Human-AI Collaboration- Dream Team of Customer Service

By Aayushi | Last Updated on October 16th, 2024 4:08 am

The quality of a company’s customer service system tells a lot about it and is an important factor in shaping its brand image in the minds of customers. Taking this into account, companies nowadays are becoming increasingly customer-centric and spend considerable time and effort in delivering a seamless customer experience. However, not all strategies work out in their favour.

Some companies focus solely on using AI tools like chatbots and virtual assistants in their customer service approach and some on traditional human-based customer service which doesn’t provide them maximum efficiency. What companies need to work on is maintaining a balance between the two and creating the perfect human-AI collaboration mix to be incorporated into their customer service strategy. But why is it necessary to do so? Let’s find out.

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What is Customer Service?
Why is Human-AI Collaboration Necessary in Customer Service?
Power of a Human-AI Collaboration: Top 5 Benefits in Customer Service
Tips to Build your Own Human-AI Dream Team
Conclusion

What is Customer Service?

First things first, let us understand what customer service really means. It is the totality of all activities that a company undertakes to serve its customers well by offering support and chat assistance to them throughout their buying journey including after sales service. The activities involved range from solving customer queries, providing assistance throughout the day to keeping them updated on important information and much more, all to enhance their experience at large.

Customers need to be served well and should have a good experience when interacting with the company through any channel, be it on a website or via telephone. A company can have top quality products and services with amazing features, but would not be able to convert sales if it has poor customer service. If customers do not feel heard and supported by a company, they are most likely to create a negative impression and not buy from it. This leads to loss of customers which is a major setback for any company. Thus, putting customers first and formulating the right strategies to provide them a positive experience should be a priority.

Now that you have a basic gist of what customer service is, let’s move on to why a human-AI collaboration is necessary for serving customers better?

Why is Human-AI Collaboration Necessary in Customer Service?

Most companies, in recent times, leverage the power of artificial intelligence and use it to streamline their customer service workflows. Conversational AI tools like customer service chatbots are a vital part of customer service and provide a multitude of benefits like cost and time saving by automating tasks, and enhancing customer experience by answering customer queries promptly and handling other administrative work efficiently.

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It’s necessary to know why a human AI collaboration is necessary before actually working towards achieving it. Let us understand the limitations a chatbot or a human agent faces when handling customer service single handedly, followed by advantages a company has through an efficient collaboration between them.

Limitations Faced by AI

Complex Inquiries: There are some inquiries that an AI chatbot might not be able to process and solve for the customers, leading to the potential risk of customer dissatisfaction.
Customer Preferences: Some customers are not able to fully trust AI with their queries and wish to speak with a human agent.

Limitations Faced by Human Agents

Manual Handling Risks: If the entire customer service system is handled manually, there is a great risk of human error and inefficient process handling.
Lack of 24/7 Availability: Human agents are not available throughout the day to handle customer inquiries and cannot solve queries within seconds like a chatbot which can lead to customer frustration.

Advantages of AI

Intelligence: AI chatbots can understand, analyze and respond to customer queries accurately through their natural language processing capabilities and emotional intelligence. They can understand user intent and have contextually relevant conversations with customers.
Efficiency: AI tools can handle administrative tasks efficiently within a few seconds thereby reducing customer wait times and work delays.
Automation: AI chatbots can carry out tasks by putting in less time and effort than a human would have to through the power of automation, that too without any risk of error.

Advantages of Human Agents

Complex Problem Solving: Human agents understand complex queries involving slang, technical information, or sensitive issues better than a chatbot and can give responses based on critical thinking and judgment.
Dynamic and Creative Responses: Human agents can adapt their responses based on the conversation flow and can give out-of-the-box ideas and creative solutions to customer problems.
Negotiation Capabilities: Humans can handle situations better when they go out of hand and can negotiate well with customers by offering them discounts, exceptions, offers etc. to either close a deal or retain a customer.

Solution

To avoid a situation where a customer query is left unanswered, companies can keep an option for handing over user-bot conversations to a human agent if the chatbot cannot provide the required help. Various software like Appy Pie’s Chatbot Builder provide the feature of adding a handoff in the bot’s conversation flow with which customers can opt for human help to get their queries solved if they’re not satisfied with the answer generated by the chat assistant.

This helps reduce website bounce rates as the customer is redirected to a live agent to get assistance instead of being prompted with a message saying that their query can’t be processed. Additionally, it improves customer satisfaction and loyalty which eventually increases customer retention rates in case of an existing customer and lead generation rates for new customers.

A good human AI collaboration and a balance between traditional and AI-powered customer service methods should be maintained by a company to make the best out of its efforts. Thus, it’s clear that both AI and human agents have their own pros and cons, and a collaboration between the two can help deliver exceptional customer service!

Power of a Human-AI Collaboration: Top 5 Benefits in Customer Service

A strong human-AI collaboration has a lot more power and impact on customer service than you might think. Here are some of the top benefits a has to offer:

Boosts Customer engagement

A well-maintained coordination between human agents and AI tools can help boost customer engagement. A chatbot can effortlessly resolve customer inquiries and provide accurate responses in seconds. This ensures that customer wait times are reduced and that they get proper solutions to their problems either through a chatbot or from a skilled human agent. This improves customer engagement as they are likely to be interested in knowing more about products if they are getting useful information easily.

Efficient Sentiment Analysis

Understanding the emotions behind customer inputs is the key to providing exceptional customer service. A human agent would take a long time to analyze user intent in every customer conversation, which is where an AI tool can swoop in to help. AI chatbots can efficiently scan customer interactions to identify their sentiment which can help companies address issues proactively and tailor messages according to different customer personalities.

Easy Contextual Identification

AI tools can pass on important customer information like past interactions, purchase histories, needs and preferences etc. to human agents effectively allowing them to grasp the situation better and enabling them to serve customers better without asking too many questions. This reduces customer frustration and speeds up the process of query resolution. When a chatbot is not able to handle a certain type of customer query, the conversation is easily transferred to a human agent with all context required, which avoids loss of customers and maintains a consistent flow of customer service.

Proactiveness in Service

By carrying out a proper analysis of customer purchase histories and conversations, AI-powered tools can predict potential issues that customers might face which allows the company to adopt a proactive customer service approach and provide solutions and recommendations to customers for these problems before they reach out for help. This highly improves customer satisfaction as they feel supported and helps build trust in them for the company.

Fosters Self-Reliance

Some customers wish to solve their own problems without having to inquire a lot. Here’s where an AI directs the users to a knowledge base where they can access all information required to solve queries independently. This helps reduce the volume of basic inquiries that require human intervention and allow human agents to focus on other complex tasks, thereby promoting opportunities for growth and scalability of the business.

These benefits make it clear that strengthening human-AI collaboration isn’t an option, but a necessity.

Tips to Build your Own Human-AI Dream Team

The best tip you can come across when looking to formulate the perfect customer service strategy is not letting either AI or traditional methods completely take over the whole system. Instead, encouraging the harmonised working of both AI tools and human agents together should be your aim. More such tips to help you build your own human-AI dream team are listed down below:

Set Clear Objectives

The first decision to take efficiently before building a strong human-AI collaboration is regarding business objectives. A company should set clear, achievable and measurable goals to ensure that both the human agents and AI tools work together to achieve the same results i.e customer satisfaction. If there is ambiguity or conflict of interest between the two, an effective collaboration cannot be created.

Combine Expertise

To make the best out of the available resources, try combining expertise of the AI tools and human agents. Hire human agents with strong communication and problem solving skills and create seamless tools like chatbots with extravagant features using top software like Appy Pie’s Chatbot Builder.

Promote a Collaborative Environment

Encourage open communication between human agents and AI systems to create a collaborative environment within the customer support team and motivate members to work more efficiently to achieve the required results. If there’s lack of proper coordination and interaction between the two, it might lead to confusion and distress. So, make sure to prioritize maintenance of a good work environment.

Focus on Training and Development

Provide continuous training to human agents to keep them updated on advancements in technology as well as customer needs and preferences so that they can serve customers better and provide them relevant solutions. Additionally, regular updation of the AI tool’s database should also be undertaken for it to provide contextually relevant responses in real time.

Be Customer-Centric

Ensure that your AI tools are built and trained to serve customers in the best possible manner through fair and transparent means. They should not generate irrelevant responses which do not provide any value to the customers. So it’s important to focus on training the AI bot with the right prompts and equipping it with necessary features and technologies like natural language processing, machine learning, emotional intelligence as well as contextual awareness. Moreover, human agents should also not let their personal goals affect the bigger goal of optimizing customer experience.

Also Read: What is Natural Language Processing?

Conclusion

In summary, both AI tools and human agents do not provide the desired results in optimizing customer experience single-handedly. But when they’re brought together for a strong human-AI collaboration, they can bring a company the best of both worlds and help it ace its customer service!

Aayushi