Digital Ma Li, Zhou Yun: Kundenservice ist der nächste Wachstumsanlaufpunkt im E-Commerce.
The growth formula for e-commerce is being rewritten.
As the traffic dividend reaches its peak and the classic model of "traffic × conversion rate" gradually fades, merchants are starting to look for new growth points and turning to the other side of the e-commerce field: the refined operation of existing users. Among these, customer service, a contact point that is closest to the brand yet most easily overlooked, has come into the public view and quickly become a new growth variable.
Growth can be said to be the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over every brand. "Seek growth from service" is a slogan that many brands have actively put forward, but in the past, few could truly achieve it. However, today, this slogan has become a core issue for all brands. While brands have to pay attention to it, problems also arise: service quality, response speed, and cost control form an "impossible triangle." During major promotions, to ensure a good experience, merchants need to prepare several times the usual number of customer service staff. But after the promotions, the idle cost of these teams will become a heavy burden on the enterprise. If they choose temporary outsourcing, it is difficult to ensure the unity of service quality and brand tone.
Is there a new solution that can make customer service capabilities be used on-demand and flexibly scaled, just like "cloud computing," so that it can handle traffic peaks, avoid resource waste, and at the same time promote conversion effects?
During this year's 618 promotion, this idea seems to have been verified. Eighty-nine leading brands, including vivo, Luolai, and Banana Umbrella, have all started to try a new service model. Data shows that during the entire promotion period, this model handled more than 26 million manual service requests, with a peak of nearly 550,000 requests in a single day, and the average service satisfaction rate remained at a high level of 94%.
One of the "masterminds" behind this is Ant Group's Digital Ma Power. While many people still think it is just an AI customer service tool, it has long set its goal as a "growth partner" for e-commerce enterprises.
So, how does this "AI cloud customer service" model, which combines AI with "distributed human resources," actually work? And how does it transform a traditional cost center into a new engine driving GMV growth?
01. Human-machine integration: achieving both efficiency and warmth
What are the manifestations of the reconstruction of the growth logic in the e-commerce industry?
For example, the uncertainty of background traffic is "eroding" the certainty in business. With the fragmentation of advertising channels and the changing platform policies, merchants can only "bet" on traffic peaks. The consultation volume during major promotions such as Double 11 may vary by a hundred times, making it difficult to accurately estimate the demand for customer service resources.
The current situation where "having too many customer service resources leads to waste, while having too few leads to breakdown" poses a huge challenge to the growth and cost of enterprises. From a technical perspective, the current AI Agent is regarded as the key to "breaking the deadlock."
Gartner predicts that by 2025, AI-driven customer service interactions will increase by 400%, and AI Agents will increase customer service satisfaction by 20%. The industry know-how of AI Agents far surpasses that of most human customer service representatives. In terms of conversation processing speed and ability, the cost of all-day service, and multi-language coverage, it seems that AI Agents can "replace" most human customer service representatives.
However, relying solely on AI Agents to meet customer service needs may create an "illusion" in data indicators. For example, although explicit data such as the customer service connection rate has increased significantly, the implicit service quality has not been effectively improved. In some common SaaS-based intelligent customer service applications on the market, the service gap is very obvious.
In some complex consultations, the average response time of AI customer service can be compressed to within 15 seconds, but the actual time to solve the problem has actually increased. Behind the seemingly high efficiency lies an indescribable negative user experience. Especially when users are anxiously asking questions and repeatedly receive mechanical responses, it is easy to directly cause a loss in brand conversion rate.
The gap between the ideal and the reality has made more merchants realize that the key to solving the "last mile" problem in customer service is still people.
The current business logic of e-commerce is undergoing a structural transformation from "operating traffic" to "operating trust." However, whether it is traffic or trust, ultimately, it is all for growth. It is basically an industry consensus that good service can definitely bring about repeat purchases, growth, and conversion. However, to extract growth value from customer service, it requires that customer service not only solve problems but also convey warmth to users and help them make complex decisions.
Driven by the goal of growth, the essential benefit of customer service is to prevent growth from being lost and to explore new growth opportunities. In the past, relying solely on technological power only addressed the aspects of "response conversion" and preventing growth from being lost. When it comes to exploring growth potential, the emotional connection and professional wisdom of "people" are still crucial.
As a result, there is an urgent gap to be filled in the AI customer service market. Seeing this "uncharted territory," Digital Ma Power quickly built a bridge between efficiency and warmth for AI customer service and human customer service: the human-machine integrated AI cloud customer service.
Zhou Yun, the vice president of Ant Group and the chairman and CEO of Digital Ma Power, told 36Kr: "Using AI technology to empower and guide customer service experts in multiple aspects, such as product features, consumer insights, and job processing, can greatly improve the efficiency of customer service work, enhance the stickiness between consumers and enterprises, and better promote business growth."
02. Good service can increase GMV by 10%
Why has customer service, as a bridge between brands and users, been easily overlooked all along?
This is because GMV is the lifeline of e-commerce. Compared with the mature front-end traffic system, customer service is a cost center that "seeks no merit, but only to avoid mistakes." Although merchants are aware of the importance of service efficiency and quality, the text features and user behavior data involved are too complex to be directly quantified.
However, in the AI era, there is a definite answer to the strategy of using customer service for growth.
Digital Ma Power's AI cloud customer service solution constructs a new integrated paradigm with AI as the intelligent center and a "talent cloud pool" to reconstruct the enterprise service process, achieving the intelligent matching of enterprise needs and labor supply, thus solving the problem of balancing service efficiency and quality.
This new human-machine integrated paradigm provides an opportunity for the customer service field to transform from a cost center to a new growth entry point.
Zhou Yun told 36Kr that Digital Ma Power provides "managed" services for enterprises. Before sales, it trains cloud customer service representatives through "AI pair training" to build up personnel reserves, helping enterprises stably explore more consumption trends and consumer preferences, and completing pre-sales conversion through proactive services. During the sales process, it uses AI tools to intercept risky remarks, assist in，product recommendations and optimize remarks, and teach cloud customer service representatives how to use platform tools step by step, directly convey policy changes to merchants, and standardize the service process. After sales, it also uses means such as holiday marketing and scenario marketing to enhance consumers' brand loyalty and encourage more repeat purchases.
"After cooperating for a period of time, our service can basically bring about a 10% increase in GMV for e-commerce enterprises," Zhou Yun admitted. "The arrival of AI has made our service more personalized. Customer service experts can better understand customers and consumers, and at the same time, AI can also help customer service experts find more service opportunities and touchpoints."
Digital Ma Power's "Ma Shang Employment" platform has nearly 530,000 certified talents. Among them, there are more than 280,000 e-commerce talent reserves. In the field of cloud customer service alone, Ant Cloud Customer Service is available in 485 cities and more than 3,600 districts and counties, with an average of more than 12,000 people online every day.
Currently, Digital Ma Power has cooperated with nearly 100 leading industry customers and brands. The idea of flexible employment not only meets the demand of these enterprises for flexible employment during traffic peaks but also uses the AI technology platform to lower the employment threshold and deliver employment opportunities to more remote areas.
Another important factor that enables Digital Ma Power to break through the inertial thinking and turn customer service into a growth entry point for enterprises is that they don't put all their eggs in the "solution basket." Instead, they establish long-term trust with enterprise customers through service quality and effect commitments.
Recently, Digital Ma Power officially launched the "Double 11 Service Guarantee Plan," and the first batch of 10 major customers, including vivo, Belle, Tineco, Xiaomi, Laifen, Proya, and Semir, have joined the plan. This plan addresses the pain points in e-commerce and makes commitments such as "if you use it, I'll compensate," "if you can't handle it, use it for free," and "no conversion, no charge." It guarantees the service bottom line and connection rate under various channels and assessment dimensions. If proactive service fails to generate inquiry conversions, the corresponding fees will be waived, fundamentally guaranteeing the result orientation that enterprises are most concerned about.
For enterprise service providers, especially during the implementation of new technologies, "daring to guarantee results" is a very crucial core competitiveness. This means that the provider deeply binds the growth goals of enterprise customers with its own business model in the long term, rather than just selling tools and services on a one-time basis.
When enterprises use AI, they no longer need to pay for the uncertainty of AI service effects. Once they experience obvious growth effects, with the recommendation rewards and tiered incentives in Digital Ma Power's "Double 11 Service Guarantee Plan," enterprises can also share the benefits of economies of scale. This is the "partner spirit" that distinguishes Digital Ma Power from traditional technology providers.
In the context of e-commerce customer service, Semir, a national fashion brand, has unique insights. Around 2016, Semir introduced intelligent customer service. After years of iteration, it found that AI has indeed achieved cost reduction and efficiency improvement for the enterprise in after-sales processing. Especially after products are included in the knowledge base, AI's recognition and recommendation capabilities have become stronger and stronger.
However, in terms of adaptability and emotional perception in conversations, it still fails to meet human standards. Especially in the field of non-standard products such as clothing, Semir needs to establish a clear talent profile when screening customer service representatives, such as hobbies, expression ability, and clothing matching skills, in order to provide personalized services to users. Although this takes up a lot of management and training energy, the service quality has been significantly improved.
Therefore, Digital Ma Power's human-machine integrated and flexibly coordinated AI cloud customer service solution has made Semir see the possibility of AI combining the liberation of human efficiency with the retention of service warmth.
Shi Danfeng, the customer service director of Semir, told 36Kr that the ROI of AI cloud customer service is mainly reflected in the improvement of human efficiency. For example, in terms of the convenience of querying information, assuming that a human customer service representative can handle 200 user problems a day, after using AI-assisted tools, each action of the customer service representative can save 5 seconds. Under the same conditions, the number of problems the customer service representative can solve can increase to 300.
"Providing good customer service is the foundation, and supporting the brand to increase sales is the ultimate goal," Shi Danfeng said. Through long-term cooperation, Digital Ma Power's AI cloud customer service has not only helped Semir solve the problem of flexible configuration but also has a clear result orientation in terms of delivery. The service satisfaction rate and conversion rate have both increased rapidly. In terms of matching human customer service representatives, AI cloud customer service can match business scenarios according to the labels in the talent pool, showing consistency with Semir's internal organizational system.
Every year on August 8th, Semir usually holds a Double 11 kick-off meeting. In the past, Semir has invested a lot of management and training energy to prepare for the peak period of major promotions. This year, it has built up a cloud customer service talent pool in advance and will conduct flexible coordination according to business needs at that time. This not only improves human efficiency and reduces manpower waste but also increases user satisfaction. "This year, we have also added conversion rate assessment for Double 11. We believe that with the assistance of AI tools, it will also be greatly improved. In addition, in terms of quality assurance, the AI cloud customer service team can match business scenarios according to the labels in the talent pool, which also has certain advantages in achieving data and results," Shi Danfeng revealed.
From the changes in Semir's organizational relationship, it can be seen that the supporting value of AI in organizational coordination, demand prediction, decision-making, and conversion has been optimized and amplified after combining with the warmth of human customer service.
03. The "future competition" for people is about inclusion and inclusiveness
Before Digital Ma Power entered the market, there were very few providers in the e-commerce field who truly understood enterprise services and could provide good AI solutions.
The high expectations for AI have made many service providers have unrealistic expectations. They simply forcefully combine technology and service. When it doesn't work, they simply attribute the pain points between people and enterprises to the immaturity of technology.
However, in fact, technology cannot be the only protagonist in service.
Zhou Yun believes that customer service is not just a job that pursues accuracy: "Good service should be professional, efficient, and warm. Professionalism is reflected in the understanding of product performance and the accuracy of solutions. Currently, most intelligent customer service still focuses on solving the problem of accuracy. Efficiency requires in-depth and rapid understanding of users' needs and basic situations, thinking and solving problems from the users' perspective, and showing sufficient empathy and patience. Warmth is the biggest challenge at present. It means solving problems while soothing users' emotions and making them feel secure."
Even from a technical perspective, Digital Ma Power has clearly recognized that AI is applied by people, so the first step is to match people well. After understanding enterprise services and growth logic, Digital Ma Power has also seen the trend of "future competition" in the aspect of "people."
The social value of human-machine integration does not lie in using AI to replace people or starting a high-end talent war. Instead, it is to activate stronger employment inclusion and inclusiveness.
In Digital Ma Power's cloud customer service resource pool, many practitioners come from remote areas. Digital tools and skills have improved their professionalism, lowered the employment threshold, and broken geographical restrictions. Among them, there are also some people from special groups who have become cloud customer service staff, providing a stable and dignified job with growth opportunities for anyone. This is also an embodiment of the inclusiveness of AI.
Lai Xiaojuan, a Paralympic champion, has transformed into a cloud customer service representative. From the sports field to the cloud, she refines her customer service skills with the standard of a gold medal.
Good AI and a healthy business model should promote employment rather than cause employment anxiety.
"In the future, enterprises can entrust the entire customer service function module or the ability training module to growth partners like us, making the management structure more lightweight and agile."
Zhou Yun believes that just as technology has ecological interfaces, the management and organization methods of enterprises can also set business goals and connect with business results with more "interface-type" service providers. According to Zhou Yun, Digital Ma Power will precisely match the most suitable service experts from the resource pool according to the enterprise's industry, product features, and brand style.
During the digital transformation process of enterprises, no matter how the technological wave changes, growth is an unshakable goal. Demonstrating care and inclusion for people in service is a higher-level competitiveness.
Zhou Yun pointed out that the growth value of customer service is not limited to e-commerce: "The experience of Digital Ma Power in creating brand experiences in the e-commerce customer