San Francisco police stopped a driverless car for driving without headlights, but as officers returned to their patrol car, the AI vehicle "escaped," driving a bit further before stopping again. The company explained it was finding a safer spot to pull over, but the incident perfectly illustrated AI’s limitations. While driverless cars can follow traffic rules, they lack the human understanding needed for social cues. It’s a reminder that despite their technological brilliance, AI still has some learning to do and isn’t the best option to handle complex social situations.Likewise, chatbots are a valuable tool in your community financial institution’s (CFI’s) arsenal, but aren’t the ideal solution for every interaction between a CFI and its customers. CFIs can improve first-call resolution rates by 20%, save more than 4 minutes per inquiry, and save between 50 cents and 70 cents per transaction by using AI-powered customer service. Yet, anyone who has ever gotten stuck in an infinite telephone loop, pushing 0 over and over in the hope of accessing a human being knows that there are problems that a chatbot can’t solve. Sometimes human-to-human customer service is the right way to care for a customer. If your CFI is going to use chatbots, then it should also decide when it will hand over problems to human agents. Conventional wisdom says that chatbots should handle 80% of customer interactions, and people should deal with the remaining 20%. But which problems fall into the 80% and which into the 20%? To begin sorting different interaction types into one of the two groups, it’s helpful to compare the strengths and weaknesses of both chatbots and people. Chatbot and Human Strengths and WeaknessesChatbots are very good at providing the following:
- Instant customer service. A chatbot can provide quick, concise, accurate answers to common customer questions and walk customers through simple procedures. Provided that a CFI’s phone lines are adequate for call volume, chatbots can provide those answers quickly, without any need for callers to wait on hold for an agent.
- 24/7 availability. A customer who loses a debit card late at night or needs to get an account balance on a Sunday morning can report the loss or get the information they need without waiting for the bank to open.
- Simultaneous, high-volume customer service. A chatbot can handle many customer interactions at once. It’s also readily scalable for times of high volume, such as tax season, during a lending boom, or after a natural disaster.
- More efficient human agents. Freed from routine inquiries and quotidian functions, human representatives can focus on resolving more complex customer issues.
- Financial savings. Adding chatbots to an overall customer service plan typically saves CFIs money.
It’s important to remember that chatbots aren’t good at everything. Human customer service agents thrive in offering these services the best:
- Empathy. A chatbot may be able to understand the facts of what a customer is saying, but technology isn’t able to create an emotional connection around how that person is feeling. Customers often end a banking interaction feeling much better if their problems are solved and another human being has empathized with their frustration.
- Flexible problem-solving. Chatbots learn rules, and that’s valuable. But some problems require adaptability and creative problem-solving, things that chatbots simply can’t offer. The more complex or unusual the problem, the more flexibility should come into play.
- Sensitivity. A person can hear a customer’s tone and adjust the conversation accordingly, recognize when a complaint is particularly significant, see an opportunity to cross-sell a product, or otherwise apply nuance to handling an angry or frustrated client.
Divide and ConquerTo set up the right division between chatbots and human customer service, consider the following:
- Think of chatbots as a supplement to a primarily human-run customer service program. Chatbots are there to serve people, whether they’re customers or bank employees.
- Let chatbots handle routine questions and walk customers through simple processes, such as balance inquiries or sending out a new debit card.
- Employ trained customer service agents to solve more complicated problems and address nuanced, sensitive situations.
- Design chatbot scripts with natural language, clarity, and personalization while continuously refining based on feedback.
- Give callers an easy way to access a human customer service agent and minimize the time they’ll spend waiting to talk to a person.
- Design AI that passes along what it knows of the customer’s situation to a human customer service agent when the person takes over the call.
A human-centered customer service approach can combine chatbots and human agents. Let chatbots do what they do well: routine questions and procedures. Hand off more complex or sensitive problems to people, with the chatbot passing along what it knows of the customer’s situation. Give callers an easy way to switch from a chatbot to a human agent, and you’ll find customer satisfaction will follow.
