection that sales and customer service professionals manage to establish with their customers as part of relationship management. Nonetheless, it is an undeniable truth that involving AI in sales and customer service operations is a crucial component in growing a company’s revenue. There is a very high possibility that budgets would eventually shift toward AI adoption, enabling sales and customer service teams with better insights, quality recommendations, predictive intelligence, and so much more. In short, using AI tools that are operated by experienced human agents could help in building an effective, efficient, and customer-centric sales and service organization.
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