“Customer experience is at crisis point,” and “contact centers are at a breaking point.” Spend five minutes on Google News, and you’d be forgiven for thinking we are months away from some kind of CX armageddon.
At the same time, AI promises to transform the sector and become a significant force for good.
But, so far, customers don’t see it that way. A 2024 Gartner report indicates this, finding that 64 percent of customers would prefer the companies they do business with to avoid using AI in customer service.
These customers cited concerns that AI will take people’s jobs, provide misinformation, and negatively impact data security.
Yet, their chief worry is that it will become more difficult to reach a live person.
Recognizing this, Steve Blood, VP of Market Intelligence and Evangelism at Five9, told CX Today:
We need to look at this from an outside-in perspective. We must shift our attention to looking at it from a customer perspective.
Such lessons are crucial, as despite customer pessimism, investment in AI will only grow.
Despite Pessimism, Brands Aren’t Holding Back on Investment
Despite this backlash, companies plan to hike their investments in contact center AI, as Five9 research – released in late 2024 – underlines.
Indeed, the report found that: “Companies plan to continue investments in AI (chatbots, IVA, etc.), and a majority are choosing to purchase AI tech from customer experience vendors.”
It also identified the most critical factor in adopting AI is to deliver CX to enhance customer experiences (48.56 percent) and improve agent efficiency and productivity (38.94 percent).
This puts self-service AI tools at an interesting crossroads. They’re implemented to improve experiences, but customers view them to have the opposite effect.
Recognizing this, Blood articulated several succinct points to learn from 2024 and course correct.
Stop Hyperfixating on Containment Rates
Every sector has its hyperfixation. For customer service, particularly self-service, the obsession with measuring success is based on containment alone.
This narrow perspective on containment can often fail to address the question of whether the customer achieved what they came on the chatbot to do.
But if not containment stats, then what? Well, Steve expressed interest in shifting focus towards outcome-driven statistics and not shying away from the potential need to escalate to a human for support.
He added: “We [Five9] truly believe that there’s a lot of self-service activity that takes place that is achieving a lot. However, we also think it is imperative to create a route through to the most appropriate channel if you can’t achieve self-service.”
Develop That Seamless Escalation Path
The next step, and perhaps the most brutal industry-leading advice of all, is to stop investing in AI providers that can’t offer a smile escalation route.
Speaking frankly, Blood noted: “If your provider can’t offer you a route for assisted service, stop investing because it’s a failed strategy.
“A Forrester [study] told us that, right? No seamless journey was one of the key reasons the level of CX is down at the lower levels.”
Many companies can feel exasperated and lost in the quagmire of chatbots’ conversations with customers.
Starting with high-volume transactional customer intents, embedding an escalation path for everything else, and expanding the bot’s capabilities slowly is critical to ease these pain points.
Steve offered insights from a Five9 perspective: “You must analyze. When you analyze, you can understand that engagements can be automated.”
There are opportunities to avoid an engagement by changing a process or fixing a problem. You won’t know any of this until you analyze.
Take the Data Strategy Beyond Knowing Your Customer
On data strategy, CX Today learned: “If it [data strategy] is not accessible or it’s not usable, it’s going to be very difficult to deliver on a set of capabilities as a result.”
So, I think the data strategy is key, and having that in real-time and with contextual data ensures that you can respond effectively and with a personalized experience.”
To uncover Blood’s advice for delivering that data strategy that powers a better AI strategy, check out the following video: Challenges & Opportunities: What Has 2024 Taught Us About AI in Contact Centers?