Dive Brief:
- Three-quarters of consumers say they prefer speaking to a live customer service agent, according to a survey of 4,000 people in the United States and U.K. released by Five9 and Team Lewis last week.
- Almost half of respondents say they don’t trust information from AI-powered customer service chatbots. Three in five Gen Z and millennial consumers tend to have a higher opinion of chatbots and trust the information they produce.
- The generational divide is likely more about experience and skills rather than specific traits of older demographics, according to Daniel O’Sullivan, senior director analyst at Gartner. Companies looking to improve confidence in AI with older generations should consider their preference for non-digital channels in their investments.
Dive Insight:
The task of building consumer trust in customer service AI is beyond any single company’s abilities.
Even if customers don’t necessarily trust AI, they know it is becoming more common. More than 4 in 5 customers are already aware that AI is playing a role in customer service interactions, according to the Five9 survey.
The AI products and services offered by large companies, like Google’s AI overviews, will shape consumers’ perception of the technology in general, according to O’Sullivan. However, businesses can still build confidence in their own AI initiatives.
One of the essential ingredients is transparency, according to Julie Geller, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group. Companies should make it clear when a customer service inquiry response comes from a chatbot rather than a human agent.
It's on companies to understand the limits of their generative AI assistants and put proper guardrails on the kinds of inquiries they handle, O’Sullivan said. This includes offering alternative options for when AI isn’t suited to handling an issue.
Any information provided by a chatbot must be trustworthy, even when AI only serves as a midpoint on the journey to resolution, according to Geller.
“Trust builds further when the AI is equipped with the latest, most accurate information and when transitions to live agents are seamless,” Geller said in an email to CX Dive. “Customers feel more at ease with AI when it’s a well-integrated, reliable part of the service experience.”
