Your comprehensive guide to AI copilots for customer service

Every conversation about artificial intelligence seems to have at least a slight undercurrent of the widespread, “The robots are coming to take our jobs!” fears.

However, as this technology continues to become more widespread, this point becomes clearer: the primary goal of most AI tools is to enhance (and not erase) human jobs.

There are few places where that premise is clearer than on customer support teams — and AI copilots are one of many examples of how this cutting-edge technology can make your customer support operations simpler, smoother, and more successful. 

What is an AI copilot?

An AI copilot is an AI system that can help you complete a variety of tasks in real time. AI copilots are used across industries but, looking at AI in customer support specifically, a copilot could help by providing insights, offering recommendations, or automating responses.

We’ll spare you the major technology lesson, but AI copilots use generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to understand the context of a situation and craft helpful responses. Many of these AI systems also use natural language processing (NLP) to interpret what you’re saying and machine learning (ML) to learn from your interactions and improve responses over time.

For example, you could set up an AI copilot that considers a customer’s inquiry and then automatically suggests relevant responses to your support agents.

Think of an AI copilot as a digital virtual assistant (in fact, you might also hear a copilot called an “AI assistant”). It’s a tool that can help you simplify your decision-making processes, streamline time-consuming workflows, and tackle even your most complex tasks.

One quick thing to keep in mind: Microsoft offers an AI solution (called Microsoft Copilot). However, we’re talking about AI copilots in general in this guide — not that specific Microsoft product.

Why do companies use AI copilots?

AI tools are way more than just a trend or a bandwagon. There are many compelling reasons why companies are turning to automation and copilots, including:

• Saving time: Copilots handle repetitive tasks so agents can focus on more complex issues that need a human touch.
  
  
• Improving accuracy and consistency: With standardized and brand-aligned responses, copilots can reduce errors and keep messaging consistent across agents.
  
  
• Boosting customer satisfaction: Copilots allow for faster responses and more personalized support, which improves customer experience, loyalty, and satisfaction rates.
  
  
• Scaling support: Copilots allow companies to handle higher ticket volumes without needing to hire and grow the team at an aggressive rate.

Those are the high-level benefits that explain why companies are enlisting the help of AI technologies. But let’s take a closer look at a few use cases that explain how customer support teams are putting these tools to work.

Real-time customer response assistance

AI copilots provide support agents with suggested responses based on previous interactions, common FAQs, and the current context of the conversation. For example, if an agent is answering a question about shipping policies, the copilot can instantly suggest the most relevant and up-to-date response. 

Agent performance monitoring and coaching

Customer support managers can use AI copilots to track performance metrics (such as response time or customer sentiment). If an agent’s performance dips, the copilot flags the potential issue for the manager to step in and provide necessary training or coaching.

Automated escalation

Copilots can rely on keywords or sentiment analysis to automatically identify issues that should be escalated. If a customer expresses frustration or uses a specific term, the copilot alerts the manager or automatically escalates the case to a more experienced agent.

How can AI copilots help boost customer experiences?

AI copilots offer many benefits to customer support teams — but they can be just as beneficial for your customers who receive faster, readily available, and personalized support. Here are a few of the many ways AI copilots are advantageous for your customer or user experience:

• Faster resolution times: With suggested responses and real-time agent assistance, AI copilots can help agents address customer questions faster (without customers enduring long hold times or being bounced around between different agents).

• Personalized customer interactions: AI copilots analyze customer profiles, past purchases, and their previous interactions with customer support. That equips agents with tailored insights they can use to make each customer interaction feel personal, relevant, and helpful.

• Self-service support: An impressive 81% of customers say they want more self-service support options. AI copilots allow companies to offer self-service options through different apps like chatbots and automated help desks, so customers can find the answers and solutions they need — even if it’s outside normal business hours.
  
  
• Proactive problem solving: While AI copilots are helpful for mundane or repetitive tasks, they can also help with more complex decision-making processes. AI copilots can gather and analyze customer feedback in real time to identify patterns or common complaints that could signal a larger issue. With that information, the company can address those problems before they get worse.

The impact of AI apps and copilots on the customer experience isn’t all anecdotal. As just one example, contact center teams that used Microsoft Copilot boosted customer satisfaction scores by 12%. Those who use Assembled Assist report an impressive 18% increase in customer satisfaction replies. 

Differences between AI copilots, chatbots, and AI agents

As you familiarize yourself with the different AI technologies on the market, you’re bound to come across various tools that sound similar — and AI copilots, chatbots, and agents are some of the most common examples.

All three of these tools use artificial intelligence to streamline your customer service operations. However, they have different functionality and roles on your customer support team.

AI copilots

These are advanced systems that are designed to work alongside your human agents and assist them with tasks like generating responses, providing recommendations, and surfacing relevant information (especially from large datasets).

While chatbots interact directly with customers, copilots operate more behind the scenes to help agents with speed, accuracy, and performance. 

Chatbots

Unlike copilots, chatbots aren’t behind the scenes — they’re programmed to interact with your customers directly, usually via text or chat interfaces. 

Chatbots can handle straightforward or frequently asked questions, such as checking the status of an order or providing information about your business hours. They don’t yet have the depth or adaptability needed for complex tasks or interactions, which means they’re the best fit for routine, high-volume inquiries that can rely on predefined scripts or conversation flows.

AI agents

An AI agent (often called a virtual agent) is similar to an AI chatbot in that it’s customer-facing, but it’s far more sophisticated than a standard chatbot and can handle more complex or dynamic customer interactions.

AI agents use natural language processing and machine learning to engage in more nuanced conversations, answer more complicated questions, and escalate to a human agent when necessary. For that reason, AI agents are the best fit for high-volume or mid-level complexity support needs.

Need a quick comparison between these three types of AI tools? This chart breaks down the major differences to know:

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How to choose an AI copilot for your business

Once you decide that an AI copilot is the right addition to your support team’s workflows, you’ll quickly realize you have plenty of options. It seems like nearly every technology company has released some sort of copilot. Microsoft even offers several different ones, including the Edge Copilot and the 365 Copilot.

Having options is a good thing, but it can also make your decision murkier. Here are five questions to ask yourself to choose an AI copilot that’s the best fit for your team.

What is your primary need or goal?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when evaluating AI tools, so start by zooming out to determine your main business need. Why do you need an AI copilot? What problems will this solve?

While it might seem like an overly basic step, it will help you stay focused on your primary use case and only consider solutions that meet that need.

What teams or functions does this copilot serve?

Remember that AI copilots are a broad category that includes a variety of industries and use cases. For example, there’s GitHub Copilot, a code completion tool specifically to help software developers write code. Or there’s Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot that’s embedded in the Salesforce CRM and helps salespeople by summarizing records and generating custom communication.

Those tools are excellent — but that doesn’t mean they’re relevant. Look for a copilot (like Assembled Assist) that’s specifically built for customer support teams so you can get the features and capabilities that are most beneficial to you. 

What regulations do you need to abide by?

Certain industries like healthcare or financial services are highly regulated. Consider any industry-wide or company-specific data protection, privacy, and security policies to ensure the potential copilot complies with those regulations.

What integrations do you need?

Your support team likely already has at least a few tools that you regularly use and love. Understandably, you want your AI copilot to fit in seamlessly with the tools you already have.

Take a close look at the AI copilot’s integrations to confirm it will play nicely with the apps and solutions that are already part of your customer support tech stack.

What is your budget?

Your AI copilot will come at a cost. Your exact price tag will depend on your desired features and the size of your team, so it’s important to know what you need and how much you’re able to spend to get it. Ironing out your budget ahead of time will help you narrow down your potential options right from the get-go. 

How to develop a governance framework for AI copilots

AI copilots hold a lot of promise for your customer support team, but you don’t want your enthusiasm to overpower your good judgment.

You and your team will have the most success rolling out an AI copilot if you take an intentional and structured approach to introducing, using, and managing them. That’s what your governance framework is — a plan for how you’ll use your AI system in an ethical, responsible, and effective way.

Sound daunting? It doesn’t have to be. Here are three simple steps to help you iron out your governance framework for your AI copilot:

1. Establish your internal policies: Start by defining internal policies that state how the AI copilot will interact with sensitive data. As part of this step, you’ll need to outline your privacy policies (which explain how customer and company data is protected) and your security policies (which explain access controls, data handling practices, and security protocols).

2. Define standards of excellence: Much like any other change you roll out to your team, you want to know what success looks like. Set quality and performance standards for your AI copilot (like benchmarks for response accuracy, customer satisfaction, and efficiency) to ensure it satisfies your goals and values. 

3. Assign roles and responsibilities: Your AI copilot isn’t entirely hands-off, so identify the team members responsible for managing, monitoring, and updating the copilot. Clearly define these roles so everybody knows who’s responsible for what. 

Training your customer service representatives to use AI copilots

AI copilots are designed to make your support agents’ jobs easier — but that doesn’t happen out of the box. Much like with any other new tool, you need to commit to thorough training so your agents learn how to use the copilots effectively.

That involves more than a quick orientation or onboarding session. Train your agents on the following aspects of using (and benefitting from) an AI copilot:

• Effective prompting techniques: The output of a copilot is only as good as the input. Provide guidance for writing clear and specific prompts so your agents know how to frame their questions in a way that helps the copilot understand the big picture and the requirements of the task. 

• Feeding context to the platform: Similarly to prompting, knowing how to provide context can help your agents receive more accurate responses. Your training sessions should teach your agents how to share relevant customer information, past interactions, and specific details with the platform to get responses that are tailored to the specific situation.

• Providing consistent feedback: One of the best parts about AI copilots is that they continue to improve the more you use them — provided your agents offer consistent and clear feedback. Teach your agents how to contribute to this feedback loop so that you can improve your copilot while also fostering a sense of ownership among your agents.

That’s not an exhaustive list — and your chosen copilot may have existing training tips and resources to get your team up to speed on your specific solution. However, the above key training areas will help you set your support team on the right course when using your AI copilot.

Use AI to improve your customer service operations with Assembled Assist

AI copilots aren’t here to replace human agents — they’re here to make life easier. Assembled Assist, an agent copilot and issue resolution engine powered by generative AI, will help your customer support agents address customer tickets faster and with more accuracy.

With features like real-time conversation assistance, automated ticketing, and personalized customer interactions, Assembled Assist has all of the features you need to streamline your support workflows and reduce your response times. You’ll get contextual suggestions based on previous interactions and customer data to help you deliver a standout support experience to every customer.

AI copilots are here to transform your customer service operations in ways that benefit your team and your customers. Book your demo today to see how Assembled Assist can take your support team (and your customer experience) to the next level.