There is perhaps no group more deserving and in need of great customer service than medical device patients. The products are both complex and crucial to their lives. However, those patients are far too often relegated to chatbots that are little more than glorified FAQ lists. According to Gartner, by 2026, conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots and virtual assistants will handle 30% of service interactions currently handled by a human agent. Today, AI is becoming a practical tool – one that’s helping medical device companies, in particular, with customer service.

As these companies continue to put greater emphasis on providing a tailored, positive, and seamless patient experience, integrating AI into their customer service strategy will be paramount to remain competitive and relevant. In this piece, we explore three AI customer service use cases for medical device companies and considerations for how to responsibly implement AI into their practices. 

3 AI Customer Service Use Cases for Medical Device Companies

AI Customer Service Use Case #1 – Improving the Speed and Scale of Customer Service and Support 

Demand for rapid customer service and resolution is rising across industries. Medical device companies feel that demand more than most, as patients naturally place a high priority on the products and devices impacting their health. When a patient has an urgent request go unnoticed or require more time for a response, it can greatly impact their relationship with their medical device provider. Fortunately, GenAI affords the opportunity for businesses to transform a potentially frustrating experience into a seamless, effective one for their patients.

Leveraging an AI solution, medical device companies can not only streamline response mechanisms but also enable personalization to the specific patient with little or no wait time, regardless of time or place. After-call work (ACW) functionality allows reps to close out customer interactions and cases more easily to reduce average handle times (AHT). GenAI doesn’t just solve for some of the key challenges facing customer service teams – it also enables a more patient-focused relationship ultimately driving improvements well outside of customer service and issue resolution.  

AI Customer Service Use Case #2 – Enhancing the Quality and Accuracy of Customer Service and Issue Resolution 

While speed is critical in customer service, accuracy bears as much weight for the patient. Large language models (LLMs) can leverage a wide variety of resources and data for content creation, summarization, and classification to create quality content that speaks to the direct needs of your patients. Drawing on everything from call transcripts and case notes ensures that patients are receiving relevant, up-to-date information at a moment’s notice. AI has also made huge leaps in consistency around parameters for the type of information the medical device company is comfortable disclosing.  

By incorporating real-time data from patient interactions, AI solutions can create thematic summaries, which in turn can be used to inform future FAQs, patient resources, content, and more. In doing so, medical device companies can create a regenerative improvement process that incorporates customer feedback on a continuous basis. Furthermore, for customer service teams that also handle ordering on behalf of patients, GenAI solutions can improve the accuracy of orders and also enable self-serve options via a chatbot with patients.

AI Customer Service Use Case #3 – Creating a More Personalized Patient Experience 

Often, while they provide easily accessible information, chatbots or other AI interfaces can feel impersonal or transactional for users. But in order to leverage GenAI effectively for customer service, it’s critical that patients have an experience comparable to engaging with a customer service rep. LLMs can improve recognition and classification to help answer patient questions in a natural-sounding tone and voice. GenAI is also great at maintaining and using a working memory of the full conversation, preventing frustration or the patient having to repeat themselves or the context of their question. These improvements are enhancing the experience and conversation with patients to drive greater engagement

Key Considerations Before Implementing AI in Customer Service 

The potential of AI for transformation is as profound as the threat it poses when not implemented appropriately. A myriad of considerations must be taken into account from strategy to the technology you’ll leverage and how you’ll roll out this change within your business.

Assessing the potential business benefit is the first step, as it’s critical to ensure the potential ROI first and set up mechanisms for capturing and measuring the value. As with any technology in today’s age, robust data practices and strong analytics capabilities will be essential to realizing AI success. But, as we’ve seen with our clients, underestimating the change effort for your customer service teams will be especially important as the tools will rely on human agents to effectively drive value.

Cross-functional collaboration is also critical in order to realize the full potential of your AI solution for customer service. Bringing together application leaders with customer service and support, as well as leaders in IT, data/analytics, and corporate governance, will ensure a more well-rounded purview of the potential impacts and threats to a new AI solution.

An adequate AI solution for customer service will take into account the key nuances and unique characteristics of your business, your industry, and the patients you serve. Clarkston’s industry consultants bring both industry expertise and functional excellence to each engagement to provide targeted, industry-specific solutions that have scalability. If you’re interested in developing an AI use case for your customer service function or exploring the potential of AI across other areas of your business, contact us today to learn how Clarkston can help you build and scale AI solutions across the most impactful areas of your business.