Enhancing Customer Service With AI: A Human-Centric Approach

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology and customer service, artificial intelligence (AI) offers businesses opportunities to enhance the way they interact with their customers.

The debate around AI in customer service often bounces between two poles: one viewing AI to deliver cost reduction by replacing human workers, and the other seeing it as a powerful tool to augment human capabilities.

While chatbots have their place, they’re a far cry from what a large proportion of customers want. According to the data gathered by SurveyMonkey, customers want empathy and understanding for complex issues and as such, 43% of people prefer to get customer service from a human rather than a chatbot.

This is also demonstrated through the commonly used customer satisfaction metric Net Promoter Score® (NPS) which, according to other SurveyMonkey research, is 72 points higher for human service agents than it is for customer service chatbots.

In reality, there’s an important place for both. At Ethos Farm we have a saying, “Let AI deal with the ordinary, let our people deal with the extraordinary.” In this article, I’ll explore a balanced approach to implementing AI, remembering the ethical implications, promoting digital literacy and emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between AI and human intelligence to maximize customer service.