By
Cynthia Long
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Date Published: April 22, 2025 - Last Updated April 22, 2025
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Comments
As a customer, if you have a small problem, you reach out to the contact center for support. First, you have to login, then schedule a call back time and then, provide phone numbers which should already be in their system.
Didn’t you just read about all the AI technology this company was implementing? Where is it? Why isn’t it helping you with your support questions?
Honestly, all the various channels, text, phone, email and self-help can be confusing. Wouldn’t it be nice, for you as a customer, if the focus was on what you need to quickly and simply find the answers to your question, without the hunt for the right path?
Maybe you are provided an online manual or instructions to review to try and preemptively provide a solution. What a headache — when you only want to know X — and you are being forced to self-serve, or be their research resource to get your own details. Some customers love self-service, while others just want help the old-fashioned way.
And while some companies are bragging about all their AI solutions, is it really improving their customer experience? If companies are always chasing the latest tech for their own press releases, what is the real improvement for the customer?
Here are four basic questions that companies contact and support centers should be asking themselves about AI:
- Has it improved speed to resolution?
- If not, what has the AI actually done for your customer experience?
- Has the Customer Experience improved since you implemented your AI solution?
(look at your CSAT scores, customer effort scores and NPS)
- Are you checking your first call closure rate to ensure that any one customer hasn’t called in repeatedly that same day multiple times? Contact centers can deceive themselves on FCC if they aren’t thinking about all the calls from any one customer per day.
Customers don’t want three phone calls to find out where a 401K distribution is or how to schedule an appointment to get their car repaired. We, as customers, always want the easy path, the fast path, the right path to the solution. And with all the AI jargon in the marketplace we are expecting it today — are we receiving real AI support solutions that are improving the customer experience?
More contact centers need to provide visual path diagrams for customers, so than can more easily find the right path for their problems and issues.
Diagrams like these on your support page, with key information on which support path works best for the customer questions that are dynamically linked to the correct tool (chat, self help, call back or agent) are needed to deliver the best customer experience in our tech-based world.