On the heels of several recent high-profile customer service debacles in the airline industry, it's clear that how you treat your customers can make or break your company and its reputation. From legacy giants to the booming on-demand economy, fast and intelligent customer service has never been more crucial. And with new developments in technology, including buzzwords like cognitive computing, machine learning, and VR, merging human interaction with AI is seeming to be more and more likely the solution for managing customers needs.
Using AI to manage customer service is a trend that we will increasingly see more of. However, that’s not to be confused with completely replacing human interaction when it comes to customer service. So what does that mean? Does it mean the world of CS will soon be overrun by robots? Not exactly.
All customer service interactions are on a spectrum that has two axes: emotion and urgency. Each channel can be viewed from the standpoint of those two axes and placed on a quadrant like this one:
New AI tools are rapidly emerging in the support space that can address high-urgency situations quickly, but when it comes to high-emotion scenarios, no AI can replicate human empathy, so there’s still a distinct advantage to having a real person help a customer. Whether it’s your own airline fiasco or an on-demand food delivery app delivering your meal late or cold, some support interactions just require a human element.
A computer or bot might be able to recognize that you’re trying to check in for a flight that was recently canceled, but the emotional axis is entirely un-programmable. Perhaps the flyer has increasingly high emotions around the flight being canceled because she is flying to a business meeting or meeting family for an important occasion. Or maybe the food delivery you ordered is running late but you’re leaving the house or office and missed your opportunity to actually eat the food you ordered. Instances like this, regardless of how small or large the case is, can create high-stress moments for the customer. Only another person can comprehend the difference.
High-stress moments are the ones that stick with customers forever, so it’s vitally important to have a plan in place. What separates the best companies is a keen sense for determining which customer service functions AI can handle on its own and which cases need to be handled by a human with AI assistance.
This decision depends on a company’s range of customer service interactions, but in general, the rule should be to use the speed of AI for objective yes/no functions and outcomes that come down to an algorithm. AI can instantly run a query and tell you if there are unfilled seats that are available if you’d like to purchase an upgrade. That’s a perfect utilization of that technology.
For inquiries that are high on the emotional spectrum or could involve unique problem solving, there’s no substitute for the personal touch of a human. Passengers whose luggage is lost are going to seek out an employee to help them locate their bag. Although the support rep is going to use AI to locate that big, it’s too emotional of an interaction to remove the human element.
From the customer’s standpoint, they should be interacting with companies in a way that minimizes their effort. AI should be utilized any time it can minimize customer effort and still meet their needs. Think about Lyft - the traditional process of calling a cab company, arranging a pickup point, directing the driver to a desired location and having the right amount of cash (including tip) was a lot of work just to get from one place to another. Lyft won customers because they replaced all those high-effort steps with one simple app.
Lyft uses technology to replace that high-effort transaction with AI-empowered self-service. The customer is doing all the work — calling the cab, directing the pickup and dropoff and determining the payment method — but it’s so easy that it feels like an improvement. The lesson is obvious: customers choose low-effort interactions over high-effort ones.
That insight isn’t just applicable to a product. When it comes to customer service incidents, companies still need to focus on utilizing technology to keep customer effort to a minimum. No one wants to contact a company, spell their name, provide their account number, explain the problem, transfer from one agent to another, etc. They want to get their issue resolved with the least amount of work on their part. AI can help with all the routine parts of the interaction, but it’s not a shortcut around human-to-human service, it’s a catalyst.
The conversation around AI now is too focused on the question of how AI can replace agent interaction, which is missing the point. The aim of AI shouldn’t be to replace human interaction, but to improve human interaction. Instead of cutting the human out of the support process, AI can instead be used to route calls to the right person as soon as possible.
To return to the airline flight example, imagine that the moment your flight was canceled, the airline used AI to empower human agents to help all the travelers whose plans were disrupted. The AI could contact the affected customers to let them know about the cancellation, maybe it could even begin suggesting replacement flight options to their destination. But these notifications aren’t truly a satisfactory response to the emotional urgency of the customers. For the reasons we’ve already discussed, you’ll need a real human for this type of issue.
The customers who respond to that high-stress moment by contacting the airline directly should be handled intelligently. AI can detect that an incoming call, chat or email from one of those customers is likely to be in regard to the cancellation and can immediately escalate that interaction to a human agent who could respond immediately by suggesting new travel options. That saves the customer a lot of effort in terms of re-booking travel and it also saves them the emotional trauma of recounting their story. The human touch of an AI-empowered agent will not only help re-book the flights faster, it will also make the experience much more positive for the affected customers. It saves the customer time and effort, it might even get them a first-class seat. That sounds like an outcome that would build loyalty.
AI and human agents can work together for much more than just booking flights or just customer service. New software is popping up daily that finds ways to automate processes that used to be manual. With a new generation of tools, AI is already working its way into processes across all industries. The AI revolution was started by a generation of thinkers who invented creative new ways to solve modern problems. The question from here won’t be how far we can push AI, but how we can use our imagination to continue reinventing the problem-solving process.
