- Gartner report claims companies are reversing or toning down their strategies for AI customer service
- Almost all companies will keep human agents in their teams
- Experts call for a hybrid approach, with AI and humans
A growing amount of of companies are abandoning plans to drastically reduce human customer service roles in the next two years due to technical, operational and cost-related challenges, research has claimed.
A new Gartner report found a staggering majority (95%) plan to retain human agents as a result, acknowledging AI’s current limitations in handling complex or nuanced customer interactions.
The report also confirmed customers prefer human interactions and support, with only 7% trusting AI most for issue resolution. Three in five (62%) also worry that AI will make it harder to reach a human if they need more detailed support.
Companies still plan on using human customer service agents
Gartner’s analysts emphasized that AI cannot fully replace humans in the field just yet, citing poor user experiences and unexpected costs from failed AI implementations.
So far, projects expecting GenAI to solve all customer issues have largely fallen short of expectations, and the idea of a fully human-less contact center is neither feasible nor desirable at this stage.
“Human touch remains irreplaceable in many interactions, and organizations must balance technology with human empathy and understanding,” Senior Director Analyst Kathy Ross explained.
“A hybrid approach, where AI and human agents work in tandem, is the most effective strategy for delivering exceptional customer experiences.”
However, separate IBM research revealed UK businesses are still bidding big on AI – four in five (83%) execs expect agentic AI to improve efficiency, with UK businesses allocating an average of 15% of their IT budgets to AI.
A similar number of execs (84%) also expect AI to automate repetitive tasks at above-human speeds by next year.
All of this in mind, even IBM admits that some challenges remain, especially surrounding data quality (49%), trust (46%) and skills shortages (42%).
IBM Consulting VP for AI Integration Services, Francesco Brenna, explained how AI isn’t a plug-and-play, solve-all tool to fix all business problems: “This isn’t about plugging an agent into an existing process and hoping for the best. It means re-architecting how the process is executed, redesigning the user experience, orchestrating agents end-to-end, and integrating the right data to provide context, memory, and intelligence throughout.”
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