AI technology promises significant benefits for businesses, including improving customer engagement, data analysis, automation of processes, and even enhanced decision making. Here is the rub though, a lot of the time AI is deployed in ways that just add to the confusion when it comes to customer experience. Providing more tools that dont have the answers you want like a chat bot that pretends to help you but really can’t. No one wants to engage with those. Remember when IVR was such an amazing technology for triaging customer calls? How has that gone? Most people would probably tell you they can’t stand it and just want to talk to a human…right?! It feels like the same people are going down the same road with the same mentality. I think applied right the technology could solve a major customer experience problem.
Let me set the stage: I went to lunch with a friend and as I got into the truck, I realized he was on hold with customer service for his ISP. I noticed the timer showed it had already been 4 and a half minutes. We chatted for another 9 minutes before a customer service rep finally answered the call. The women that answered was already the second person he had spoken to after being transferred the first time. She was pleasant but hard to understand. Eventually after a few minutes of back n forth he was able to help her understand the issue. His internet was down. Once they both understood the reason for the call, I bet you can guess what the next question was…..What’s your account number? Well as you can imagine were on our way to lunch and my friend had no idea what his account number was. He proceeded to offer his street address and name. Fortunately, the service rep found the account. Next of course she had to verify the account and asked him for the zip code. Mind you were now in minute 19 of this call after a previous 15 minutes of waiting for the first rep who ultimately transferred the call.
To the representative’s credit she was able to determine the account had been disconnected for non-payment. My friend was puzzled since his account was on auto pay and he had received no notice the account was not up to date. At this point he’s pretty frustrated and pulls up a picture of Roz from Monsters Inc to demonstrate his frustration with the rep and to entertain me I suppose since were now at the restaurant sitting in the truck trying to resolve his issue.
It only spiraled down from there since of course the rep would have to transfer him again in order to resolve the issue with the correct person holding the magical powers of taking a payment. As we were waiting on hold (he had the call on speaker) our discussion quickly went from Roz to the 12 tasks of Asterix. You know the animated movie with the house that makes you go mad. Where you have to get permit 848 on the 6th floor which it turns out requires the blue form and then you’ll need the yellow form so you can get the green form etc. I think you get the picture.
Once the 3rd representative got on the call my friend went through all the same steps all over again finding the account, verifying the account, understanding the problem before finally getting to the last step of making the payment. My friend has now been on the call for over 45 minutes and the apparently his wife had just made the payment, and the service would be reconnected by the end of the day. Yes 2 people went through the entire experience to make 1 payment and restore service.
Imagine if an AI agent could be programmed to solve this entire thing in less than 5 minutes? First how complicated was the problem? Well, the 1st problem was his Internet is down. The second problem was a past due bill. What about the resolution? Simple, collect payment and restore the service.
AI could be programmed to do all of that without engaging 3 different service reps. Here are some reasonable steps a service rep might take that could be programmed into the AI.
- Diagnose problem by engaging customer
- Check for any system wide outages
- Pull up the account and verify the bill is current.
- Determine the service was temporarily disconnected for non-payment
- Determine the amount owed to bring the account to current
- Collect payment and initiate restoral of service
Here is how it might go on a call with an AI agent…
AI agent: How can I help you?
Customer: My internet is down.
AI agent: I’m sorry to hear that “customer name”, I’m pulling your account up using the number you called from, one moment. …(Checks the account and sees bill not current and notices auto pay fell off when new billing system was implemented.)
Sir, it appears your auto payment fell off when we updated our Billing system. The account has not been current since Feb 28th. The service was temporarily disconnected for non-payment. Would you like to make a payment today?
Customer: Yes, I’d like to restore my auto pay using the same credit card. Do you have that number?
AI agent: (makes data inquiry) Yes, we do have that card, the payment amount will be $409 to make the account current and restore the service. Would you like to proceed with payment?
Customer: Are there late fees on there?
AI agent: No, there are no late fees charged.
Customer: Then let’s go ahead and make the payment.
AI agent: Charges credit card and initiates restoral of service.
If you really think about it none of that requires a human and AI can actually handle the transaction much easier than a human because it can access all the systems. And even if something didn’t go this smoothly at the very least the AI would have correctly diagnosed the problem and could then transfer the caller to the correct Human (department) the first time. Either way it’s a win/win for the customer experience. This use of AI would solve a lot of problems with customer support.
Rather than get pulled into that same mentality of deploying new technology. Think outside the box, you’ll be amazed at what’s already available. Dont’ get me wrong, it’s cool that really large call centers can have chat bots, and SMS text, and have AI coach reps during the call and so forth with AI. But at the end of the day that’s just more tools for reps and doesn’t save your business any time or money. If you can afford it, you’ll definitely increase revenue with those tools. But Most businesses can’t afford a $100 per seat call center AI licensing anyway. Don’t shy away from AI thinking that’s the only thing available and can only be deployed like the auto attendant example. An AI agent unlike the auto attendant that only gives you the option to choose where you get transferred. AI agents can be programmed to quickly diagnose a problem and either resolve it or get the customer where he needs to go. If you want to hear a demo example, check this video out: Goto AI Receptionist
AI agents are the most exciting thing I’ve seen from AI so far in the telecom space. No longer do we have to try to decipher a foreign accent or explain the problem to 4 different people and sit on hold for who knows how long. AI deployed properly by VoIP providers at a very reasonable cost will vastly improve the customer experience. I guarantee my friend would have happily talked to an AI agent and resolved his internet outage in 5 minutes or less rather than spend an hour being passed between 3 different humans only to find that his wife beat him to the punch.
If you want to learn more about AI agents and how they can improve customer experience give me a call.
