rtificial Intelligence is surrounded by a lot of assumptions.
There are several minds who think that AI Chatbots will replace human beings & it will be a ‘bot world’ just out of a sci-fi movie!
But the truth is replacing humans was never the motive behind developing AI Chatbots. Rather, they are meant to team up with humans to make the entire work system more efficient.
In this article, we have precisely explained why you need live agents as a Plan-B along with AI Chatbots & how combining humans & chatbots can be your winning strategy.
So, let’s get started!
AI Chatbots & Live Agents: The Winning Strategy
In the era of smart consumers, businesses are not only focusing on products but are redefining customer support to provide customers with a perfect shopping experience.
With Conversational AI like WhatsApp for Business, AI-powered Live Chats etc. being integrated into business, customer service has become more efficient.
Both AI Chatbots and live agents complement each other.
For example, one of the limitations of live agents is that they aren’t able to serve multiple customers at a time. If a live agent manages too many customers simultaneously, it will result in errors.
Here, AI Chatbots are increasingly helpful. Chatbots can handle multiple customers on different channels simultaneously and are expert at customer engagement. So, it definitely reduces the burden off live agents.
On the other hand, live agents come into the picture when customer queries get complex and AI Chatbots aren’t able to resolve them.
So, combining both can definitely yield better results for the business.
Now, let’s have a glance at the few important benefits that live agents can derive from Conversational AI.
- Provide 24x7 live support
- Automation in administrative tasks
- Effective customer engagement across multiple channels
- Increased lead generation & nurturing
- Drive Sales & Appointments
- Resolve repetitive queries from customers
These are few of the several benefits that AI chatbots provide, thus, freeing up the live agents to handle complex work.
Now that you know why you need AI Chatbots in your business, let’s see why live agents are necessary along with chatbots in the next section.
5 Reasons Why You Need Live Agents
A report by Gartner (2019) suggests that 85% of the customer communications will be handled without live agents by 2020.
Since, the goal is quite achieved with the widespread adoption of Conversational AI, the main question here is –
Will AI Chatbots & voice bots alone be able to provide the perfect customer service?
With 85% of customer interactions being handled by Conversational AI, that means 15% of the time, human intervention will be required to provide satisfactory customer service.
So, essentially, without human intervention 100% customer satisfaction is difficult to achieve. Here’s why:
1. Live Agents can Handle Complex Issues
Since AI Chatbots work based on limited information or databases, they aren’t able to handle the complex customer queries.
This is the top-most reason why you need live agents along with chatbots.
For example, if a customer wants to resolve a complex technical issue regarding online transactions, he/she will need a detailed response. Here, chatbots might not offer any meaningful help. So, one-to-one conversation with human agents will be necessary.
2. Live Agents can Deal with Customer Disputes
Managing sticky situations isn’t a bot thing and angry customers need proper handling from human agents.
Negative reviews can significantly impact the brand reputation and hence, when customers have a negative experience with the brand, it is better to be handled by live agents than bots.
An agent will connect better to the customer than a chatbot and will be able to decipher the situation better & provide a timely resolution.
3. Live Agents have Better understanding of customer’s needs
Customers are likely to have several queries other than the standard FAQs.
Sometimes, it might not be possible for bots to pinpoint the exact customer query, especially if the interaction is unclear.
In such situations, live agents are necessary. A live agent will be able to get a better understanding of what the customer wants and resolve their issue faster.
4. Live Agents can Review Product Damages or Documentation
Chatbots are not really fit to resolve an issue as critical as product damage.
Live agents are a must for resolving different product damage tickets raised by customers as they will be able to understand whether a refund should be processed or not.
This job can be entrusted only to trained agents who can understand the issue, document and review the damage & then make the refund decision.
5. Live Agents Specialize in Priority-driven Action
Conversational AI is designed to operate in a specified way. So, the bots may not be able to comprehend the seriousness of the situation.
Since various customer queries are attended to within a day, sometimes it’s necessary to prioritize the issues.
There may be customers whose issue needs to be addressed on a priority basis. So, in such situations, live agents are in a better position to respond than bots.
Also, live agents are better at picking cues from a conversation that might be helpful to understand the customer’s situation which a bot might not be good at.
Final Thoughts
The combination of Conversational AI and live agents is definitely a success strategy. You can’t rely on any one of them to ensure the highest level of efficiency in your customer support process. However, you need to know when to use chatbots & when to employ live agents.
So, if you haven’t already incorporated Conversational AI in your customer support, we recommend considering the Konverse platform.
Get both - live agents & chatbots, to ensure a next-level business performance!
Additional Readings
Know the AI driven customer retention strategies
Whatsapp Chatbots for eCommerce Industry
AI chatbot Ideas you must know
More from
Support
category
