The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in customer experience (CX) is steadily progressing, particularly within contact centers. AI has the potential to revolutionize the customer journey, promising transformative benefits from cost savings to improved efficiency. However, there's still much work to be done to ensure AI delivers on its promise without negatively impacting the customer journey.
AI implementations in customer service are currently limited, with chatbots being the most prevalent application. While efficient, these chatbots cannot often maintain the human touch, which is critical in customer interactions. Understanding and mastering the delicate balance between automation and human oversight is the key to implementing AI to enhance rather than detract from customer satisfaction, ensuring that the human touch remains a central part of the customer experience.
Chatbots and automation: Cost efficiency at the expense of customer engagement?
One of the most common AI implementations in customer service is the chatbot. These tools offer clear advantages: cost savings, scalability, and 24/7 availability. Chatbots can handle large volumes of queries simultaneously, freeing human agents to focus on more complex issues.
However, these advantages can sometimes come at the expense of the client experience. When chatbots are not well-integrated or designed with the full client journey in mind, they can lead to frustration, disrupting the user experience instead of improving it. They can seem like gatekeepers, blocking access to an agent and stopping the client from getting what they want to get done. They can create endless loops, leaving a client typing (or shouting!) stop. The worst case is to think they have understood a problem, texted a solution and terminated the call or chat, leaving the client back at square one.
Quick wins vs. long-term strategy: Navigating the AI hype
The excitement surrounding AI leads companies to pursue quick wins - implementing automation without fully understanding its long-term impact. While it is tempting to focus on short-term results, such as immediate cost reductions or faster response times, this approach can lead to disjointed customer experiences if AI solutions are not aligned with broader business and CX strategies.
Looking at the earlier examples, is the organizational strategy to reduce cost at the expense of customer experience, or is it a premium brand that values client engagement? Smartly implemented chatbots use more than ChatGPT or similar LLM integration to create the façade of human interaction. They also involve reworked processes to ensure a similar level of customer service at a lower cost or can enhance service without increasing cost! For example, a simple LLM-enabled chatbot can answer a call instantly and capture any needed information for an agent, preloading a ticket into the case management system and streamlining the subsequent call.
The role of AI in enhancing agent experience
AI tools can further transform the customer experience by revolutionizing how customer service agents work. They can give agents real-time insights (from the client history and similar cases raised by another client, for example), helping them focus on the soft elements of a call (rather than wrestling with data entry and process adherence) and better resolve customer issues. This reduces stress (turnover), increases productivity (cost), and empowers agents to focus on delivering the right experience each time. Striking the right balance between automation and human intervention remains critical. While AI can handle repetitive tasks, human agents bring empathy, creativity, and critical thinking - irreplaceable qualities in many customer interactions.
Beyond technology: Operational knowledge and process improvements
One of the most overlooked aspects of AI implementation is the need for operational alignment. AI tools are only as effective as the processes they support. Organizations must ensure that their operational workflows are optimized for AI integration. Training and reskilling employees to work alongside AI systems is also essential for success.
Organizations that fail to align their processes with AI capabilities often struggle to realize the full potential of their investments. AI tools can filter or deflect contacts and support agents to make a call flow more efficient or parallel task (perhaps performing pricing, validation or scoring processes in real-time). So to ensure lasting success, organizations must take a holistic view, ensuring that AI is integrated in a way that supports and enhances the overall customer journey.
It is important to closely monitor key performance metrics such as customer satisfaction, first-contact resolution, and agent productivity to measure the true impact of AI-driven initiatives. Additional or different metrics may also be needed to assess how an AI tool is learning (accuracy or effectiveness), call deflection levels or customer effort score (especially if a chatbot is merely shifting work from an agent to the customer!).
Conclusion
As AI continues to evolve, its role in customer experience will only grow. However, companies must approach AI implementation thoughtfully, recognizing its limitations and ensuring that human engagement remains central to the process. AI can be a powerful enabler of cost efficiency and enhanced customer engagement, but only when aligned with broader business strategies and operational processes. The near-term future of AI in customer service lies in its ability to support, not necessarily replace, human agents, striking a balance that enhances both the customer and agent experience.
