Tom Lewis is the SVP of Consulting at TTEC Digital and leads the organization’s thought leadership around the intersection of AI and CX.
ChatGPT was one of the fastest-adopted technologies in history, acquiring 100 million users in just weeks. It quickly gained adoption in all corners of business, academia and everyday life. It was so widely adopted that even children on iPads were able to use it, and, generally, the answers provided were useful and intelligible in a way that had not been seen before.
The Expectation Gap
Thus, the problem. It was so well accepted that consumers started to expect generative AI-level responses from customer service bots. Instead, consumers are still presented with very narrow-scoped chatbots that don’t know anything about them and often, it seems, don’t cover the topics being sought, causing high failure rates and transfers to live agents.
While chatbots and interactive voice response (IVR) technologies have advanced significantly in the past decade, they are still often a “cheaper cost channel” for the brand and not actually a more effortless experience, as highlighted in the book The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon and the CEB.
Despite not being frictionless, chatbots are still successful as they often manage to bypass the necessity for human interaction, a scenario many consumers seek to avoid. On the other hand, because of how bad many of these automated systems are, many consumers just take the stance that they will circumvent the technology and go straight to the human. They believe that they will have to repeat everything they just communicated in the automated system anyway, so why go through the effort?
But the real question consumers are asking is, “Why, if my kid can converse with ChatGPT on an iPad, can’t company chatbots handle basic prompts like ‘What is my balance?'” The typical chatbot experience really highlights the deficiencies with most of the current technology. Thus, my main point: Generative AI is causing worse customer experiences with a technology that actually hasn’t changed, simply because of the expectation gap.
Bridging The Gap
A major investment focus for PE and VC firms of late has been around AI, specifically generative AI. Many of these firms are also looking at companies that focus on the customer experience SaaS industry, and as such, this creates a unique opportunity for investors and businesses.
Many brands are still experimenting with this technology in customer service departments because they are concerned it will hallucinate or otherwise provide inaccurate answers. This happened recently to an Air Canada customer who was granted a refund via a bot and then told “no” by a human at the company.
The next stage in the evolution of sophisticated voice and text bots is the complete integration of generative AI. As software companies roll out these capabilities and brands experiment and gain comfort with the answers they give customers, consumers will see more and more of these technologies. That is obvious, but what is not obvious is that this rollout will quickly create a brand differentiation characterized by those who can truly make the interaction effortless. Customers will choose the brand, and the channel into that brand, that will take the least amount of effort.
Not only will these bots be able to handle a wider range of subjects, but they will also be able to relate to consumers specifically based on their relationship with the brand. They won’t offer options that are irrelevant to the customer, and they will tailor not only their responses but also their recommendations. This “mass personalization” will further reduce friction, differentiate brands and endear consumers to those brands.
The current state is not really that pretty, but the near future looks bright. Brands should be experimenting now with this technology and pressing to roll it out quickly to take advantage of the differentiated experience and customer loyalty that creates.
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