How AI can help your customer teams do what they do best: be human
AI can do all kinds of amazing things when it comes to responding to customers — from making decisions based on past data to creating content in super-quick time.
The challenge comes when the responses need to be sensitive, nuanced and unique. In other words, human.
Do you really want AI replying to a customer who’s been bereaved?
Do you trust AI to show empathy and say sorry to a customer who’s really angry or upset, and do it sincerely?
The all-important human touch
There’s nothing worse than an automated response to an important complaint or question. One careless message can do a lot of damage.
It may be that AI gets most of the message right, but misses the personal touch — those vital few words that show you’ve really listened. Or the information might be correct, but the tone is off.
The moment customers know (or suspect) a response is coming from a bot, the whole experience feels careless and false (not to mention a bit creepy).
That’s why it’s vital to have a real person who can make sure your customers get the right message in the right way. They can do this either by checking the AI-generated content is right and editing it. Or by writing the message from scratch themselves.
Let AI do the legwork, so your people can focus on empathy
The role for AI then, is to free your people up to do what only people can do: be human. AI can help with this by taking away repetitive tasks like gathering data, creating draft responses and automatically flagging things like compliance concerns.
In some call centres, these repetitive tasks have created a robotic culture where people switch off their empathy to meet productivity targets. So it’s perhaps ironic that by using AI, call centres can become more human and rewarding places to work.
By giving time-consuming tasks over to AI, your teams have the opportunity to focus on the all-important human skills, like showing empathy, tailoring the message and giving expert, personal support.
Humans supported by AI = happy customers and teams
For your customers, the benefit of balancing AI and human support means they get fast, accurate answers to everyday queries, with the human touch from your people. And when they need 100% human support, they can get that from well-trained humans, who have the time and skills to offer it.
Your teams also benefit. AI can take away the boring parts of their role and allow them to do more meaningful work, like supporting customers in need or solving complex problems for your customers. All of which can make them more confident and happier in their role.
Using AI to help your people be human gives every customer service team the chance to become experts in empathy, not just efficiency – the kind of people we’d all like to hear from when we need help.
At The First Word, we empower our clients’ customer teams by giving them skills, tools and confidence to communicate as only humans can – with subtlety, sensitivity and empathy. This helps our clients create teams of experts who complement AI, and create a consistently human experience every time their customers get in touch.
