Conversational assistant or human? Combine the two to ensure the success of your customer service
Feb. 13, 2020
Who still remembers Eliza, the very first conversational assistant, born in 1966 in the USA? Not very talkative, she was nevertheless clever enough to rephrase everything she heard! Next came the avatar-like robots that filled in non-personalized contact forms and delivered very simple information. The conversational assistants have now invaded customer services: they provide information, converse, adopt styles, detect the emotions of their interlocutors and adapt! All these conversational assistants, which are becoming more and more intelligent, are making our heads spin, and, of course, raising questions about the destiny of the human being within customer services... Don't panic, it's still very useful! Here's why...
Why have conversational assistants become indispensable?
With globalization and the growth of online commerce, customer relations cycles have literally spun out of control! To keep pace, customer services departments increasingly turned to conversational assistants. At first, they answered the most common questions. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI), they are now able to understand a query expressed in natural language, analyze it, interpret it... and respond appropriately! Open and complex conversations are now possible thanks to the automatic categorization of keywords processed by natural language processing(NLP) algorithms. Machine learning and deep learning (neural networks) also make it possible to categorize very large volumes of questions and understand the intentions behind them. This means that, 24/7, the increasingly connected consumer immediately receives fluid, qualitative feedback. Thanks to conversational assistants, customer relations never sleep again!
Why is the human element so essential?
The conversational assistant is a formidable tool that relieves the pressure on customer relations departments and provides contextualized answers to the consumer... But is it capable of managing a highly complex request, or, however intelligent it may be, of calming a customer on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Well, no! That's why conversational assistants are so well-designed: they've been taught to "disengage" when they "feel helpless", and redirect the customer to a human operator. The latter then restores the dialogue's relevance and user-friendliness, thus preserving the quality of the operation and customer satisfaction. In conclusion... No, the conversational assistant is not about to replace the customer advisor. The customer advisor can focus on high value-added tasks (such as keeping a customer!) by providing empathetic support, while the conversational assistant solves all the problems and filters out the most important requests. The conversational assistant and the human are truly the winning tandem in customer relations!
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Last update: November 22, 2021
