Conversational assistant or human? Combine both to ensure the success of your customer service.
Who still remembers Eliza, the very first conversational assistant that was born in 1966 in the United States? Not very talkative, she was nevertheless clever enough to rephrase everything she heard! Then appeared, in the form of avatars, the robots that provided non-personalized contact forms and delivered very simple information. The conversational assistants have now invaded customer service: they inform, converse, adopt styles, detect the emotions of their interlocutors, and adapt! All these conversational assistants that are becoming increasingly intelligent are dizzying, and of course, raise questions about the fate of Humans within customer services... No panic, they continue to have all their usefulness! Here’s why…
Why has the conversational assistant become essential?
With globalization and the growth of online commerce, customer relationship cycles have literally accelerated! To keep up, customer services have increasingly turned to conversational assistants. Initially, they answered the most common inquiries. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI), they are now able to understand a request 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 algorithms (NLP). Machine learning and deep learning (neural networks) also enable the categorization of very large volumes of questions and the understanding of the hidden intentions within them. This is how, 24/7, the always-more-connected consumer receives immediate fluid and qualitative feedback. Thanks to conversational assistants, the customer relationship no longer sleeps!
Why is the Human still essential?
The conversational assistant is a wonderful tool that alleviates the customer relationship services and provides contextualized responses to the consumer... But is it capable of handling a very complex request, or, as intelligent as it may be, calming a client on the brink of a nervous breakdown? Well, no! Despite the astounding progress of AI -and fortunately- it is unlikely that this will ever happen... It is precisely for this reason that the conversational assistant is so well designed: it has been taught to "shift down" when it "feels helpless" and to redirect the client to a human operator. It is then that the latter gives relevance and friendliness back to the dialogue, thus preserving the quality level of the operation and customer satisfaction. In conclusion... No, the conversational assistant is not about to replace the customer advisor. The latter advantageously focuses on tasks with very high added value (such as the one that consists, in particular, of knowing how to keep a client!) by providing empathetic support, while the conversational assistant handles the everyday requests and filters the most important demands. The conversational assistant and the Human truly represent the winning duo of customer relationship!
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Article update: November 22, 2021
