Are we using AI to improve CX or just to keep customers away from humans
I keep seeing CX teams pushed toward more automation and I’m not convinced automation alone means a better customer experience. Bots are fine for simple stuff. The problem starts when a customer has an issue that doesn’t fit the script. They spend five minutes fighting the bot then finally reach an agent and have to explain everything again. Meanwhile human agents have their own mess. They’re expected to know every policy and process while searching through knowledge bases during live calls. Then QA reviews a small sample of those conversations days later and tells them what they should have done differently. By then the customer already had the bad experience. I think the more interesting use of AI is during the actual conversation. Surface the right answer when an agent needs it.
Flag a missed step before the call ends. Carry context from an AI agent to a human. Learn what the best reps are doing and help the rest of the team do the same. We’re looking into AI tools for our customer support operation right now and one thing I really don’t want is to use AI as another wall between customers and an actual person. I’ve dealt with enough support bots myself to know how annoying that gets lol. It’s more like “how much repetitive work can we remove so the support team has more time for the conversations where a human actually matters?”