According to a recent survey, more than 50% companies are using AI-driven smartbots as part of their business strategy. Chatbots are a great way to improve customer service and eliminate wait times – but there’s still room for improvement.
Chatbots aren’t perfect, and there are aspects of the customer service experience that are still best left to human agents. For companies looking to effectively scale and manage their contact centers, this speaks to the need for a blended approach – one that leverages a combination of human and AI expertise to deliver enhanced service.
In this piece, let’s break down some of the top advantages of a blended service, and explore strategies for effective AI use.
Benefits of a Blended Customer Service Model
Human agents and AI tools both have strengths and weaknesses. Chatbots excel at understanding commonly asked questions and finding answers quickly from the structured databases. Consider a customer calling to ask about return policies. You could route them directly to a chatbot that is instantly available and can answer their questions drawing on existing documentation. Putting them on a 20-minute hold to talk to the next available human agent makes little sense there.
But smartbots struggle with complex queries, especially if there’s an emotional component, such as a customer asking why their order was misdelivered despite providing specific instructions. For those cases, human agents are better suited to the task of de-escalating the situation.
By blending human and AI expertise, businesses can gain the following advantages:
Improved Service Efficiency
As businesses move to offer omnichannel service (any time, anywhere contact), it creates a challenge of maintaining efficiency across multiple touchpoints.
While AI chatbots may not be able to address the issue directly, they can gather basic information from customers such as their name, phone number, email and order number and cross-reference this data across customer relationship management (CRM) tools to get a complete history of customer interactions. They can then pass this information on to a human agent, both expediting service and improving efficiency.
Enhanced Response Times
“We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes” – It’s an often-heard response that customers get leading to really long wait times.
Chatbots help shorten response times by providing access to information. Whether programmed with a list of potential options or designed to be more open-ended, a chatbot can help triage incoming calls. This gives customers with simple questions quick answers, and those with more complex issues access to human experts without too long a wait.
Higher Customer Satisfaction
Customer experience services are a critical component in building consumer trust and long-term relationships. Using a combination of human and AI tools sets the stage for that. A dual-purpose approach solves two of the most common challenges in customer service: Wait times and inaccurate responses.
Chatbots provide near-instant access to information and ensure conversation histories are passed on to their human counterparts who are better-equipped to understand and resolve the issues on time.
Strategies for Effective Use
It’s one thing to deploy AI — it’s another thing to deploy it effectively. There are three strategies that can ensure effective use.
- Identifying ideal use cases — Effective AI use equals identifying ideal use cases. For example, chatbots can be safely tasked to handle things like data-driven queries about order histories, delivery timelines, and product data – whereas human agents are best suited to deal with complex, multipart questions that rely on human empathy for lived experiences.
- Choosing the right tools — Not all AI tools are created equal. Some chatbots are designed to deliver basic ask-and-answer services that limit their functionality but also keep the costs low. These tools may be well-suited for B2B operations that see customers calling for specific product data. Other tools are more complex and come with increased contextual understanding, along with the ability to parse simple human emotions. This allows them to provide a broader range of services, such as resolving specific issues with refunds or redeliveries without assistance of human agents.
- Training agents to collaborate with chatbots — The last piece of the puzzle is to teach staff to collaborate with chatbots. This can be challenging, especially if agents are threatened by the introduction of agents. To bypass this, it is advised to bring agents into the process as early as possible, and have the messaging to clearly states that the chatbots are there to assist, not replace them. Not only can chatbots reduce the volume of calls that agents need to handle, but they can also provide key contextual and historical data to help them be more quick and effective in solving customer concerns.
Smarter Together
Both chatbots and call center agents offer functions that can elevate customer service. In isolation, however, both have limitations. Together, they offer a collaborative approach that benefits buyers as well as businesses, giving customers quick response times and improved efficacy, and a reduce total spending for companies. United, AI and human intelligence can set a new standard of customer service at call centers.
