AI Copilots in Customer Service: Their Role & Benefits

The use of artificial intelligence across industries has increased substantially in recent years.

In fact, 83% of companies report that AI has become a top priority in their business plans and strategy.

One emerging technology that’s gained significant traction as a result is the AI copilot.

These virtual assistants are smart, supportive tools designed to work alongside humans.

For CX leaders and contact centres, copilots can boost agent productivity, increase operational efficiency, and improve customer service.

In this article, we’ll explore how you can leverage an AI copilot to achieve these outcomes for your own business. 

We’ll cover…

• What are AI copilots, and how do they work?
• Key use cases for an AI copilot in customer service
• The benefits of using AI copilot for customer support

TL;DR

Key use cases for copilots in AI customer support…

1. Information retrieval & contextual assistance: AI copilots pull relevant information from knowledge bases and systems, enabling agents to respond quickly without switching platforms.
2. Response suggestions: AI copilots analyse inquiries and offer real-time response suggestions to maintain consistency, reduce errors, and save time.
3. Message autocomplete: Advanced predictive text functionality helps agents complete messages faster, reducing manual typing and boosting response speed.
4. Style & tone adjustments: Copilots suggest revised versions of messages to align with customer sentiment or company guidelines, ensuring polished communication.
5. Agent skill development: Continuous real-time support and feedback from AI copilots help agents acquire knowledge, improve skills, and enhance decision-making over time.

What are AI copilots?

AI copilots are intelligent software tools designed to assist users in performing tasks.

These tools act like AI virtual assistants or chatbots, working collaboratively with humans to optimise decision-making, boost efficiency, and minimise errors.

The range of applications and use cases for AI copilots across industries is huge.

The core advantage lies in their ability to complement human intelligence by automating tasks and analysing large datasets rapidly.

For example, in software development, GitHub Copilot assists software developers by suggesting code snippets, autocompleting code, and detecting potential issues.

For content creation, AI copilots can assist with writing, editing/proofreading, providing feedback, and creative brainstorming.

In customer service, copilot AI assistants are used to empower agents and optimise their performance during customer interactions.

From response generation to information retrieval and real-time guidance, copilot AI enables a hybrid model where the efficiency of automation meets the empathy and problem-solving capabilities of human intervention.

How does an AI copilot work?

AI copilots are powered by advanced artificial intelligence technologies, including:

• Generative AI (GenAI): Generative AI enables copilots to generate outputs that closely resemble human writing and speech, facilitating seamless and natural conversations.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP): Natural language processing helps an AI copilot understand and interpret the subtleties, context, and variations in human language.
• Large Language Models (LLMs): Trained on extensive datasets, LLMs (e.g. OpenAI’s GPT models) support the copilot in handling complex and context-aware interactions, improving its ability to respond intelligently.

Copilots work by leveraging these technologies through integration with a business knowledge base and other existing systems (e.g. CRMs).

This enables them to pull relevant information from a company’s knowledge resources and data.

In turn, an AI copilot can provide human agents with assistance, recommendations, and contextual guidance during live customer interactions.

This real-time support empowers agents to resolve issues more efficiently and effectively, reducing their workload and enhancing service quality.

AI copilot in customer service: Key use cases

Now that we’ve covered the basics of agent copilots, let’s dive into some of the key use cases for this technology in the context of AI customer service.

1. Information retrieval & contextual assistance

AI copilots excel at retrieving relevant information quickly.

This is invaluable when agents need to look something up or provide detailed or technical answers.

When integrated with your knowledge bases and other business systems, AI copilots can pull up product/service details, company policies, troubleshooting guides, etc., during customer interactions.

This allows agents to instantly access information and respond without switching between multiple platforms or systems.

With Talkative, this copilot use case is demonstrated  by 'Navi', an internal-facing AI chatbot.

Navi is essentially a brand-trained virtual assistant who can help agents during customer conversations by...

• Answering agent questions based on  your knowledge base resources and the interaction context
• Recommending the next steps or further actions that the agent should take during interactions
• Summarising the customer’s journey, including the web page they’re currently viewing

This means your agents will have all the information they might need at their fingertips, eliminating the need to search manually for answers.

It also reduces resolution times and enhances service quality, leading to increased customer satisfaction.

2. Response suggestions & recommendations

Another impactful use case for AI copilots is their ability to generate response suggestions during customer interactions.

By analysing incoming inquiries, AI copilots can offer a selection of relevant responses for each customer message in real-time.

In turn, the agent can either instantly send an AI suggestion back to the customer or customise the response as needed before sending it.

This process helps agents maintain consistency, avoid mistakes, and save time during customer conversations.

This is especially useful in high-volume support scenarios where fast, accurate responses are crucial.

With Talkative’s Agent Copilot, response suggestions are powered by generative AI and based on your knowledge base content - as well as the context of interaction itself.

This ensures that all suggestions are aligned with the latest company-approved information and guidelines.

3. Message autocomplete

In addition to full response suggestions, AI copilot can also offer message autocomplete functionality.

This is similar to predictive text on smartphones but more advanced and tailored to your brand.

It works by predicting and completing agent messages, accelerating response times and reducing manual typing.

As agents type, an AI copilot can generate completions or the next part of a response based on the interaction context.

If the agent is happy with the suggested text, they can autocomplete the message with a single click.

4. Style & tone adjustments

Maintaining the appropriate tone and style in customer communications is vital for building rapport and ensuring positive interactions.

AI copilots can assist with this by offering improved or revised versions of agent messages during text-based interactions (i.e. live chat, messaging).

These adjustments allow agents to easily adjust their messages to better align with customer sentiment or company guidelines.

With Talkative’s AI Copilot, agents can select a preferred tone/style/format for the new version of their message from the following options:

• Better spelling and grammar
• Longer or shorter text length
• Friendlier, more casual tone
• Formal, more professional tone

Once generated, the revised version of their message can then be added to the chat box with one click.

It can also be amended further by the agent if needed before sending.

By enabling users to instantly adjust messages to a more suitable style, an AI copilot helps ensure that agent communications are polished and contextually appropriate.

5. Agent skill development

AI copilots don’t just improve agent performance in real time.

They can also contribute to your human agents’ ongoing skill development.

By consistently providing suggestions, recommendations, and information, copilots create a learning environment that empowers agents and aids continuous improvement.

As agents interact with AI copilot tools, they become more adept at understanding and recalling company knowledge, applying best practices, and communicating effectively.

For example, through using AI response suggestions, agents naturally learn the most efficient phrasing and industry-specific terminology.

This, in turn, boosts their proficiency and speed in handling similar queries in the future.

Additionally, AI copilot assistants like Talkative’s Navi provide essential information and valuable insights during live interactions.

This real-time guidance helps human agents understand complex cases more thoroughly, boosting their decision-making skills.

These experiences increase an agent’s knowledge and abilities over time, leading to optimal performance.

Benefits of using copilot AI assistants for customer interactions

As the above use cases show, an AI copilot can be a valuable asset for your agents and customer experience.

By leveraging this technology, you can gain the following benefits…

Increased speed & efficiency

One of the key benefits of using AI copilots in customer service is the boost in speed and efficiency.

Case in point, 60% of support agents report that AI assistant tools help them save time.

AI copilots can conduct complex data analysis instantly, providing real-time recommendations and suggestions.

This AI-powered assistance enables agents to handle and resolve inquiries faster.

It also lightens their workload, giving them the capacity to handle multiple interactions and/or complex issues more efficiently and effectively.

This results in reduced wait times for customers, faster response times, and a higher number of queries being resolved within shorter timeframes.

More consistent & accurate service

Because AI copilots are integrated with your knowledge bases, they ensure higher consistency and accuracy in the information provided to customers.

It’s one reason why 68% of agents claim that AI helps them better serve their customers.

Human agents may vary in their interpretation or recall of product/service information, company policies, guidelines, etc.

AI copilots don’t have this issue, as all their response suggestions and recommendations are generated using only your pre-approved knowledge base content.

This minimises the risk of human error and the chance of a customer receiving incorrect, inconsistent, or outdated information.

Better customer experiences

A better customer experience is a direct result of the efficiency and accuracy that AI copilots bring to the table.

With faster service and consistent, well-informed answers, customers are more likely to feel satisfied with their experience.

AI copilots can also help personalise the customer experience by drawing on data from integrated CRM systems and tailoring responses.

Overall, copilot technology empowers agents to communicate more effectively, solve problems faster, and deliver higher-quality service.

In this way, AI copilots augment and enhance the human experience.

Improved agent experience

An AI copilot doesn’t just impact the experiences of your customers.

It can also improve the day-to-day work and employee experience for agents.

By providing real-time assistance, copilot AI reduces agents' cognitive load while empowering them to serve customers better and faster.

It also allows agents to focus on higher-level problem-solving and more engaging aspects of their work.

This decreases the risk of employee burnout, which is a significant problem in high-pressure customer service and contact centre environments.

In fact, more than half (59%) of agents are currently at risk of work-related burnout.

Overall, the support provided by AI copilots enables agents to increase productivity, develop their skills, and perform optimally during customer interactions.

The takeaway: Getting started with a generative AI copilot

Agent copilots combine the power of AI and automation with human intelligence.

By complementing and enhancing agent performance, an AI companion can elevate the efficiency and effectiveness of customer support.

That’s why the Talkative solution includes a generative AI-powered Agent Copilot solution.

Designed to improve the speed, accuracy, and quality of your digital customer service, Talkative's AI copilot provides...

• Integration with your own knowledge bases
• AI-generated response suggestions
• Next-step/action recommendations
• Navi, an internal-facing AI assistant for agents
• AI message autocomplete and rephrasing capabilities

In addition to Agent Copilot and other AI solutions, we offer a complete suite of customer contact channels and capabilities.

These include live chat, web calling, video chat, cobrowse, messaging, and more.

Want to learn more?

Book a demo with Talkative today, and check out our interactive product tour.