AI: Enhancing, Not Replacing, Customer Service Agents

Our team recently participated in a webinar focused on the future of customer service. The discussion focused specifically on artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can play a role in improving the customer experience.

The business media often gets this subject wrong. Here is a good example in the Washington Post. The story suggests that because AI is helping companies to improve their automated customer service processes, it means that customer service agents are no longer needed.

This is just wrong. It is true that AI chatbots and service automation is getting better. The financial service company Klarna made a recent announcement that their internal AI system was now able to answer a significant number of customer questions. However, even Klarna could not eliminate all customer interactions with human customer service professionals.

This singular focus on chatbots ignores the potential for AI to change and improve the way that we deliver service to customers today.

Our AI framework was discussed on the webinar. This is a modular series of products and services that can transform the customer service process. The AI Assist module can directly help the customer service professional to provide a faster and better service to the customer.

It does this by acting as a digital assistant to the agent (we call them talents). It can write up notes on a call and categorize it, saving valuable time that previously required manual administration. It can help the talent to have the right information immediately available for the customer by listening to the conversation and suggesting the next best action.

The AI analysis module helps managers oversee how service is being delivered. What is working well and what needs improvement? Can you identify patterns and a reason why top performers are delivering service better than others? Can you turn this into a process of constant improvement? All this insight is possible with the AI analysis module.

The real value of AI in modern customer service strategies today is the ability for it to constantly improve and optimize business processes. AI can improve productivity and ensure the customer receives faster, more accurate, advice than ever before.

Our team really is in the vanguard of using AI to improve the customer experience because we are able to combine AI with our unique flexible approach to workforce management. Our talents have always worked in a very flexible way, allowing customer service executives to plan for peak periods and to react to business surprises. You always have more talent available, which is the complete opposite of a traditional contact center.

Now add the additional benefits AI can offer, assisting the talents and creating an environment where constant improvement is normal, and it is clear that the future for the customer experience is both flexible and driven by AI.

The webinar discussion on how to improve your customer service with AI took place in June 2024. You can replay the event here (in German).