Picture it: The year is 2030 and customer support as we know it has been completely turned on its head. The number of use cases for AI in customer support has skyrocketed in the years following the release of ChatGPT. Along with that, the anxieties abound around AI-powered automation stealing everyone's jobs. Altogether, the customer support landscape is hardly recognizable compared to the world before generative AI came on the scene.
No doubt the employee experience has changed a lot over this decade, but not in the ways that most of us might have expected. Whereas many fear AI will simply steal all the human agents' jobs, we beg to differ. In fact, automation can actually help power more rewarding careers. Tedious tasks that once took agents hours upon hours to complete — be it boring data entry or replying to repetitive questions — can now be relegated to computers. What's more is that chatbot automation offers the opportunity for upskilling as customer support teams implement this new technology. And with the dawn of generative AI, careers in CX automation are going to get a lot more interesting in the years to come.
This is what customer service expert and influencer Harald Henn envisions for this decade, anyway. So we sat down with him to delve deeper into how AI will improve the employee experience, and he had some compelling insights. Let’s take a look.
Why the employee experience matters
To understand how AI can improve the customer service employee experience, it’s integral to first understand why you should even bother being concerned with this aspect of your company.
After all, doesn't the customer come first?
Harald says no, pointing to the Hal Rosenbluth book “The Customer Comes Second.” When you put the employee first, Harald explains, it can help turn the modern contact center workplace into a synergistic powerhouse where people produce consistently incredible results.
And it makes perfect sense. Think about it: who is going to go out of their way for your customer — an employee who is underpaid, overworked, and doesn’t feel appreciated? Or an employee who’s treated like a valued member of the company?
The latter, of course! Harald adds,
“Well-trained, well-informed, well integrated employees provide well above average customer experiences. Companies such as Zappos, Ritz Carlton enjoy high customer loyalty based on high employee customer engagement.”
And Harald says putting your employees first can ultimately improve all the most important aspects of your business, "Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees. Employee satisfaction, in turn, results primarily from high-quality support services and policies that enable employees to deliver results to customers. Employee experiences directly impact the company's bottom line.”
But how to improve these employee experiences?
...enter AI.
More on how AI has transformed customer service
How AI can improve the employee experience
When it comes to how AI can makes employees happier, according to Harald, you should reverse engineer the question: “What makes an employee unhappy?”
The answer? "Repetitive, monotonous work, searching for relevant information in various systems, to name a few of the big frustration points.
AI can support employees by eliminating tedious search tasks. AI-based “internal search systems” will find relevant information in a fraction of the time."
Learn how to choose the right tech setup to deliver outstanding customer experiences.
Harald goes on, "This is even more important in situations where customers get angry or become very demanding. Employees feel the time pressure from the customer to find the necessary information as fast as possible.
The same holds true for automating simple tasks like asking for a shipping date on a recent purchase, changing an address or credit card information. AI chatbots will handle those simple, monotonous tasks, freeing the employee from the tedium of repetition.
Especially during peak times like Christmas, when every customer wants to ensure his purchase will arrive on time. Answering the same question 80 to 100 times a day doesn't make any employee happy. So, AI will look up where the parcel with the long-awaited gift for the grandparents is and answer this.”
Teleclinic is an excellent example of the application of AI technology in such a scenario. From hay fever season to global pandemic, they have weathered major surges in support volumes with the help of AI-powered automation.
The result? The company has saved €100,500 in 2023 alone, all while cutting down on agent workload and increasing employee satisfaction.
Learn everything you need to know about customer service automation.
Bots working hand-in-hand with humans
The capabilities of AI can go far beyond automating simple, repetitive tasks, if we consider how AI can work together with humans to create a team of what are essentially super employees. This especially holds true with recent innovations in automation technologies like LLM -based chatbots in the era of generative AI.
Instantly take the mundane tasks off the shoulders of your support team with UltimateGPT.
Now, it's possible for a chatbot to instantly take on all those mundane tasks like password resets or order status updates and without skimping on a natural conversational experience for your customers. Meanwhile, your agents' workload will be relieved of the boring stuff so they can focus on more interesting, complex tasks.
AI will also help to guide employees through more complex customer journeys. A chatbot that utilizes generative AI can be a helping hand to your agents in those high-pressure moments where a query gets escalated by an angry customer. That's because your bot can pull relevant info from their interaction with the customer, instantly populate the ticket with what they find, and even perform sentiment analysis to craft suggested replies tailored to that specific request.
AI will be a cooperation partner for your agents. A ‘friend’ that will look over their shoulders and offer advice and support along the process, customer journeys.
And as chatbots and virtual agents are adopted more widely and become better, automation rates will increase, escalation rates will decrease, customer service will become more efficient, and everyone will be happier.
In 10 years’ time...
Of course, all of the above shifts are already taking place at a much. more rapid pace than anyone thought possible. So what we can expect from AI and the employee experience at contact centers this decade?
Harald paints an interesting picture:
“We will see a continuous shift in contact centers: AI will relieve employees from monotonous and transactional tasks. Currently we see isolated approaches by AI such as robotic process automation (RPA), which is used to automate some easy transactional data entry jobs. In the years to come, we will see a merging of different AI technologies.
AI chatbots will identify a customer intent, and based upon what the customer needs, pass this request on to RPA. Which means that in some cases, an employee will not even realize that a customer request has been successfully handled.
This will give a lot of extra time for employees to do what human beings can do best: engage with a customer, empathize and build a strong relationship.”
Final thoughts on AI for agents
Harald rounds things off with some advice for any customer service leaders looking to implement AI to improve their own employee experience.
“One of the biggest challenges — as with any other AI project — don't try to save the world in the first step.
Reducing the expectations and narrowing down the initial release to one or a few use cases, is certainly a wise approach.
Once employees feel supported by AI and regard the AI tool as a support in their daily work, employees will accept any further development."
Learn more about the benefits of AI-powered automation and what to expect when getting started.
Improving the employee experience can boost your business in a big way. It's clear that AI can make employees happier. By taking away repetitive tasks, AI can work together with humans to augment their work, making them faster and more effective at every task. Furthermore, AI provides you agents with invaluable opportunities to advance their career. Lastly, AI also allows them to concentrate on problem solving and being emotionally available for customers — exactly what humans are best at.