AI is rapidly becoming a must-have for businesses seeking a competitive edge.
Yet in this race, we are witnessing a rush to adopt AI without necessarily having it deliver the type of service you want it to.
Sure, AI can handle basic customer queries, like whether a business is open or if it offers a certain product, but such use is not reinventing the wheel beyond a traditional IVR.
AI is now more than capable of delivering a service customers can resonate with. The difference lies in how you put it to work – and Clerk Chat gets it.
“We asked, how do these AIs actually become one with your company, where they understand who they’re working for, how you like to talk to your clients, where they’re actually helping you out just as a human would,” William Bowen, AI Specialist at Clerk Chat, said.
“I think that’s the more important level of adaptation and variability we’re going with these agents, because we found otherwise it’s not actually super valuable to a company.”
Getting AI to integrate across your workspace, handle the load, and get AI agents to work in a way that actually matters is how Clerk Chat brings value out of AI to its clients.
Integration: A Crucial Step for Useful AI
The business communication technology space has undergone significant transformation in recent years.
While platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Webex have become staples for internal collaboration, their native messaging capabilities often fall short when it comes to external customer engagement.
“Microsoft have released a basic SMS product, which is primarily focusing on SMBs that need one-to-one messaging capabilities. But where we found a lot of traction among customers is in the space when it comes to providers that do Operator Connect and Direct Routing ,” Igor Boshoer, Co-Founder and CTO at Clerk Chat, explained.
Here is where Clerk Chat brings value. With its robust integration capabilities, the platform seamlessly connects with major communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and WebEx, as well as critical CRM systems such as Salesforce and HubSpot.
This deep integration ensures that AI interactions are not isolated events but are part of a comprehensive communication ecosystem.
“I’m sure basically everyone at this point has interacted with some chatbot that will always say the same pre-packaged lines. If I say, ‘hey where’s my order’ the old bots would have given the same canned, useless response for me and you,” Bowen said.
This lack of adaptability creates frustrating customer experiences and fails to represent the company’s brand voice accurately.
Yet, with Clerk Chat AI , integrations allow it to become a personalized experience that not only make the customer feel valued, but deliver specific information related to them.
This integration serves two-fold. Firstly, it allows the AI to actively collect information from the conversations it has with inbound customers.
“If you’re text messaging for the first time, it can get all necessary data and sync it back to your Salesforce, which then creates a hyper-personalized conversation,” Bowen said.
Secondly, it remembers past conversations, so if someone messages again months later, the AI can pick up right where things left off.
“For instance, if you are an avid sports fan and attended a sports match, if you messaged about season tickets, the AI agent would have the full context,” Bowen continued.
For sales organizations, this allows AI to qualify leads by gathering essential information, so when a human representative steps in, the conversation is ready to go. This creates a more efficient customer experience.
Moreover, traditional AI implementations often suffer from hallucination issues, where systems provide incorrect or fabricated information when faced with queries outside their training parameters.
This can make them maybe appear too risky to use as a hands-off solution to things like customer service.
Clerk Chat’s AI overview keeps the AI focused so you can forget about hallucinations.
“AI is known to hallucinate, but this setup allows you to confine the agent to specific tasks and topics. Further, once the AI detects a type of conversation it cannot handle – it will seamlessly escalate it to a human representative,” Boshoer explained.
This, alongside its compliance features for data handling like SOC 2 Type 2 certification, and its integration with companies like Smarsh, mean such AI conversations can be deployed in even the most highly regulated industries like insurance, finance, or healthcare.
AI’s Benefits Across Channels
Aside from integration, a core skill of Clerk Chat’s AI offering is the ability to apply these capabilities across multiple communication channels.
“We built an entire agentic system behind the scenes that can be plugged in on top of your existing phone number,” Boshoer said.
This system enables businesses to maintain their existing communication infrastructure while adding intelligent automation capabilities.
“We enable SMS on existing numbers, offer global WhatsApp support, and RCS – messaging channels that many UCaaS platforms lack,” Boshoer continued.
The ability to apply AI in an omnichannel capacity means that these benefits, both taken from the interaction and given to the customers, can be engaged through their preferred platforms while businesses manage these interactions through a single interface.
Materializing AI’s Benefits
With AI being all the rage now, it can be a struggle to cut through the noise and see the actual results its application can bring.
But Boshoer highlights how their solutions have had tangible effects: “A company that enabled Clerk Chat on their LATAM WhatsApp saw their team go from handling about 300 messages per person per day to over 6,000 messages per day, nearly entirely handled by AI, and not suffering on CSAT or NPS.”
This capacity not only helps agents but is being seen to translate to improved customer service metrics.
Don’t just take his word for it, Clerk Chat itself practices what it preaches, with its AI solution handling “60% of our own internal support,” that is now “going up to 80%.”
By automating routine inquiries and tasks, companies can redirect their staff toward higher-value activities that require human judgment and creativity.
“All of that human capital that you’ve got in your company can be leveraged to do way more complex, way more demanding tasks and also tasks that are actually more fulfilling to a human,” Bowen said.
The Future of AI-Enhanced Business Communication
As AI technology continues its rapid evolution, solutions like Clerk Chat represent the vanguard of a new approach to business communication – one that emphasizes personalization through a synergy of integrations.
For businesses considering AI communication solutions, the message is clear: generic implementations focused purely on cost reduction will likely fall short.
Instead, organizations should seek solutions that enhance their existing communication infrastructure, maintain brand consistency, and free human staff to focus on complex, high-value interactions.
With properly implemented AI-powered communication systems like Clerk Chat, businesses can achieve the seemingly contradictory goals of increased personalization whilst scaling – transforming customer engagement from a cost center into a competitive advantage.
