Will AI replace customer service?

Key takeaways

• AI is becoming integral to customer service, potentially influencing all digital interactions.
• AI tools are designed to assist rather than completely replace human agents in customer service roles.

Key Takeaways Basic Summary General Summary

• AI is becoming integral to customer service, potentially influencing all digital interactions.
• AI tools are designed to assist rather than completely replace human agents in customer service roles.
• The implementation of AI can enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve overall customer experience.

The post explores the evolving role of AI in customer service, highlighting its potential to transform digital interactions. While concerns about AI replacing jobs persist, the focus is on how AI assists human agents, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. Key benefits include streamlined processes, reduced costs, and enhanced customer experiences through AI-driven tools.

AI’s evolution from early chatbots to modern solutions is discussed, emphasizing its integration into various customer service aspects. The debate between replacement and augmentation is considered, with insights into how companies can leverage AI to support their existing workforce.

Ultimately, the future of customer service lies in balancing AI technology with the human touch, ensuring that human agents remain vital to delivering exceptional service.

The post delves into the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on customer service, an area that has seen significant evolution over the decades. AI’s journey began in the 1960s with the creation of the first chatbot, ELIZA, and has since progressed to sophisticated tools that enhance customer interactions. Experts predict that AI will soon play a role in virtually all digital customer interactions, marking a pivotal shift in how businesses engage with their customers.

While many fear that AI could entirely replace customer service jobs, the reality is more nuanced. AI is primarily designed to assist customer service agents by automating routine tasks and providing insightful data, rather than replacing the human element of service. This dual approach allows human agents to focus on complex issues that require empathy and nuanced understanding, thereby maintaining the quality of customer support.

The post highlights the various benefits of integrating AI into customer service workflows, including increased efficiency, cost savings, and improved customer experiences. AI tools can streamline customer interactions by quickly gathering information and resolving simple queries, which enhances productivity and reduces the burden on human agents.

However, the post also addresses the challenges and limitations of AI in customer service, such as its inability to handle complex issues and the necessity for human oversight. Trust and acceptance of AI technology among customers remain significant hurdles that businesses must navigate by providing a balanced approach that combines AI efficiency with human interaction.

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If you’ve shopped online in the past five years, you’ve probably used an artificial intelligence (AI) customer service bot. The next phase of customer support will be increasingly powered by AI, with experts predicting that AI will soon play a role in 100 percent of digital interactions.

Will AI take over customer service jobs entirely? Many argue (or fear) that it could. But the possibility of AI replacing customer service is much more complicated than bots taking over the world.

AI tools are, first and foremost, designed to assist customer service agents and customers alike. To best understand the full implications of AI in customer service, it’s important to first get to grips with the evolution of AI, the reality of its role, how it can be implemented, and what the industry is saying about its current and future use.

The evolution of AI in customer support

Customer support AI didn’t just pop up overnight. It’s a solution that has been under development for decades. In fact, the first AI chatbot, ELIZA, was invented in the 1960s. Since then, this technology has evolved to create solutions like interactive voice response (IVR) systems for phone support and the AI agents we experience today.

As these tools have evolved, they’ve increased the efficiency of customer service, allowing for a better experience for both agents and customers. But while early solutions like IVR may have acted strictly as an aid to human agents, modern AI solutions have proven capable of helping solve simple customer issues totally on their own.

Today, AI solutions have been integrated into every aspect of customer service. From AI chatbots to AI agent assistants, these solutions can accelerate and improve any phase of your customer journey. Some of these solutions include

• Generative AI
• AI automation
• Voice recognition
• Data analytics solutions

Incorporating these tools into your customer service workflow can help you improve your customer experience. But will AI replace call center agents altogether? The answer may depend on your company’s unique standpoint.

Will AI replace customer service jobs?

It’s highly unlikely that AI will fully replace customer service agents anytime soon. Human agents have too many intangible qualities that AI simply can’t replicate. That being said, AI is evolving at an exponential rate and could eventually reach a state where some jobs become fully automated.

The debate: Replacement vs augmentation

There are two ways to look at the impact of AI on the customer service industry: replacement and augmentation. Some claim that these automated solutions could eventually take over human-occupied positions. In fact, Goldman Sachs found that the equivalent of 300 million jobs could be impacted by automation.

However, this doesn’t mean full replacement. For example, a company may employ AI tools to scale its customer service as it grows. In this case, the agents currently working for the company wouldn’t be fired — the company would just use AI to streamline their existing workload and avoid hiring more employees in the future.

Alternatively, many believe that AI will change the way humans perform customer service — working in tandem with and opening up new job opportunities for human agents. Some experts see the best usage of these tools as a combination of the human qualities of creativity, ethics, and empathy with the high-speed efficiency of AI.

The Harvard Business Review argues that companies should use human agents to improve, develop, and effectively deploy AI tools, rather than relying solely on automation. By segmenting responsibilities and finding new opportunities for workforce development, you can maximize the value of both your team and AI.

Benefits of AI in customer service

AI has the potential to improve your customer service in a variety of ways, but its core benefit lies in its ability to streamline. Simplifying the customer experience for both your customers and your team creates other helpful advantages, including efficiency, cost reduction, and an overall better customer experience.

Efficiency and cost reduction

AI transforms typically lengthy customer service interactions into streamlined processes. By gathering customer information, feedback, and preferences beforehand, AI tools can help your agents create high-value interactions and reduce the costs associated with drawn-out customer service.

AI tools save on expensive employee training courses and onboarding costs, allowing you to train AI agents quickly using your existing data. These tools also make your team’s lives easier, increasing their overall workplace satisfaction — reducing burnout and turnover costs.

Enhanced customer experience

Customer service AI can create a faster, more personalized experience through natural language processing and machine learning. Especially compared to similar tools, like traditional non-AI chatbots, these solutions create a significantly better experience overall by offering more flexibility.

AI can also help empower human agents to provide the best customer experience by supporting them with the data they need to improve their interactions. AI tools can collect important information about customers — like buying habits, preferences, and past issues — and automatically provide this data to human agents during a customer interaction to ensure smooth and productive conversations.

Challenges and limitations of AI in customer service

While AI can be a helpful addition to your customer service toolbelt, it’s still a developing technology with a few common issues that you may encounter.

Complex issue resolution

• Challenge: The core limitation of most customer service AI is its inability to handle complex actions. 
• Outcome: Relying too heavily on AI can create a bottleneck for these issues and place undue pressure on your team.
• Solution: Human agents will still need to resolve issues that require human expertise, emotional intelligence, or soft skills. 

Customer trust and acceptance

• Challenge: While AI is widely used today, many still don’t trust this new technology. In fact, 61 percent of people worldwide are wary of trusting AI systems, and 67 percent report a low to moderate level of acceptance of AI.
• Outcome: This means you could risk alienating your customer base if you make AI customer service tools their only means of communication.
• Solution: Take a balanced approach. For example, allow AI tools to automate tasks behind the scenes while letting human agents lead customer-facing interactions.

What to expect from AI in customer service

AI has a diverse range of capabilities within the customer service industry. How you apply AI tools to your customer service practices will likely depend on the technology you invest in and your organization’s needs.

The right tools will allow you to access a wide scope of potential uses. Solutions like Jotform AI Agents, for example, are designed to provide the best possible results for your team across every facet of the customer service experience.

Jotform AI Agents allows you to transform your forms into dynamic, conversational experiences without writing code. These agents are trained with the data you provide and can ask questions and answer your customers’ queries. Using Jotform’s AI-powered tools, you can collect information more intuitively and efficiently.

Below are a few ways that AI tools, like Jotform AI Agents, can help elevate your customer service experience and enable your team.

Streamlined communication

Your team doesn’t have time to respond to every single message immediately — especially while trying to handle complex customer issues that require a human touch. AI chatbots like Jotform AI Agents automate responses and gather relevant information, freeing up valuable time for staff to focus on delivering exceptional service.

Customization and integration

The way your AI tools appear to your customers and work alongside your existing systems matters for both staying on brand and maintaining efficiency. You can tailor your AI tool’s appearance and functionality to align with your brand’s look and feel, ensuring a consistent customer experience. AI agents can also integrate with databases, links, and files to deliver smarter responses and handle customer interactions efficiently.

Versatility

AI agents are also highly adaptable and can be adjusted to fit specific roles as needed. General customer service and support AI agents help manage high volumes of customer inquiries, ensuring no issue is left unresolved. Meanwhile, other AI agents can be used to handle more specific tasks — like requesting an appointment or providing feedback. They can also be deployed in various industries, from e-commerce to healthcare, to enhance customer service operations.

Ease of creation

If you’re bringing in an AI tool to improve efficiency, you don’t have the extra time to spend on a complex agent-building process. That’s why it’s important to find a solution that makes it easy to build a custom tool from scratch. For example, creating a Jotform AI Agent is straightforward and involves just a few simple steps:

1. Start from scratch, with a form, or use a premade template.
2. Train the AI with documents or URLs.
3. Customize your agent using the Agent Builder by updating the visual style, icon, behavior style, and more. Users can create and personalize their AI agents to fit their needs, streamlining the data collection and interaction process.

The future of human-AI collaboration in customer service

AI is an ever-evolving technology. We’re likely to see significant changes in how AI and humans work together in the future to create a better customer service experience.

Hybrid models

Harnessing AI’s full potential requires focusing its attention on tasks that don’t need a human touch. Many companies are already using AI in this way. But as the technology evolves, its capabilities will expand. As solutions become more powerful through machine learning, you’ll likely find new ways to use them.

For a successful hybrid model, consider which common customer experiences are the most important for a member of your customer service team to facilitate. Answering frequently asked questions and collecting basic customer information may not be high-value tasks for your team, for example, whereas working through multistep processes or connecting with frustrated customers will require a personal touch.

Skill development and training

Human customer service agents and AI can also work together to improve one another, working collaboratively to develop each other’s skills. For instance, AI can provide agents with data regarding their performance and boost their on-call abilities with helpful tools — increasing their effectiveness at work.

AI can also learn from humans on how to improve. Human agents can work directly with AI to train them in handling less straightforward customer requests. This can help you maximize your AI’s value while creating opportunities for your customer service agents to diversify their skills.

Balancing technology and the human touch moving forward

As AI advances, your team can rest assured that they’re still an essential part of your customer service resources. Partnering with solutions like Jotform AI Agents will make their jobs easier and help them provide better customer service, but for now, AI will also likely continue to act in a secondary role. By using your team’s skills effectively — and choosing the right AI to complement them — your business can take full advantage of the benefits to come in the age of customer service AI. Get started for free with Jotform.

Photo by Yan Krukau