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Dive Brief: - Less than half — 46% — of consumers rated their most recent experience with AI and chatbot channels positively, according to a Five9 survey released last week. - By comparison, consumers were more positively disposed toward live phone, email and in-person support, with about two-thirds of respondents rating their most recent experience with those channels positively. - When consumers abandon AI for a human, nearly half — 46% — said they did so because the bot repeatedly misunderstood them, Five9 found. Five9 surveyed 3,000 consumers and 600 business decision-makers in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. Dive Insight: Few things will cause a customer to immediately request — demand, even — a live agent like a bot that misunderstands them. A CX leader implementing AI for self-service should first understand why that can happen and then take several steps to eliminate that friction. “A bot can understand every word a customer says and still completely miss the point,” Brad Cleveland, CX expert and author, told sister publication CX Dive. This is because customers don’t speak in neat scripts, may conflate multiple separate issues into a single statement or may use sarcasm or irony to convey the opposite intent. Additionally, context can be missing, and the knowledge on which the bot draws its information can be outdated. “This is the Achilles heel of AI and customer service across the board. It's a huge need to make sure the underlying knowledge is sound,” Cleveland said. Organizations should also make sure the knowledge bases from which the bot will draw its responses are current and accurate. And, of course, testing is a critical step. “Test with real customers and real conversations. And not just with a perfect, polite customer,” Cleveland said. “Test with frustrated customers, fast talkers, a person with dogs barking in the background or at a busy airport where they’re trying to get something done while waiting for a flight.” Lastly, CX leaders should measure failures and make escalation to a human agent easy — which may even encourage AI adoption. Five9 found, as well, that 55% of consumers trust AI to resolve their issue when a human option is available versus 26% when there isn’t one. “Don't celebrate containment if customers feel trapped,” Cleveland said. “Track your failure rate and the escalation rate and how that's improving. These tools are always iterative — they should be anyway. So, make sure you're making improvements and then seeing what's happening.”
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