Editorial
The Gist
- AI enhances, not replaces, human customer service. While AI plays a significant role in streamlining and improving customer service, it does not replace the human touch.
- Redefining roles and skill sets in customer service. As AI takes over routine and repetitive tasks, customer service roles are evolving.
- Continuous improvement through AI in customer service. Utilizing AI in customer service creates opportunities for continuous improvement across businesses.
Customer service is at the forefront of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution and everyone’s trying to keep up. Here’s the question people are asking — will customer service AI replace human service agents?
Here’s the answer: No.
AI is effectively complementing the human support experience, and it’s key that support leaders think about the new support roles and new responsibilities of support reps that an AI-first world requires. At its very basic level, humans provide the type of customer empathy, intimacy and context that AI is far from being able to deliver. “Humans” are also important in the AI-first world because the technology is only as good as the information it has access to and the way it is integrated into the customer journey.
This leads to the emergence of new responsibilities for existing customer service teams and in fact some completely new roles as well.
What Customer Service Teams Need to Know About AI
For existing customer service agents, there will be a need to hone problem solving and troubleshooting skills, since much of the human support work that will come through will consist of complex and challenging customer issues.
It's likely that most businesses support reps will become subject matter experts, highly trained in a particular aspect of the support journey, rather than generalists. The level of customer engagement and empathy skills required will also increase in this world.
There is also the opportunity for support reps to be more "consultative" and "proactive" with customers and truly allow support to be a real value adding part of any business.
Related Article: AI-Enhanced Contact Center Platforms for World-Class Customer Service
4 New Roles to Emerge Due to Customer Service AI
AI in customer service will also have an impact on the types of human support roles needed, with new roles to emerge including:
1. Knowledge Managers
Support teams have long struggled with the time and effort required to capture and maintain knowledge to create an optimal knowledge management process.
Now, while customer service AI takes on the repetitive tasks that have long been a burden to support reps, “knowledge managers” can emerge as the ultimate experts in the product or service your team supports and train AI models to spit out the correct content.
Knowledge managers now have the time to tap into the "tribal knowledge" living within their heads from years of support experiences and take the time to teach the model what kinds of responses will lead to customer satisfaction.
2. Conversation Analysts
Applying AI to analyze customer conversation information will surface many key insights that will drive a culture of continuous improvement across any business at the product, process and people skills levels. But the ability to interpret and drive the necessary improvement initiatives will be driven by "conversation analysts."
This role will include interpreting and using natural language processing analytics to define how AI listens and interprets what the customer/user says. This is all about the language put in during customer service interactions, rather than the user experience (UX) design behind the conversation.
Any time a customer service agent solves a problem should be the last time that particular issue occurs. By analyzing past conversations, customer experience conversation analysts can ensure the technology develops knowledge to ensure issues don’t repeat themselves.
3. Conversation Designers
Out of the box a generative AI engines can be "conversational," but you need to wrap a customer engagement and UX design process around it to help deliver a unique and valuable customer experience that represents your brand and values.
The conversation designer can now emerge to critically think about how customers will "converse" with your team’s support processes and look at the full end-to-end customer journey with your business when a customer seeks support or help.
Conversation design also isn’t a one-stop shop — as AI customer service technology evolves, so will the conversation dynamics. This role will be vital in constantly fine-tuning the customer experience and flow of individual conversations.
4. Prompt Engineers/Problem Formulation Engineers
The role of prompt engineering, which focuses on optimizing textual input to effectively communicate with large language models, is a fast emerging key role in the AI space. However, there are some industry observers who feel this role may be replaced by the role of problem formulation engineer, as AI may become adept in prompt engineering on its own.
Prompt engineering requires a firm grasp of a specific AI tool and linguistic proficiency, while problem formulation necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the problem domain and ability to use that understanding to solve real world issues.
The premise behind both roles is that the way you interact with AI technology will ultimately dictate how effectively the technology works in any given situation. While generative AI works well out of the box, tuning the technology through prompt engineering and problem formulation engineering will have a major impact on the effectiveness of the technology.
Related Article: AI-Augmented CX: The New Horizon of Customer Service
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AI in Customer Service: A Promising, Human-Filled Future
When implemented properly, using AI in customer service can dramatically influence how your support agents connect with and serve your customers. As someone who has operated in the technology sector for over 35 years, and mostly in some form of the customer support role, I have literally never been more excited than I am right now about the potential to transform the customer service experience through technology.
AI is not replacing humans anytime soon. The technology is still very much in its infancy, so human customer service teams will continue to be the best channel for handling the most complex issues and also where deep customer empathy, knowledge and context is required.
Customer support leaders need to consider training their support agents to hone their troubleshooting and subject-specific expertise and consider adding new AI customer service roles that will enable teams to evolve alongside technology and consistently meet customer requests and needs.
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