What to Do If Your Customer Service Robot Frustrates Your Customers

Deployed to manage labor cost and shortages, AI-based customer service systems might have contributed to the sharp decline in American Customer Satisfaction since 2018. Our Q1 2023 Multicultural Consumer Survey finds that for almost half of our 2,000 US respondents, not getting their issues resolved is their biggest grievance with chatbots or voice assistants, followed by navigation challenges and lack of social interaction and personalization.

Insight for What’s Ahead: Contacting customer service is often customers’ last resort after having tried to fix a product/service issue or find needed information. As long as AI systems aren’t advanced enough to keep customers happy, companies should make it easy to reach a well-qualified service associate to resolve customer problems and provide human—rather than robotic—empathy.

Many customers struggle with automated customer service systems, requiring more human touchpoints as well as enhanced AI

Source: Multicultural Consumer Survey Q1 2023, The Conference Board

Happy employees, happy customers, happy investors

Automated systems are people’s biggest customer service frustration, period—ahead of long wait times to receive service and being referred around the organization, according to our survey.

Implications to address this issue:

• AI-based customer service systems need to improve to be able to handle more than standard inquiries and issues.
• It is critical to invest in human customer service for enhanced customer satisfaction, willingness to pay, loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and brand value. Such investments include ensuring adequate staffing levels, treating employees well to retain and attract talent in a tight labor market, and have employees’ back in light of increased customer incivility. Companies should provide constant training to enable service employees to deal with well-informed customers and give them decision autonomy to resolve customers’ issues favorably.

Read more in Prefer Talking with Our Robot or a Human Being?