How does AI change the profile of the people you hire to manage CX?

How Does AI Change The Profile Of The People You Hire To Manage CX?

At the recent younite CX2024 event we explored an important question around the way that artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way we need to hire people to work in customer experience (CX).

Emmelie Koenen from The Quality Group shared many intriguing insights from the stage about her views on how AI is influencing hiring practices for CX agents.

But what is changing and why?

Think of the traditional business process outsourcing (BPO) customer service environment – the contact center. A customer call is automatically directed to an agent who tries to help. If they can’t help, they escalate the call to an agent with more experience or insight. It’s a common experience to be bounced around all over the place if you have a complex question – we have all known that feeling as the agent says ‘I’m just placing you on hold.’

AI offers a more effective frontline that is available 24/7. The reality is that most customers will search online anyway, so if they are engaging with your AI chatbot then they probably could not find the information they needed from Google or YouTube.

The training and generative AI capabilities today mean that modern chatbots are far more powerful that the simplistic YES/NO services we experienced just a few years ago. Millions of people have experienced how easy it is to engage with services like ChatGPT using natural language — now your customer service chatbots can be just as simple and easy to use.

But this improved automated support means that when a customer does need support from a human, it means they REALLY need help. They have a complex issue that the AI and an internet search has been unable to resolve.

They don’t expect the traditional contact center experience of being bounced from one agent to another as a solution is found. By the time your customer engages with a human support agent now, it will be the third or fourth channel they are using to get an answer.

Some of the points Emmelie made in her talk noted:

• Life experience and empathy is more important than ever. Agents with deep experience of the brand or industry they are supporting are extremely valuable.
• Problem-solving is critical. The human is in the loop is a trouble-shooter. They are solving a problem that Google and AI could not answer – they can do this specifically because they are human.
• Balancing rapid AI response and human support is essential to enhance customer satisfaction – don’t just rely on AI, because it is good, but it can’t handle everything. 

Contrast the talents working with yoummday to the traditional contact center agents. Our talents choose to work from home. They choose their working hours. They choose the brands they want to work for. They are generally more mature and naturally experienced in the area they choose to support – they choose it because they have deep experience in this area or they are a fan of the brand they will be supporting.

In the contact center it is generally early career people with very little life and work experience. They are commuting each day to an office, working shifts they don’t choose, and rarely getting a choice about which company they need to be supporting. Is it any surprise that your average contact center agent sounds like they are just waiting for their shift to end?

Emmelie’s presentation highlighted some very important points. With AI offering more and more of the basic support to customers, when humans are in the loop, they need to be highly supportive and knowledgeable. The traditional approach used in contact centers doesn’t work for a customer experience strategy in the late 2020s.

Follow the link in the first line of this article to see a video of Emmelie’s complete presentation and discussion on this subject.

For more information about the agile yoummday approach to twenty-first century sales and customer experience contact us.