Most CX Practitioners Agree: Governments Should Mandate Humans-Led Customer Service

The study comes as the US Government strives to enforce “single button” human customer service

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Contact CenterInsights

Published: January 27, 2025

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Floyd March

We’ve all been there. You need a quick answer to that really specific problem. You hop online, put in your details, and 15 variations of the same question later, you are hit with the same thought: “I just need to speak to a human.” 

Customer experience professionals tend to agree with their customers’ concerns and frustrations, and the latest industry study from CX Today is a testament to that.  

61 percent of those surveyed agree that governments should mandate the right to speak to a human in customer service.  

Yet, while the CX professionals agree with the testament echoed in every corner of the customer service sector from a user perspective, many are not making it easy to engage with a live agent…  

The Escalation Oversight

Elsewhere in the CX Today study, 43 percent of the CX professionals revealed they would trust an autonomous AI Agent to engage with their customers “completely”.  

That’s more than the 36 percent that would also trust an autonomous AI Agent once they’ve ensured “a proper escalation” strategy”.  

These statistics suggest that more CX teams wouldn’t necessitate an escalation path for their AI Agent than those that would.  

Such findings are striking. After all, getting stuck in a frustrating bot conversation is a significant customer pain point.  

President Biden even recently railed against so-called AI “doom loops” in customer service. 

In doing so, he introduced a ‘Time is Money’ initiative to tackle the “general aggravation” caused by substandard service propositions. 

Taking to X, the President wrote: 

“The CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ) is working to help consumers talk to a real person by pressing a single button. And the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is looking into doing the same.”

Yet, while most CX teams agree with this regulation, they aren’t necessarily ready for such laws to come into practice.   

Policy Failing to Keep Up with the Pace: But for How Long?

Looking toward their trans-Atlantic cousins, any policy coming from the EU that could address this gap may not be seen until 2028 – according to Gartner 

Yet, as evident across the world of AI and CX, the market won’t wait for dithering policy decisions to keep up with the latest technology, and businesses will likely implement their CX strategies with AI in mind moving forward.  

As such, companies may have to backtrack on the AI solutions already implemented when such policies finally come through.  

Companies could sidestep this scramble by building an escalation strategy early. Alternatively, they may leverage solutions that configure the likelihood that their automated response is accurate and seamlessly escalate to a human when that’s less than certain.   

However, as distracting metrics like containment and deflection rates remain widely utilized in customer experience, the temptation to limit escalation paths may prove too compelling. 

Balancing Cost and Customer Service: The Endless Paradigm

CX professionals must balance the cost benefits of AI-led customer service solutions with the experience of their customers/ service users.  

Gartner stressed that the conversation shouldn’t fixate on whether the contact center may breach future regulations. Instead, it urged teams to focus on what’s best for the customer, and it’ll naturally align with that regulation. 

So, while we may be sitting online yearning for a human to interact with for a while longer, there could be movement in the sector as agentic AI evolves and mandates trickle into it.  

Eager for more insights from CX Today’s study? Download it here. 

 

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