Greetings!
One of the major areas of service in a firm that has been largely replaced with artificial intelligence and is widely accepted is customer care service. To this day, I still frown upon many organizations that have completely left the duty of customer care service to bots that operate only based on programmed problems and solutions.
If you're familiar with solving issues online instead of visiting the physical location of the organization, you must have experienced a situation where the bots attending to you prompt responses that are entirely different from what you're asking or seeking to resolve. If you try reaching a human customer service representative, you'll often be told that no one is available now, they’ve closed, or human customer care is not available for the season (maybe they work based on weather conditions. Lol).
In February, a woman close to my workplace had her phone stolen. As soon as she noticed, she raised an alarm. We tried dialing her phone number to see if the thief would pick up and negotiate with us to get it back, but the phone was completely off. She asked me to help her block her line because her bank details and much of her life were attached to the number. She approached me because I’m the tech-savvy guy who knows my way around, especially for handling such issues without going to the bank, which would take an eternity, especially if there was a long queue.
I asked for her bank name, she told me, and I went online quickly to contact customer service to block the line.
I had done something similar for my own bank when my ATM card had unauthorized deductions; it was easy for me because when I dropped a message, a real person replied instantly. Within a short time, I got my ATM card blocked.
I was hoping it would be the same for her bank, but no, I encountered a bot reply. I sighed because I knew it was going to involve a series of unnecessary messages.
I messaged, followed the prompts, and when it reached a certain stage, the bot got confused and kept prompting irrelevant commands, just as I expected. I decided to call, and the automated voice told me that they had closed for the day and I should use their online(internet) customer service. If I couldn’t wait, I was advised to go to the nearest bank branch.
Oh my gosh! What’s the essence of having a customer service bot?
Luckily, there was still time, so I told the woman to rush to the bank to block the number because there was no way to do it online. She went and came back after two hours. She succeeded, though she had to bribe her way into the hall because the bank was already closing.
What am I saying in essence?
No doubt, AI in customer service is good, but I think it should be like the old days.
Let a human be available.
Let a human who can read and understand the situation and know the kind of solution to offer, not a bot that, when faced with a confusing question, keeps prompting annoying options.
Thanks for reading.