The advancement of chatbots that use artificial intelligence have allowed the customer support industry to change and grow rapidly in recent years. These tools allow businesses to provide faster service, streamline support departments, and analyze trends that give agents the opportunity to provide proactive support. However, many people question whether this is a good thing. What happens when chatbots replace agents altogether?
The truth of the matter is, agents are still imperative to the support process. They provide a level of empathy and intuition that chatbots can’t, even when powered by AI. However, it can’t be denied that AI is changing the way live agents must work. Today, the best operation is one where agents and AI-powered chatbots are working together. Let’s go over three reasons how collaboration can be a huge benefit to a business.
Increasing the Efficiency of Support Service
For B2B organizations, high-quality client support is essential for business growth. This means providing fast solutions along with a good customer experience. AI-powered chatbots are invaluable resources, as they can now handle a large portion of client inquiries successfully and without the assistance of live agents. This is why they’re such imperative assets for high-volume support departments. However, there’s always going to be situations where a chatbot is unable to answer a client’s inquiry. In these cases, live agents can be standing by to take over. In fact, many chatbots are designed to gather as much information as possible before turning things over to a support agent. This cuts down on the time needed for the agent to get up to speed and also reduces human error.
AI-Powered Chatbots Can Learn from Live Agents
When live agents and chatbots utilizing artificial intelligence work together, chatbot technology can actually be improved. These tools employ machine learning, which means they can pick up on trends and change the way they function in the future. When a chatbot hits a dead end and a live agent must take over, they’re able to tag the issue so the bot understands how to handle it in the future. This means the chatbot continues to provide faster, and more reliable service and the live agent becomes better at supervising the process. The only thing the chatbot can’t learn from the agent is how to effectively empathize when a client is frustrated. That personal touch is something humans will always be responsible for.
Chatbots Boost Agent Knowledge and Skill Level
AI-powered chatbots aren’t the only ones learning something new when active collaboration with humans occurs. Agents can also get invaluable support and learn from chatbots. Let’s say a support team works with a product that requires live phone interaction. Chatbots can assist in retrieving client and product information for the agent in real-time so they can provide the best service possible. A chatbot can also inform agents about product changes or an item that’s out of stock. This is a much better situation than if the agent has to scramble to find this information while on a call. The result – a much faster and effective customer support experience.
Let Your Agents Work Alongside Chatbots
Chatbots have established themselves as imperative assets for any support department. However, when working in tandem with live agents, the result is an unstoppable team.
Let PhaseWare implement customizable customer support software into your operation and harness the power of chatbots today. Contact us to learn more.