Dive Brief:
- Zendesk has launched new capabilities for its Zendesk AI assistant and entered a partnership with AWS and Anthropic to scale its AI development, the company announced Tuesday at its annual Relate conference in Las Vegas.
- Zendesk will utilize the Amazon Bedrock service and Anthropic’s Claude 3 AI model to help its chatbots deliver more personalized self-service experiences and to better support live agents by suggesting responses to customer inquiries.
- Zendesk is also upgrading its autonomous chatbots to handle more complex queries and introducing a continuously learning agent copilot designed to help call center workers better understand customer needs and leaders track key KPIs to optimize operations.
Dive Insight:
Zendesk’s developments are part of a larger trend of vendors launching improvements to chatbots and tools that can empower agents in equal measure.
The solution provider previously said that “the human touch” would remain a choice for customers following its acquisition of service automation provider Ultimate last month.
Other call center software vendors are following a similar path. AWS and Salesforce each launched AI tools to assist call center agents last month. Zoom added call summaries to its AI companion’s capabilities in January and is planning to introduce a next-best-action tool for agents in the near future.
The emphasis on empowering agents as well as self-service may be driven by consumer behavior. While acceptance of AI is growing, customers still very much want the option to speak with a human. A January KPMG survey found that 3 in 5 customers are wary of AI, and only half believe AI’s benefits outweigh its risks.
Experts have noted that companies must take care as they implement self-service options. Robust self-service options can offer speedy resolutions for simple issues, but empowered agents are still essential for truly complicated problems.
