We need to change the way we think about AI in contact centers. Many believe that AI will replace human agents – yet McKinsey reports that only 1% of US companies have successfully scaled their AI investments. It is equally wrong to think that AI cannot scale customer experience (CX) and deliver ROI.
A new Gartner study backs this up, predicting that 50% of CEOs who have planned to replace CX staff with AI will abandon those plans by 2027. Businesses that have rushed towards ‘agent-less’ staffing models are realising that human agents are still crucial for optimal CX.
This was recently exemplified by Klarna. The Buy Now Pay Later provider cut its CX workforce in the hopes that AI would be able to handle customer queries without any problems. But when service quality dropped they had to rehire human agents. Should we blame AI here? I do not think so.
AI is not to blame when businesses struggle to improve CX. While 60% of consumers remain sceptical of AI’s ability to meet their service needs, AI is still the best way to optimise contact centers, driving faster responses, round the clock availability, and true omnichannel support – all of which are now demanded by customers worldwide.
Businesses could, in theory, satisfy customer service demands by hiring human agents en masse, and for years this has been the solution. But recruiting, onboarding, and training is highly costly and time-consuming. With a limit on the contact center talent available and staff turnover notably high in the space, constant recruitment is simply not sustainable.
AI offers businesses an efficient way to elevate CX without the high cost of large workforces – but it works best alongside human agents. What is abundantly clear however is that CEOs and CTOs need to know how and when to implement AI into their CX stacks to drive ROI and deliver real improvements for customers and clients.
For example, AI can handle out of hours calls, especially in cases where consumers want to talk to someone in their natural language. Thanks to AI, customers can check a delivery status or get key updates when human staff aren’t available. This can help keep customers happy without incurring the additional cost of extra, out of hours agents.
The positive impact of AI in cases like these should not be underestimated as 70% of consumers are willing to ditch a brand following only two negative experiences, which could quite easily be two instances of bad customer service. What’s more, for digital businesses, customer service is often the only personal touchpoint customers have with the brand, which makes it even more important in demonstrating how they value and treat their customers.
AI is also invaluable for handling repetitive, time-consuming queries. Take forgotten passwords for example. Nearly all passwords can be reset using the now ubiquitous ‘forgot your password?’ function but this does not stop callers in their droves from dialling up and asking about this very issue.
It’s understandable that someone might want to call a company about a password problem, but these types of calls tie up agents, clog up the phone lines, cause delays, and add pressure to already busy teams.
AI can handle these kinds of queries because it is able to interpret basic data such as caller ID, account status, and log in attempts, and guide the caller through a secure reset. AI is also able to verify a customer’s identity by integrating with secure authentication tools like CRM logins or multi-factor authentication to ensure that only the legitimate account holder makes the change.
When AI handles routine tasks, human agents can concentrate on more complex, rewarding work, which alleviates workplace tedium and has been shown to improve agent satisfaction scores by 15%. This in turn can reduce the usual high attrition rates in contact centers, which reaches as high as 44% in some instances.
If AI can help retain and supplement human agents, businesses will make substantial long-term savings. Some research suggests that replacing a single human agent in a contact center can cost anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000, so keeping good people by lightening their workload with AI makes good financial sense.
It’s encouraging that 97% of businesses are planning to use AI in customer communications. But it’s also critical that AI is introduced in the right way and is relied on to pick up straightforward queries which might otherwise weigh human agents down. Introducing AI in this way enables human agents to focus on what really matters. Used wisely AI lifts the burden, protects service quality, and can gradually expand as it continues to prove its value.
Neil Hammerton
Neil Hammerton is CEO at Natterbox and has spent the past 16 years challenging the idea that voice calls belong in the past. Today, Natterbox is leading the next wave of customer experience: building enterprise-grade voice AI that understands natural speech, answers real questions, and delivers instant ROI, without compromising on data privacy or control.
