Human vs. machine: how do you support your customer and contact centre team?

Chat and voice bots are ideally suited to contact centre applications because they deliver significant improvements in First Contact Resolution (FCR) – even outside of ‘business hours’ – and because they facilitate self-service. In other words, they enable the customer to complete simple actions and processes themselves, allowing contact centre employees to focus on more challenging and complex cases. 

In addition, they support employees in their interactions with customers, partly because – if properly implemented – they provide insight into the contact history and make recommendations on how the customer can best be served.

An umbrella European organisation, customer of our partner Chatlayer.ai, had a chatbot implemented to offer their thousands of employees support and follow-up to questions about work and health in times of COVID-19. The bot enabled them to share unified COVID-19 information, resulting in a 70% decrease in operating costs¹⁾. At another customer, a provider of tickets in the European transport sector, the bot now answers 89% of all requests²⁾, allowing the service staff to focus on the more complex questions.

^{1) Source: Chatlayer.ai: customer case COVID-19}

^{2) Source: Chatlayer.ai: customer service case}

Human vs. machine

But there are also limits to what bots can do for customers and employees. When it comes to sensitive information, for example, or situations that require a certain amount of empathy. In such cases, human service employees are still (much) better able to serve the customer. That is why bots are increasingly programmed to detect customer emotions, so they know when to transfer a call to an employee.

It is therefore important to formulate a clear objective in advance about the tasks and processes in the customer journey that the bots should and – perhaps more importantly – should not take over. Above all, keep in mind what the customer wants. Let him decide when to switch to an employee, at any point in the contact process. If the interaction takes place outside opening hours, give the customer the choice to continue the conversation with an employee the next working day.

Whitepaper 'From the pit lane to pole position'

The customer experience has become the competitive tool of choice, and in a world where customer behaviour and customer needs are changing at breakneck speed, the need for innovative technologies and automation in the contact centre is increasing. Those who do not invest in innovation run into an unbridgeable deficit.

In our whitepaper ‘From the pit lane to pole position: The urgency of customer-centric innovation in the contact centre’, we discuss the different ways AI and other technologies can be applied in contact centres. They help to find the right balance between man and machine, and between scalability and ‘personal touch’, in order to optimally serve the customer.

Don't get stuck in the pit lane, invest now in the technology that puts your company in pole position. We are happy to help you on your way.