Let Humans be Humans and Bots be Bots!

Today’s brands are increasingly defined by the customer experience, and companies need to reinvent how they best utilize their resources in their Customer Service.
To meet the expectations of today’s demanding customers, organizations need to find ways to streamline the way they handle recurrent questions from customers, as well as utilize the workforce efficiently and productively.

In a fast-paced society, human customer service agents often have very little bandwidth to do anything else than to answer the same generic questions day in and day out, which leads to a mundane work environment, increased number of sick days and a feeling of alienation.
Many customer service agents feel disconnected and unmotivated at work, I believe that the feeling of alienation and monotonous task are the main reasons for this.

 Let’s face it – who wants to come to work, day after day feeling like a robot? 

What if the Customer Service workforce could focus on more complex tasks and be part of the Customer Experience on another level?

It is my firm belief that by decreasing the repetitive environment in Customer Service and upskill the current workforce, organizations would see an increased ROI on many levels:
1. Higher employee retention
2. Less sick days
3. Better Brand image
4. Improved client retention
5. Increased sales

Second generation conversational AI based virtual assistants (or just VA’s) is an efficient way to offload Customer Service and make sure that the customers get answers promptly leading to a positive customer experience.

There is a lot of “buzz” around conversational AI, but what is often missed in the communication is the human aspect: what VA´s actually achieves, is taking robotic tasks away from the humans. This allows the agents to be more focused on more business-oriented tasks.

Today the virtual assistants are “smart” enough to be able to offload Customer Service in line with the organization’s standards. The technology can handle a vast number of different languages and discuss with the clients in a very natural way, as well as connect to the back-end systems to solve an even greater number of customer requests.

I believe that the winning recipe for excellent customer experience in the future is a mix of conversational AI based VA’s and highly skilled customer service agents. VA’s are handling the simple routines much better and faster than humans. And the human agents can put all their energy and increased motivation in the tasks where VA’s fall short of their capabilities.

Today, there is absolutely no reason for us humans to go to work feeling like a robot. Let humans be humans and let the bots be bots.

Niclas Broberg,
Regional Sales Director – Front AI