How AI and automation drive better customer service
Firms in all industries see artificial intelligence (AI) and automation as a means to improve operational quality and customer experience (CX), reduce costs and increase margins. Customer service is a good place to employ such technology as it’s both a major expenditure and a driver of customer experience. AI and automation can help at every step of the customer service journey.
For instance, conversational AI or chatbots are appealing to organisations looking to offer customer service outside of business hours without requiring extra staff. By removing repetitive, low-value tasks from customer service agents, automation lets them focus on where their human touch adds the most value.
This is how hotel chain Hyatt uses a virtual assistant for parts of its reservations journey, taking away the “mindless” draining tasks – such as authenticating customers or gathering their travel dates and destination – before transferring the call with all the relevant context to an agent who can focus on the emotional component of the selling. Finally, the ability of the agent to connect to the customer is a fundamental driver of call quality.
Risk of having a narrow view of customer journey As artificial intelligence and automation technology matures and becomes more affordable, it’s tempting to rush to deploy it, but this can result in common pitfalls that prevent a business from reaching the impact they expected – or worse, that hurt the customer experience. This can happen if there is a lack of insight into the end-to-end customer service journey. A customer service journey involves multiple digital and non-digital channels, as customers typically try to self-serve before reaching out to a customer service representative. CX professionals who target specific moments or touchpoints in the journey without a clear and complete picture fight a losing battle. “Suppliers of automation and AI services say their main challenge with customers is managing expectations about what technology can and cannot do” If call centres are overwhelmed because customers can’t find the information they’re looking for on the company website, the first action should be to fix the website rather than deploying a chatbot to answer those requests. Misjudging technology capabilities is another problem organisations can encounter. Suppliers that operate in the automation and AI market agree that their main challenge with customers is managing expectations about what technology can and cannot do. The best return on investment comes from high-volume, simple use cases that can be answered without the need to hand over the interaction to a human agent. But when companies get it wrong, they create frustrating experiences for customers. Conversational AI or chatbots that lock customers into dialogues, redirecting them from one unhelpful tool to another, are a common illustration of such misjudgment. It is also worth noting that these technologies should not be considered as replacements for humans. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the rate at which machines took on human jobs. Workforce reduction is still considered a potential benefit of AI, but while AI is transforming customer service, it won’t replace human agents. Human representatives are necessary for highly emotional or complex cases where customers seek human interaction.
To reap the benefits of AI and automation, you must identify their right place and role in your customer service journey. Forrester breaks this down into six steps. The starting point is to map out the service blueprint of your customer service. Opportunities for AI and automation often reside in the backstage of the experience. Start mapping the visible part of the customer service journey, including before and after interacting with an agent. Then add the invisible layers of the experience – the technology and processes that enable or hinder steps of the journey.
