As part of their ongoing reporting on artificial intelligence (AI) in business, ComputerWeekly recently explored how AI is expanding into call centers and customer service departments. With bots and automated menus and messaging, nearly all of us have worked with a AI utility while trying to contact a company to solve a problem or make a request. While AI will eventually touch all aspects of a business, its effects are most profound in customer service departments, so much so that human-based customer service may disappear in the coming years. Customer service is an important link between companies and their customers, and the performance of customer service can make or break a customer's relationship with the brand. But can AI understand the nuances that a customer gives when they are upset and may end their business relationship? Not just yet, says ComputerWeekly - humans are still needed for that, well, human touch.
AI in customer service serves two purposes. First, it allows customers to handle their own requests in an automated way, and second it can help to provide more information to call center operators when a customer must be escalated to a person. For example, AI systems guide customers through troubleshooting and react based on customer responses, and then provide that information to operators, or they can simply drill down the exact problem that the customer is experiencing, route it to the correct department, and then connect the customer with an operator who knows exactly what the trouble is. Software has even been developed to passively listen in on calls - recording whether the issue was resolved, the customer satisfied, their loyalty, and also making recommendations for areas to improve. With this research, AI is now more able to predict customer behavior on the phone and make recommendations to operators on how to handle the call. Research has found that customer service reps are most effective when they don't have to follow a script, so the input of AI in how to handle the customer's issue is proving successful.
Though AI is an expanding technology, it may not yet be able to take over the customer service role completely just yet. ComputerWeekly puts it succinctly: "It’s true that AI is unburdening call centres through bots that can answer simple and oft-asked questions online, without the need for the customer to pick up the phone. This means the job of a customer service rep is becoming more varied – the bots answer the routine questions via an online chat or other channel; the people on the phone are the problem solvers.
When AI and customer service reps work in tandem, where data insights are combined with a personable phone manner, the best results for customers can be achieved."
Read more at ComputerWeekly.