How AI can turn your agents into customer heroes

Here’s a bit of a head-scratcher for AI trailblazers in the world of customer care: In a recent McKinsey consumer survey, respondents in every age group—even digitally raised Gen Zers—said that live phone conversations with human agents remain their go-to channel for customer support. Their second-favorite channel? Live chat with the same agents.

There are important reasons why high-level human support isn’t going away anytime soon.

The biggest is that a new generation of automated digital solutions in customer care—sophisticated chatbots, conversational search, generative AI copilots, automated self-service—are incredibly helpful and efficient for some use cases and businesses but terribly mediocre in others. Customers don’t yet trust the digital helpers to solve complex issues, and one bad experience will send them back to dialing the 1-800 number.

Real-time agent coaching

Longtime customer-service researcher, consultant, and author Shep Hyken has a two-part solution for CX leaders who can’t afford to cut corners with customer experience but don’t want to take their foot off the gas with AI: Put basic self-service tools to work on customers’ low-level requests and FAQs, but arm your best agents with leading-edge AI features that help them to get the real-time information they need to resolve complex issues faster with better results.?

“Agents do not need to know everything,” Hyken says in an interview with The Works. “They just need to know how to get everything, which is much easier.”?

What kinds of AI tools can help agents on the fly? As part of solutions such as Freshworks’ Freddy Copilot, they serve as real-time quality coaches that analyze language, tone, grammar, and relevance and send agents actionable advice and suggestions. Here’s a rundown of key features for agents:?

• Tone detection and response. Generative-AI-powered assistants can detect tonal cues in agents’ responses and suggest improvements. When they identify a negative tone, the copilot recommends a response that is more empathetic, professional, or solution-oriented.
• Multi-language grammar cleanup. Don’t underestimate the business value of good grammar in text and chat exchanges: Women are 81% less likely to buy a product advertised with spelling or grammar errors, according to SurveyMonkey. Freddy Copilot checks grammar and performs agent corrections simultaneously in seven major languages. That’s a big advantage for agents when English isn’t their first language.
• Real-time agent scoring. Customers receive irrelevant responses up to 20% of the time. Features developed for Freddy Copilot can reduce that number by relying on large language models (LLMs) to make continual suggestions, helping agents respond quickly with the most relevant, helpful information.

Read the full interview with Shep Hyken.

Productivity boost

Other research backs up the same assertion that AI can deliver a meaningful and fairly immediate productivity boost for service agents: A 2023 Stanford study showed that contact center agents with access to a generative AI copilot saw a 14% boost in productivity.?

A closing bit of advice from Hyken: “If you can create a self-service experience that’s easy, intuitive, and gets the answers your customers need, drive them to the self-service experience first, but be sure you have a human-to-human backup.”

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