An exciting new era for the CX industry
2019 was a pivotal year for customer service industry, which brought 3 important shifts.
- Keep up with ever increasing number of channels customers use & rising expectations from customers for high-quality, fast self-service support.
- Disconnect between the theory and the promise of AI. Technology is alone not valuable, what matters is how you use it.
- More demand to make AI accessible to non-technical people. Making AI more approachable to have a larger lasting impact.
As AI powered automation becomes more effective, moving from being reactive to proactive and from automating responses to actions, enterprises will be better positioned to improve customer experience end to end.
Re-thinking AI’s role
A common myth about AI is that it’s taking away customer service jobs, but in reality, AI is transforming the experience for agents. Automating the repetitive mundane tasks frees up agents time to spend on higher value, more complex consume problems. This makes the job more stimulating, more relationship oriented. This is beneficial for the enterprise, since it reduces attrition.
These are exciting times for customer service industry, but that does not mean there aren’t challenges. Figuring out how to structure the team is another major challenge for CX leaders.
New roles and opportunities
Gartner predicted that one quarter of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual assistants across engagement channels by 2020. The ongoing quest for digital transformation means companies will have to re-think their budgets and in some cases, their organizational structure to figure out where AI belongs.
Customer service will always need humans in the mix. Simply put in on autopilot would not serve customers well. As AI solidifies its role in customer experience, a brand new category of customer service professionals is emerging, the automated customer experience (ACX) team.
The ACX department is responsible for applying AI to day to day operations to drive efficiency, reduce effort and improve customer service. As the ACX team takes hold, enterprise will need new roles like “Bot Analysts” who measure and manage chatbot performance, “Conversational Designers” to write and build day to day virtual assistant content.
I am happy to answer any questions you might have in this space. Drop me an email at [email protected].