Emotion Drives Loyalty
There is a sense that AI can be used to replace contact center agents. Many business analysts are suggesting that AI can be used to automate all interactions, but many customer interactions require empathy and an understanding of customer emotion. A smarter idea is therefore to use AI to support the human agents, use AI to create better self-service systems, but then to also keep on using human agents where emotion is a critical component of the customer experience – would you want to call a life insurance company only to be greeted by a bot?
AI Hype vs. Human Reality
There was a brief moment in 2023 when it felt like the global business media and tech analysts were suggesting that all information-focused professional jobs were about to be automated. This was connected to the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI at the end of 2022 – the moment when decades of detailed research into artificial intelligence (AI) went mainstream.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) published a ‘Future of Jobs’ report in 2023 with predictions that the highest areas of job growth out to 2027 will be for truck and bus drivers, along with operators of agricultural machinery. Professional ‘knowledge economy’ jobs were all at risk.
In the customer service environment, this led to headlines such as this in the Washington Post: “ChatGPT provided better customer service than his staff. He fired them.” When the financial services company Klarna announced in February 2024 that AI can handle two-thirds of their service interactions with customers, it dramatically affected the share price of several customer service specialists.
What the Hype Got Wrong
But there was a line in the 2023 WEF report that more people should have paid attention to back then. It said that as AI is increasingly used in businesses, the skills that human employees need to offer will be analytical, providing creative thinking. It also mentioned that service orientation and customer service are highly valuable human skills that can’t be easily replaced or automated.
This was an astute observation in 2023 and it has been proven correct. The experience that Klarna had after their big announcement about AI is a good example of this. Customer satisfaction dropped, and complaints soared. Eventually, the company was forced to admit that they sacrificed quality, morale, and trust in pursuit of efficiency.
The new automated customer service had no empathy for customers.
Augmenting, Not Replacing
AI is an extremely powerful tool. When the interface is well designed, it can offer a very useful automated service to customers, but there is a more powerful role for AI in supporting and augmenting the human agents that are working so hard to help customers.
This is the real story for AI – this ideal mix is a blend of technology and people boosted by the new systems. The simplistic vision of replacing customer service agents with AI ignores the insight and empathy that humans can offer to the customer relationship.
AI Empowers Agents
There are many ways in which AI can be applied to customer experience processes today that drive greater productivity, but also create a better experience for the customer and the agent.
- Self-Service Automation: chatbots offer the ability to offer help 24/7. In particular, they can be very useful when trained on a large body of knowledge around products and services. For example, if you are selling kitchen products and a customer asks how tall a specific model of fridge is, then it’s unlikely a human agent would know this without searching for the answer – the AI would have this kind of information immediately available.
- Agent Assist: When human agents are handling more complex and detailed questions, the AI can listen to the interaction between the agent and customer and suggest ideas or answers to the agent. The agent doesn’t need to use the information, but it can be helpful and timely information, such as answering a question without needing to place the customer on hold while the agent searches for information. Training the system on FAQs can also ensure that the AI will have ideas on how to solve any customer problem that has previously been documented.
- Agent Workflow Automation: AI in the contact center can help drive greater efficiency by handling many of the routine tasks agents would typically need to manage manually, such as categorizing customer calls and writing up notes on problems and solutions. If the AI handles these tasks, the agent can focus more time on customer problems – such as our DataSpark solution.
- Agent Insight: The human agent cannot possibly know the preferences and past purchase history of every customer, but AI can. It can advise the agent with the information it has available and create tips or ideas that help with cross-selling and upselling based on this specific customer and their preferences.
- Proactive Support: as with the agent insight, the AI knows about customer preferences and ongoing customer behavior. It can advise on proactive support to help with customer loyalty or revenue protection. For example, if customers exhibit similar behavior before cancelling a subscription, then proactively suggest an offer to these customers before they cancel.
Real Use Cases, Real Outcomes
All these use cases are real and demonstrate that if you apply AI to improve specific tasks or actions, then it can dramatically improve the customer experience – and also the agent experience too.
DATAMARK has been investing in and delivering AI-powered solutions for the past couple of years. We know that all these suggested use cases are realistic and not science fiction, because we can point to real clients successfully using the technology.
The Path Forward
In recent months, there has been a wave of negative media focused on the difficulty many companies have had when deploying AI. I think that expectations were often raised too high, and some technology providers overpromised on what can be achieved. However, the potential for transformation is real, even if some commentators overdid the early hype around AI.
If you want to explore how AI can genuinely transform the customer experience – with the support of real case studies – then get in touch. Our team can advise, based on detailed experience and insight.
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