It's out with chatbots, in with empathetic AI concierges

Experiencing a minor car accident can bring overwhelming stress. On top of the initial shock, there’s the headache of contacting the insurance company, navigating the claim’s process, worrying if your insurance will cover it, enduring long hold times, and coordinating payment for repairs. And while your car is being fixed, you still need to figure out alternative transportation. The whole ordeal can feel all-consuming. Now, imagine a future where an AI-powered virtual concierge handles the entire claims process for you, effortlessly overcoming these struggles. The AI takes these tedious tasks off your hands, submits photos of the damage, files the claim, coordinates with your preferred body shop, and books a rental car that is delivered to your door — without needing your time, energy or intervention.

Although AI technology is evolving rapidly, it’s understandable for consumers to struggle to see a future where the level of automation described above is possible. Especially when today’s chat and voice bots often leave consumers frustrated and disappointed due to their limitations in scope and in understanding natural language.

However, despite not always living up to customer expectations, these bots have laid the foundation for more effective, useful and powerful customer experiences in the future.

Putting the chat in chatbots

Today, bots communicate based on human pre-designed and pre-programmed responses which dictate their behaviour. Bots rely on natural language processing (NLP) to understand and communicate with consumers, which leads to these machines being limited to simple tasks like cancelling orders, managing returns or updating passwords. Additionally, there can be a large disparity in their sophistication from one organisation to another. Although some bots are more sophisticated and are designed to take context into consideration, others struggle to connect the dots, leading to irrelevant pre-programmed responses, forcing customers to wait until open business hours to eventually communicate with a human agent.

These issues exist because most businesses today are operating at the early stages of automation. Bots are capable of managing simple tasks like order status and straightforward FAQs, while routing more complex issues to human agents. As AI continues to evolve, we’ll see the technology move beyond automation to optimising the customer experience through enhanced personalisation, improved efficiency and ease.

With the rise of generative AI, the next generation of chatbots have come to life. These enhanced virtual agents now have the ability to handle more complicated tasks, including troubleshooting and product inquiries. By combining customers’ historical context with an extended knowledge library of the organisation, they can better address specific situations. As virtual agents become more skilled in solving increasingly complex issues and are better at understanding human language, consumer perception will shift and some consumers will actively seek virtual agents as a means to engage with an organisation.

Virtual agents, trained by leveraging input from conversations of the best human agents, will be able to deliver positive outcomes while handling post-interaction administrative tasks such as case summaries and follow-up actions. This ensures a more efficient and effective service across all conversations. Customers will no longer have to suffer long wait times, or deal with bots that lack the capabilities to efficiently resolve their issues without human aid or empathy. Meanwhile, human agents’ time will be freed up, enabling them to focus on customers who require specialised support.

The next stage of evolution is within arm’s reach, as more sophisticated methodologies are deployed and emotion and sentiment are taken into account, granting these empathetic virtual agents the ability to be much more effective communicators. Harnessing the ability to better understand the intricacies of human language will not only deliver a more natural flow to conversations but will also assess a customer’s emotional state and adjust the interaction accordingly. This becomes particularly handy when dealing with customers who are discussing potentially sensitive or embarrassing topics. It’s in these instances where customers may feel more inclined to converse with an empathic virtual agent rather than be face to face with a human agent.

At this stage, the majority of customer service interactions will be handled by AI. However, any time the interaction becomes too complex or emotionally charged, the empathetic virtual agent will transfer the conversation to a human agent to handle the issue accordingly.

Providing empathetic support through AI concierges

As we transition from empathic virtual agents, we’ll come to a point where AI can anticipate a customer’s needs and automate most conversations, evolving into personal virtual concierges. These powerful personal virtual concierges will have the ability to navigate even the most complex customer requests and provide highly personalised, empathetic, human-like support. This shift will have a positive impact on the overall customer experience by reducing wait times and enabling asynchronous support. At the same time, it will boost employee efficiency and productivity, as time is freed while the number of conversations hitting an organisation will continue to increase.

Instead of enduring long wait times on hold or leaving a chat open, uncertain when a response will come, customers will be able to trust that their personal virtual concierge is working on resolving the issue in the background and will report back once it's resolved. Take for example that minor accident mentioned earlier — you’ve gone to the mechanic to fix the damage to your car and paid the hefty bill, to find out that your insurance company has rejected your claim. Instead of waiting on hold trying to reach a live agent to resolve the issue, your virtual concierge will handle the dispute — and, once done, let you know your claim has now been approved.

The chatbots we use today are only the beginning of a much larger shift in AI technology. While they’ve already changed how businesses operate and engage with customers, the next generation of AI will fundamentally transform how customers interact with brands, build relationships and address service issues.

Image credit: iStock.com/da-kuk