How AI is being used in customer support in Africa

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Against a background where market disruption is key to creating new opportunities, Freshworks has embraced Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help keep their clients relevant, competitive and profitable.

Having identified Twitter as a key channel through which customers often engage companies, Freshworks has developed a social AI entity called Social Signals. This AI tool helps filter relevant and important messages from the volume of Twitter messages that may be directed at any one company.

Social Signals works by going through a company’s entire feed, where it understands and filters out tweets asking for help. These tweets are then converted to a task for a customer support agent to remedy, while disregarding all other tweets.

By filtering tweets, the Social Signals AI seamlessly enhances Freshworks’ cloud-based engagement platform, Freshdesk. This integration empowers businesses of all sizes with the kind of next-generation customer experience and innovation that modern society demands.

To further refine the effectiveness of Social Signals, support agents can train the AI to recognise new types of communication thus improving its learning, resolution and decision-making skills.
In an extensive research, Freshworks found that smart automated programs called chatbots, responded to a significant 40% of questions asked through Freshdesk. Furthermore, chatbots could dramatically improve the quality of exchanges between customers and support agents.

This was achieved by the chatbots requesting basic information first to collect necessary customer data. Significant benefits from time and cost savings were also recorded with increases of 15% to 20% more customers being helped.

Arihant Jain, business head, Middle East and Africa at Freshworks, commented, “AI has immense potential to add real value to the customer experience journey irrespective of the industry. However, AI must be viewed as a complement rather than as a replacement for people.

“This is something we are passionate about at Freshworks, where we look to technology to combine the ingenuity and efficiency of automated solutions with the irreplaceable empathy of the human touch. Freshworks prides itself in offering its growing number of customers and partners, solutions that enhance their service offering without negatively impacting the bottom line.”