Chatbots, AI - what’s behind? Saving or shaving from your own business
Technology is something that sneaks into our lives faster and faster every single day. People, companies, and governments are adopting it for multiple reasons - saving time, scaling profits, and changing lifestyles for the better. This transformation is not something that you can evade, the world dictates its rules, and you have to embrace technology to be competitive. But here’s the question, where is the limit when the technology interferes with something it doesn’t belong in? Is there a limit at all? Should we blindly follow the successful cases of others and not ask reasonable questions?
Pandemic influence
The recent pandemic has created a precedent that shook the whole planet, not only from the healthcare perspective but also affected all aspects of life. The importance of digitalisation has increased drastically. Most companies had to obtain survival skills in the online environment in the shortest time. Businesses have faced an unimaginable influx of customers requiring assistance. 92% of the companies admitted that the pandemic accelerated the digitisation and automation of customer experience (NTT, 2021). The progress embodied in the chatbots and AI became a frontline of customer service and created a new norm of human-technology interaction. Some big companies, for instance, have advanced so far that they have left chatbots as the only available touchpoint for their clients. Yes, it’s cost-effective, no doubt, and convenient (for business), but don’t you think it has gone way too far? Not all the problems customers face are the same and could be resolved without the involvement of real people.
Every single customer experience matters
You should never underestimate the power of personal touch and its impact on your reputation and customer satisfaction. “A friend in need is a friend indeed” this is something that we should remind ourselves of when dealing with customer service. We will bring some numbers to showcase the importance of that or rather the cost of the bad one. According to Finance Online (2021), referring to Microsoft, almost 2/3 of American consumers have switched brands due to poor customer service. More to say, almost 3 out of 4 customers will consider switching to a competitor just after one bad customer experience (The Northridge Group, 2020).
People need people to resolve their problem
Is that the price you as a company are willing to pay? Shouldn’t we consider investing more in our support departments to retain customers? Did you know that customer service delivery is called to be the 2nd important influencer of total client satisfaction right after product quality? (NTT, 2021)
Getting a new customer is much more expensive, and at the end of the day, they might face absolutely the same struggles. No one is flawless, but when you have a real person behind the screen who does their best to resolve client issues, you are doing justice to your audience. Did you know that 70% of customers still prefer interacting with humans, not robots (99Firms, 2020)? Finance Online (2021) has reported that people want to talk to a real person for more complex problems, especially if it is a payment-related dispute. To be honest, we believe none of us would like to face the problem related to our funds and, moreover, that this problem would be handled by artificial intelligence. The financial sector is considered to be number one where customer experience is a primary competitive differentiator for their organisation:
Besides, customers named the issues and their preferences if they want these to be resolved with automation means or by actual people. The fascinating fact is that only 6% of respondents do not want to communicate with real people for any matter, vs. 22% of respondents who do not want to have business with automated systems. Almost 4 times the difference in favour of those who prefer real agents. To mention again, for any monetary question, whether it is payment or billing, or return and exchange, customers 2 times more likely to prefer communicating with the actual person.
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The cost of poor automated support
In the world of fintech, there are bright representatives of the industry who dominate our news feeds, sharing another milestones of them, advancing in technology, implementing new processes, etc. No names to be revealed, but if you, for instance, visit some reliable review website like Trustpilot and simply dig into the companies’ LinkedIn pages and read comments below the corporate posts, you will see thousands of complaints, people are not heard, they have no other means to get noticed but to post their disappointing experience. They have to interact with chatbots which are totally helpless and make clients feel completely frustrated. Does your reputation matter? If you think that it’s not a big deal, Inc. (2018) stated that it takes 40(!) positive customer experiences to counteract a single negative review. We hope that will make us re-evaluate our attitude towards providing exceptional customer experiences, especially if we deal with money.
Pros and cons of chatbot usage
This is not an attempt to demonise chatbots since they are definitely not an absolute evil and have a set of unarguable pros. This technological enhancement allows customers to get answers faster and outside of business hours. However, keep in mind that it works for, let’s say, default problems. Any outside-the-box challenge which went through the chatbot assistance can aggravate your clients’ annoyance and anxiety because they wasted time and didn’t resolve the initial problem. They will have to specify their trouble once again from the very beginning, which is reported to be the least favourite thing while dealing with customer support.
How can we embrace technology and make it work in our favour?
We believe companies using chatbots must find a way to record and save all the information collected through the chatbot by attaching it to the ticket, so the agent can take the initiative and take over the problem solving. Customers could feel heard and valued when they do not have to repeat the same information endlessly. Moreover, you need to use Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technologies that will allow your customers to speak to the robot freely and naturally without picking the right “command” language. You should identify the triggers, after which you immediately redirect your client to the real agent to avoid a further negative experience. It will definitely take time and effort to set up the right chatbot and whole customer support process, but that could be essential.
Thus, for better client experience, ensure that:
Client satisfaction and experience should be regarded as of paramount importance. Besides, it is crucial to understand that there is no one-fit solution for everyone, and the degree of automatisation of customer support in e-commerce is not necessarily applicable to finance. Our main point is that your customers need to be heard and assisted when they require it. Give them the means to reach you comfortably, and please listen to them, and remember that even a single negative review is costly to compensate.
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