How to Use AI for Sales and Service

Sales is a numbers game. That is the first lesson rookie salespeople learn. You need to do the work, that is, make the calls, send the emails, and book the appointments if you ever expect to meet your quota. The successful salesperson becomes an expert at mastering mundane daily tasks. Sales automation tools equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI) improve productivity and claim to make it easier for SDRs to hit their numbers.

Service professionals have a similar challenge. They need to answer customer questions and solve problems as fast as possible. The inbound call center is still the most common way to answer customer questions, but AI-based tools like chatbots, and intelligent knowledge bases are quickly replacing it. 

The business world is constantly evolving, and smart companies will test and incorporate the newest technologies to help them grow. This article provides an overview of current AI-based tools for sales and service departments.

AI for Sales Development

“AI is a double-edged sword, in that it gives SDRs the ability to remove a lot of the mundane, repetitious research activity that takes up a lot of their time each day, but it also helps create the ability to produce more spam messages that already clogged our prospects’ in-box.” 

David Dulany, Founder & CEO | Tenbound

As a sales development representative, it's typical to have to attempt to contact a potential customer 8-12 times using various methods such as phone calls, emails, and social media messages. Using AI tools can assist SDRs in automating this outreach process, resulting in more connections and sales appointments. ChatGPT-based products can be especially helpful as they can write emails for you, saving you time. However, it's important to personalize the message with your own tone and references before sending it out.

HubSpot has two new AI tools for sales. Content Assistant and Chatspot. Both products are in beta testing at the time of this article, but HubSpot customers can sign up for access through the HubSpot website or by contacting their customer support agent. 

Content Assistant helps you write emails, social posts, and blog posts by providing sample content at a click of a button. Chatspot is a chatbot that answers questions about your sales process. What is your forecast? How many prospects are located in your hometown? How many deals are closing this month? Unlike ChatGPT which relies on a predefined data source, Chatspot interacts with your own CRM data to provide real-time answers. 

Virtual Sales Assistants

“Hey [Siri/Alexa/Google] turn on the TV.” 

Virtual assistants are those handy apps in our cell phones and desktop devices to deal with our modern life. They recognize your voice commands and answer important questions like ‘What time is the pizza shop open’. 

Virtual sales assistants help you contact and close deals faster by automating the sales process and providing valuable information about your prospects.

Effective salespeople utilize teams to support them so they can focus on closing the deal. A sales assistant schedules calls, a marketing assistant creates ads, and writes the email. AI assistants provide the same services at a reduced cost. Conversica is an AI virtual sales assistant that automatically sends emails and replies on behalf of the primary user. Crystal Knows identifies the prospect's personality and helps you shape your conversations and email communications to match your prospect's needs. 

For SDRs determined to dial for cash, Koncert and Insidesales.com use AI to identify the best contacts for you to call and accelerate the dialing process to make more connections and spend less time leaving voicemail messages and working your way through phone trees. 

Email writing assistants make it easier and faster to pump out those outbound messages by providing ideas and improving your grammar on the fly. Tools like Copy.ai, Grammarly, and Pro Writing Aid use AI to reorganize sentences and improve your overall writing quality.

Conversation Automation

Live chat tools provide instant communications with website visitors and are now standard features on most B2B websites. When your live agents are unavailable, you can turn to chatbots to interact with customers, answer their most frequently asked questions, and reroute inquiries to sales and support articles. 

There are two types of chatbots. Programmed bots use questions and answers to take users through a structured conversation. AI chatbots recognize human language questions and reply based on previous questions. In other words, they learn from their experience to provide the most accurate answers. It’s similar to a real human conversation and provides a better customer experience. The type of chatbots you use depends on the type of questions you need to answer and the types of responses you want to provide.

Social Selling

Social media selling is an effective way to increase your sales pipeline and connect with people you don’t already have in your email contact files. But using social media tools can be time-consuming and frustrating. Salespeople often spend too much time researching prospects they can't reach. To make social selling easier, there are social media automation tools like CopilotAI, Penny AI, and We-Connect. These tools can automate connect requests and follow-up messages, saving valuable time.

Sales Headshots

Source: Studioshot

Your social media headshot is your first chance to sell your personal brand, but many people use selfies and do-it-yourself photo apps to create their profile images with mixed results. Studioshot is an AI-based tool that uses your selfies to create a professionally created headshot without the need to go to a live photographer. 

AI for Service Tools

Help Desk Automation

Help desk operations need to provide answers for agents and customers in real-time. AI tools improve the customer interaction experience and help automate the back-end processes required to respond to high volumes of support tickets. AI tools like Aisera.com plug into existing help desk software and use machine learning to understand the customer support processes and then automate the most common tasks. 

Customer Support

It’s important to understand your customer’s needs and appropriately respond to them. Sentiment analysis is one area where AI tools can help service teams improve their customer experience. The AI tools analyze the tone of your messages and predict how customers will respond. Voice AI technologies can automate your routine voice interactions, and process automation tools can improve escalation routing and task assignments. Predictive analytics tools use past interactions to predict future results and help service teams prepare the correct responses to common issues.

AI is Here to Stay

Although there has been a lot of buzz around AI in the media, AI tools are actually created to boost the productivity of sales and service teams. As these tools are constantly developing, it's crucial for revenue operations leaders to stay up-to-date with the latest innovations in this field. HubSpot is committed to integrating AI tools into its platform, and its partners are equipped to assist you in incorporating these new solutions into your day-to-day operations.