The Chatbot Disconnect: Should Customers Stay or Should They Go?

AI has been a hot topic among customer contact centers throughout the past few years, and it isn’t going anywhere any time soon. In our latest CCW Market Study, Modernizing Service Experiences with AI & Digital, 66% of contact center leaders revealed that they are continuing to focus their resources on leveraging AI to reduce the time agents spend on minute, mundane tasks and improve customer self-service options.

Many contact centers already feel they are “making good on [this] promise to transform the customer contact function.” By working with products that automate backend operations and personalizing customer experiences, they feel more confident in their ability to provide satisfying resolutions to customer problems without agent assistance. Unfortunately, not all customers are convinced yet. While company comfort with digital channels increases, customers continue to fall back on the call-in option.

Though it is tempting to blame this on a lack of familiarity with the feature, when asked where self-service is going wrong, less than a quarter of leaders attribute the failure to a lack of customer awareness. A key issue, 61% of respondents believe, is the number of options available to the user. When they call, customers can use whatever idioms they would like to convey the whole range of the specific issue they are having—and how they feel about it. With chatbots, customers are limited by options in what they can talk about and how they can say it. Additionally, the chatbot has no interest in how inconvenient the issue was for the customer (or giving an extra discount because of a sob story). It’s a bot.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost. While an AI-driven bot will never feel sympathetic about a customer complaint, with time it can learn how to converse in a way that conveys a degree of human understanding. The more customers interact with a bot that they can speak to in their own words, the more willing they are to proceed with self-service technology. Furthermore, some bots are being trained to provide that ever-elusive expedited shipping, refund, or discount previously only possible with a phone interaction. Brian Cantor, the CCW Principal Analyst, points to apps like Grubhub and Uber Eats as an example of this: “Food delivery services have proven particularly adept at the ‘service’ part of their self-service; they program their automation tools to offer instant refunds or credits when customers share bad delivery experiences.” When food arrives slightly cold, late, or without the dipping sauce, a couple clicks and a quick explanation ensure customers are awarded—all without having to dial their phone.

The future of AI in the customer contact space is optimistic. As bots evolve to demonstrate more contextual understanding and more relevant support, customers’ confidence will continue to grow. And even when bots cannot successfully or completely resolve the customer’s issue, simply retaining the information the customer gave them and providing the details to the live agent will build customer trust. The time the complainant put in with the bot would feel worthwhile, thus encouraging them to use the function again.

For more details on AI-driven chatbots and the state of the customer contact center, download our latest market study, Modernizing Service Experiences with AI & Digital.

Photo by Pradamas Gifarry on Unsplash