3 Reasons Retail Companies Need Both Human Agents And Artificial Intelligence

In a recent article, Luke Starbuck discusses how quality customer service can set companies apart within the retail industry. A major way companies invest in their customer service is by hiring a large amount of customer service representatives in order to improve their scalability and serve more customers. Starbuck argues that simply hiring more customer service employees isn’t the best approach to improving the customer experience; retail companies will need to utilize a hybrid of live agents and artificial intelligence (AI) to succeed. The article provides the following three reasons companies need to use both AI automation and customer service agents:

1) AI can give call center agents important background information on customers during calls to make interactions more personalized and fluid.

2) AI makes scaling during busy times quicker and more affordable than simply hiring more agents.

3) A high percentage of retail companies are shifting towards utilizing AI more in the next ten ears due to the need to meet customers on digital platforms, which means failure to adapt could lead to poor customer service.

The overall point of Starbuck’s article is that the best way to reduce costs while still improving scalability is to combine call center agents with AI. However, he points out that human agents cannot be completely removed from the equation because there are many customer issues that need to be resolved with empathy and human interaction.

3 Reasons Retail Companies Need Human Agents And Artificial Intelligence

The individuals answering inbound calls for retail companies have high level of responsibility. These call center agents need to project the brand image and company culture, provide a high quality customer experience, and increase revenue through sales. Companies demand a lot from their in-house and outsourced call centers, including support through sales, customer service, and multichannel support such as live chat support or outsourced email support of our client’s customers. It’s critical that retail call centers combine human agents with the use of artificial intelligence in order to keep up with increasing company and customer expectations.

The following are three reasons retail companies need to integrate human agents and artificial intelligence in their call centers:

1) Customers have multiple ways they can communicate with a company. AI can be used to monitor exchanges via social media, chat, and other online channels and can route the most important or pressing inquiries to human call center agents.

2) AI can assistant to live agents by taking care of mundane processes and freeing the agents to focus on challenging customer issues that require critical or abstract thinking.

3) By integrating AI within the call center CRM system, virtual assistants can enable call center agents to have more personable conversation with customers and provide them with service that’s tailored to their experience.

This blog post is based on an article from destinationCRM.com. To read the original article, please click the link below:

3 Reasons Smart Retailers Are Shifting Customer Care Investment from More Agents to AI – Luke Starbuck