Can AI Save Customer Support?
Release Date:
We’ll bet you’ve heard this one: you call customer support and encounter an automated system. Despite your best efforts to speak clearly, the voice on the other end of the line can’t understand you. Or, how about when you’ve finally reached someone and they need to transfer you to another agent. After waiting on hold for a while, the second agent finally answers the phone but asks you to explain the problem all over again. That is s a particularly frustrating experience, and you’re not alone according to a recent study by RingCentral and Opinium Research. Host Sara Walker welcomes Jim Payne, director of product marketing at RingCentral, a provider of AI-first cloud-based communication and collaboration solutions, for a discussion about the report’s findings and how AI can help ease those customer support pain points.
Jim Payne
RingCentral
Connect with Jim
In this episode:
- Chapter 1: Introduction (00:01 – 00:41)
- Chapter 2: Background and Introduction to Jim Payne (00:41 – 02:50)
- Chapter 3: Highlighting the Study on AI in Customer Service (02:50 – 03:50)
- Chapter 4: Customer Service Frustrations and AI Solutions (03:50 – 05:39)
- Chapter 5: Effective AI Implementation (05:39 – 08:43)
- Chapter 6: Balancing AI and Human Interaction (08:43 – 11:11)
- Chapter 7: AI’s Role in Enhancing Customer Experience (11:11 – 13:56)
- Chapter 8: Insights from the Study and Broader Implications (13:56 – 17:43)
- Chapter 9: Changing the Perspective on Customer Experience (17:43 – 20:50)
- Chapter 10: Future of AI in Customer Experience (20:21 – 23:21)
- Chapter 11: AI’s Impact on Employee Experience (23:21 – 26:33)
- Chapter 12: Take-Home Value (26:33 – 27:37)
- Chapter 13: Conclusion and Contact Information (27:37 – 28:38)
Highlights
The results are in: people are frustrated with customer support
“One of the things that stood out to me right out of the gate, I mean, you’re talking about 6,000 people, so this is pretty good statistical significance… 97% of those people are frustrated by, you know, customer service… And you could put me among their ranks. I’ve been very frustrated by customer service, even something I felt my skin crawling a little bit when you were even giving your intro, right? Thinking about experiences I’ve had just maybe trying to return something, and I’m talking to a chat bot over and over, and it just keeps sending me to help center articles. And I say, yeah, all right, I know how that works. Like, you know, it’s basically just another search engine.”
Automating Insights to improve the customer experience
“…people aren’t calling customer service to complain about customer service. They’re calling in to complain about company or an experience or a product or something like that, and then when you’re able to leverage the analytics on that side to say, okay, here’s what people are calling in about, here’s a way for us to correlate automatically. Maybe poor CSAT scores, things like that with certain categories. You might find out, oh, even for example… let’s say our CSAT scores are not very good. And then we go back and look and we find out, oh, 80% of our bad CSAT scores are just coming from billing inquiries. That may not actually be a customer service problem, it might be a business process issue… And now all of a sudden, as opposed to just being this end point for an enraged consumer, you are now a strategic arm providing valuable business insights…”
Transcript
Sara:00:00:01
I don’t know about you, but there are a ton of things I’d rather be doing than contacting customer support.
Jim:00:00:06
I still think about a time I had to change a flight through some third party travel thing, and I was able to sort it all out through a chatbot in under a minute, because they were using artificial intelligence. It was all well connected, and I just thought, whoa, it really knocked my socks off. I was very, very impressed by that. And artificial intelligence is uniquely qualified to to solve those things.
Sara:00:00:26
We’ll dive into a recent study that explores how AI can erase common pain points in customer service. On this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.
Announcer:00:00:41
The CX Leader Podcast is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.
Sara:00:00:53
Hi everyone. I’m Sara Walker, host of this episode of The CX Leader Podcast, and thank you for listening. It’s a great time to be a CX leader, and we explore topics and themes to help leaders like you develop great programs and deliver amazing experiences for your customers. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. You call in to support and encounter an automated system. Despite your best efforts to speak clearly, the voice on the other end of the line just can’t understand you. Or how about when you finally reach someone and they need to transfer you to another agent? After waiting on hold for a while, the second agent finally answers the phone and asks you to explain the problem all over again. Yeah, it’s a particularly frustrating experience, and you’re not alone according to a recent study by RingCentral and Opinium Research. To help us unpack this new study and what it says about the possibilities of AI to help with these pain points is Jim Payne, director of product marketing at RingCentral, a provider of AI-first cloud based communication and collaboration solutions. Jim, welcome to The CX Leader Podcast.
Jim:00:01:55
Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Sara:00:01:57
Well to get us started on our conversation today. Jim, maybe you can give our listeners just a little bit of an introduction to both you and your role at RingCentral, maybe exactly what RingCentral does, and then we can jump into the findings of the study.
Jim:00:02:09
Absolutely. So like you said, director of product marketing, I’m very focused on customer experience, the Ring CX product. I’ve been working in and out of the customer experience industry for a very long time. I also feel very close to this. One of my first jobs in college was actually as a call center agent, which was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had in my life. So every time we build something, I think, oh my God, how nice would that have been to have, you know, back in the day? I mean, I’m sure we’ll talk more about that, but yeah, I’ve been working in artificial intelligence for the last five years, and then the last three specifically focused on practical applications for AI within the customer experience industry.
Sara:00:02:50
Awesome. Well, let’s dive into the report that you guys just recently published that is going to be talking about all things CX and AI, and particularly how that can, um, help improve experiences within customer support functions. What would you say are some of the most interesting top line findings of the report?
Jim:00:03:11
Yeah. One of the things that stood out to me right out of the gate, I mean, you’re talking about 6000 people, so this is pretty good statistical significance.
Sara:00:03:18
Yeah.
Jim:00:03:18
The 90, 97% of those people are frustrated by, you know, customer service. That that to me, and you could put me among their ranks. I’ve I’ve been very frustrated by customer service, even something I felt my skin crawling a little bit when you were even giving your intro, right. Uh, thinking about experiences I’ve had just maybe trying to return something, and I’m talking to a chat bot over and over, and it just keeps sending me to help center articles. And I say, yeah, all right, I know how that works. Like, you know, it’s basically just another search engine.
Sara:00:03:50
Right.
Jim:00:03:50
And then I finally get escalated to somebody, and now I have to give them all that context again,
Sara:00:03:56
Right.
Jim:00:03:56
You know, that I’ve just been arguing with a robot about which is which is really tough. So yeah, I would say I’m among among the ranks of those folks who find customer service frustrating. Um, and that even leads into the next point that I found most poignant was that 50% of those folks felt like automated systems did not understand what they were saying, or didn’t have the options they are needed. Uh, you know, that it’s being passed along to agents with long wait times, things like that. So, uh, there are a lot of missed opportunities there that I can see to actually enhance support, to make it better, things like that. And, and I mean, tell me, Sara, when was the last time you had a customer experience, you know, talking to customer support that just absolutely blew your hair back and you thought, wow, that was shockingly easy?
Sara:00:04:40
Yeah
Jim:00:04:40
Right?
Sara:00:04:40
It does. I would say it doesn’t happen often. However, to answer your question directly, I would say maybe last week, week or so ago, I had ordered, um, some dinner from a delivery service and part of my order was incorrect. And then, of course, the only attempt that you can have to get in touch with the restaurant is all through an automated, um, function. Where, and you never… I never had the opportunity to talk to an agent to get my specific complaint request. I did end up getting, you know, an offer applied to my account. Um, but there was despite multiple attempts, I was never even able to connect to a live person. So I do think that was an interesting thing that I wanted to dig in a little bit. Today is where is the right intersection between AI and automated solutions, and what can be provided to enhance the customer experience, and where is the right breaking point for when you need that human interaction and that empathy to come across? Because it does seem like there’s a bit of a balance and an art to it.
Jim:00:05:39
Yeah, and I mean, isn’t that amazing? Like, I bet every single person listening to this can tell stories till they’re blue in the face…
Sara:00:05:45
Right.
Jim:00:05:46
…about all the bad or the bad experiences that they’ve had when you have that one good one. That shouldn’t be the standout experience…
Sara:00:05:52
Right.
Jim:00:05:53
…in my opinion. But for me it is where if I, I still think about a time I had to change a flight through, uh, through through some third party travel thing, and I was like, I just need to change a flight, something got messed up and I was able to sort it all out through a chatbot in under a minute, because they were using artificial intelligence. They were using, it was all well connected. It was well, you know, the extensibility was very high. So all these things were talking to one another while their database, etc., etc.. And I just thought, whoa, like that was easier and faster than if I had called the airline directly or something like that. It was just so straightforward. It really, yeah, it really knocked my socks off.
Sara:00:06:30
Yeah.
Jim:00:06:30
I was very, very impressed by that. And artificial intelligence is uniquely qualified to to solve those things, which I, I really like. As long as you have the right strategy. Um, adding some artificial intelligence point solution isn’t necessarily effective just because it just sits there. If you’re not managing it properly, it’s just going to cause more confusion,
Sara:00:06:50
Right.
Jim:00:06:50
Things like that. It’s not it’s not some catch all for anything weird the way we might, you know, hope it would be.
Sara:00:06:56
Right. So thinking about the I do want to come back to that point as far as what’s it take to design the right strategy to make sure that it is successful? But maybe let’s dig in a little bit more to some of the results and the findings of the the report…
Jim:00:07:10
Sure.
Sara:00:07:10
…specifically. Where do you think the biggest pain points or the biggest opportunities for AI to come into these customer service situations and make improvements exist? Or is it too hard to apply that as a blanket system across, you know, general support? And is there any specificity depending on industry, channel served, etc.?
Jim:00:07:31
Yeah, I think one of the easiest points we view AI in three pillars basically: automation, assistance, and then insights or analytics, whatever you want to call it. Um, the easiest way is just to look for points of automation. Even if I’m at a conference speaking or what have you, we see a lot of folks who are just looking for some way to deflect common inquiries.
Sara:00:07:55
Yeah.
Jim:00:07:55
Right? Um, we see that all the time, and that’s that’s a noble thing to try and sort out, because even when I was an agent, we would get calls all the time with just easy, hey, what’s my bill? And it’s like, okay, let me go ahead and look this up for you, and I will send it to you when you could fairly simply just connect, uh, you know, some kind of AI solution to a database. If they ask that, it can just automatically push it to them after appropriate verification or what have you. Um, and that level of, of mundane task is not just a waste of time and money for, you know, expensive agents, things like that. But it’s also boring for agents…
Sara:00:08:31
Right.
Jim:00:08:31
…and then they wind up leaving, quitting because, like, it’s not fun. Like no one wants to sit there and just answer the same question over and over and over again, that kind of thing. So it can be very difficult in that sense.
Sara:00:08:43
Yeah, I think that’s an interesting revelation about where I can make the most sense for your lowest hanging fruit, or for the things that are maybe most common. And then save the, the, the more complex or the more potentially emotionally charged scenarios for a human to to deal with and for for them to be able to apply the appropriate levels of empathy and some of the different things that, you know, an AI solution is not going to be as easily able to achieve…
Jim:00:09:10
Yeah.
Sara:00:09:10
..or to potentially cause additional frustration for the client who and the customer who’s calling in.
Jim:00:09:15
Oh, absolutely. And that automation isn’t just for those customers, but the trickle down is really great because even when you get to an agent, I remember when I was an agent, we had scheduled QA days is what they were called, where your supervisor would just sit behind you and they would plug into your phone and just listen to your calls for, you know, an hour or what have you, which is problematic and a variety of ways.
Sara:00:09:34
Sure.
Jim:00:09:35
Right? Like there’s there’s bias there. Uh, your supervisor has to waste their time doing that, which is it’s just time consuming. You’re not going to be at your best as an agent. You’re going to sit there with somebody just listening over your shoulder and filling out manual…
Sara:00:09:47
Right.
Jim:00:09:47
…scorecards, things like that. It’s just not effective in any way. Um, and then we see other contact center supervisors who are listening to call recordings on their nights and weekends…
Sara:00:09:56
Yeah.
Jim:00:09:56
…you know, at three-X speed, just to try and, like, fill out these scorecards or whatever. Like that’s really annoying for them. It’s it’s a time suck. So we can automate that as well. And and give those give those nights and weekends back to supervisors and say, hey, do something else. Maybe, uh, you know, eat dinner with your kids…
Sara:00:10:14
Right.
Jim:00:10:14
…instead of listening to these call recordings, something like that, which is which is really nice or go have some fun and then they get a good report that’ll just say, hey, here are all the areas where you’re messing up now. You can make good decisions that are precise, that are comprehensive, even if you’re listening to like 5% of of calls, that you’re still miles away from statistical significance to actually understanding what’s going on inside your org. So automating that, automating those insights is very, very powerful.
Sara:00:10:39
Yeah, and to your point, it allows for a more focused opportunity area for the agent to be able to, uh, apply more broadly to every interaction that they have and hopefully make their job more enjoyable and help them to solve the customer’s problems a little bit more effectively and more quickly.
Jim:00:10:57
Yeah, absolutely.
Sara:00:10:58
You know, that’s funny when you reference the manager of the, uh, service center reviewing the agent’s calls. It made me think of the portion of the report, um, the category for things people would rather be doing than contacting customer service. And it’s, uh, that was asked of the respondents, of course, to the study who would be the actual customers calling in, but I guess it applies to potentially a manager reviewing those calls as well. But maybe for the the audience, what are some of the highlights of things people would rather be doing than calling into customer service?
Jim:00:11:31
Yeah, absolutely. And this was one of the funnier ones just because it, it it resonates…
Sara:00:11:36
Right.
Jim:00:11:36
…right? So I mean, one of the, one of the funnier ones. More than half would rather clean the bathroom than contact customer service? I, I might be a little special in that sense, I don’t mind cleaning the bathroom. Uh, so, you know, I would be on the other side, but yeah, I would definitely rather do it than than call customer service. That’s a surefire way, especially like an ISP or something like that. If you want to get me in a bad mood quickly, Sara, and that takes a lot…
Sara:00:11:59
Right.
Jim:00:11:59
…just go ahead and give me some Internet problems and I’ll go ahead and run diagnostics on on my router and modem. And then I’m going to call customer service knowing that it’s on the ISP side. And when that first person tells me to restart my router, I’m going to just immediately be in the red, right? No, no thought at all. Uh, another one. Yeah. 2/5 said they would rather go without internet for an hour, which is very funny. Um, or one fifth said they would rather deal with a vermin infestation in their home, like mice running around and that kind of thing, which I don’t know about all that
Sara:00:12:29
I don’t know…
Jim:00:12:30
Like I live…
Sara:00:12:30
Yeah, I, that might be the tipping point for me.
Jim:00:12:32
Well, you know, we deal with that every year. I live in Colorado, and as soon as it gets cold,
Sara:00:12:36
Oh, sure. Uh, that, the mice, the
Sara:00:12:38
Seasons change….
Jim:00:12:38
Mice, they find their way. Yeah, they find their way in. Uh, it’s it’s not fun. I think I would rather sit on the phone, uh, with customer service on that one, but, uh, it really does give you perspective on how much people dread these things. Uh, they dread calling into customer service. You need the right technology, something good that’s going to help them give you the right experience. If you have a chatbot, if you have an AI solution, it has to be fully integrated…
Sara:00:13:03
Yeah.
Jim:00:13:03
…into the experience, like across every channel, right? I don’t want people reaching out to me via SMS and then losing that context once it gets escalated, or in Facebook or Twitter, whatever channel they’re choosing. And that omnichannel experience becomes important too. I don’t know how we’ve changed or why we’ve changed, but I won’t pick up the phone to order a pizza.
Sara:00:13:23
Right?
Jim:00:13:24
You have to be kidding…
Sara:00:13:24
Right.
Jim:00:13:25
…me. Like, why would I do that when that was the only way we did it back in the day?
Sara:00:13:28
Yeah.
Jim:00:13:29
And now I’m like, oh God, I have to talk to somebody. Like, you need a good digital omnichannel experience that’s going to maintain that context from cradle to grave so that when I, when I hit an agent, they can just say, hi, Mr. Payne, nice to talk to you. I see you’re having a problem with XYZ and I’m going to go ahead and sort that out for you that like could you imagine hearing that? That would be amazing.
Sara:00:13:49
Right.
Jim:00:13:49
And if you don’t have the right technology, that experience is not possible for your customers. And that sucks.
Sara:00:13:56
Well, and it makes me think back to to the example that I opened with when you asked me, when is the last time I was really jazzed about a live customer service interaction and nothing comes to mind, but but the one that did was the one where I didn’t even. I wasn’t even given the option to talk to somebody because the automated solution was not solving my need. So I do think to your point about omnichannel, yes, you want it to be connected as far as the lengths will go to not have to necessarily connect with somebody, but to give and to make sure that that is still an option within the solution set to to ultimately still have the goal of solving the customer’s issue as the the top of mind task, I do think, seems to be an important balance that the space is going to have to figure out over time. You know, you can’t just apply a automated solution and think that that’s going to solve everything. Because, you know, I would argue as the customer in my situation, that while I was given an offer, it didn’t I, it didn’t feel like it was the resolution that I was seeking. Right?
Jim:00:14:57
Absolutely. And I think that that experience has even become like a trope in Hollywood and television.
Sara:00:15:03
Yeah.
Jim:00:15:03
Right? We see it in movies, people just frustrated, and they’re like, speak to a representative. And it’s like, oh, you want to ship this? And they’re like, go speak to a representative. You…
Sara:00:15:11
Right.
Jim:00:15:11
…know, just yelling into the phone. It’s it’s yeah, it’s become sort of a trope because people can relate to that and we all experience it all the time. Um, and it can be difficult. But yeah, having that option and something just readily available is nice. Um, it’s really nice.
Sara:00:15:38
So back to the report. What do you think as far as the insights? Um, obviously they are specific to AI and CX within the customer service function. Is there any broader application, potentially, that you think this research might have to a more general CX leader audience like our listener bases here today?
Jim:00:15:57
Yeah, absolutely. I think and gosh, this I’ve been working with CX leaders for so long, it’s hard to be sort of viewed as a cost center in a lot of ways. Um, but when we start applying artificial intelligence, we do see that, like even in the analytics, right? You see that revenue can have a big you know, the customer experience has a big impact on revenue. I mean, 57% of people in the study are unlikely to buy from a company again. Right.
Sara:00:16:26
Yeah.
Jim:00:16:26
So that’s a clear and immediate impact on revenue and revenue churn, which is which is an issue, um, people aren’t calling customer service to complain about customer service. They’re calling it to complain about company or an experience…
Sara:00:16:38
Yeah.
Jim:00:16:38
…or a product or something like that. Um, and then when you’re able to leverage the analytics on that side to say, okay, here’s what people are calling in about, here’s a way for us to correlate automatically. Maybe poor CSat scores, things like that with certain categories. You might find out, oh, even for example. Right. Hey, let’s say our CSat scores are not very good. And then we go back and look and we find out, oh, 80% of our bad CSat scores are just coming from billing inquiries. That may not actually be a customer service problem. It might be a business process…
Sara:00:17:10
Right.
Jim:00:17:10
…issue, something to that effect. And now all of a sudden, as opposed to just being this end point for an enraged consumer, you are now a strategic arm providing valuable business insights to say, hey, it looks like we have a problem with our billing systems because we’re getting a lot of bad CSat scores that are correlated with that. So we might want to take a look at that. Or it could be shipping or fulfillment or…
Sara:00:17:29
Right.
Jim:00:17:30
…what have you. And now all of a sudden CX is just… It’s it’s like the tip of the spear now instead of instead of something that is just this, this, I don’t know, this arm where people call when they’re mad,
Sara:00:17:43
Right.
Jim:00:17:43
Right, or something like that. So the actual cost of a bad customer experience, customer experience. Yeah, it sort of it sort of illuminates the need for good strategy and changing that mindset of a CX leader to say, hey, no, we’re not here just to talk to customers. We’re here to provide valuable business insights. We’re here to give them a good experience and to provide and contribute to growth and to mitigate revenue churn.
Sara:00:18:06
Right. And why stop at, you know, measuring ourselves against how quickly can we resolve the customer’s issue, but more, how quickly can we prevent the customer from even contacting us because of this issue, based on the insights that you’re able to glean and provide back to the business as as far as what the customer is looking for. Why, maybe they’re reaching out in the first place. So I think that makes a lot of sense.
Jim:00:18:29
Yeah.
Sara:00:18:30
Is there anything in addition to like on the analytics side of it? I know when we opened up the conversation, you had the analytics as one, um, pillar or avenue for the way AI is going to change this industry. Is there anything you can expand on maybe in that regard as far as, um, what we’re seeing on on the back end when it comes to what AI can do for the experiences that are happening within a customer service function?
Jim:00:18:56
Yeah, I think the analytics is some of the cooler, cooler stuff because there’s so much because the artificial intelligence can give you a comprehensive set and it’ll do all the correlation for you. That’s really important because I’ll give you an example. Right. Like what’s the take rate on even CSat scores for example. Do you ever hang out at the end of a call and sit there and do the manual survey? No.
Sara:00:19:20
And you might be…
Jim:00:19:20
You know, nobody does.
Sara:00:19:21
…very polarized one way or the other if you do. Right. Another consideration.
Jim:00:19:25
Precisely so. So you wind up having this sort of small subset of people. Maybe you’re getting 6% if you’re the best in the business and like 6% of people are actually responding to surveys, in all likelihood it’s more like 2 to 3% or sometimes lower. It’s always very biased, very skewed. So now you’re just taking this, this incomplete view of your customer experience and you’re trying to derive meaning from it and then apply that to improve it, to improve your company. And that is just… I mean, you might as well just guess and try to use your gut and, and do things like that because it’s just it’s a waste of time. I, we were talking about statistical significance a fair amount. And this I can give you that all of a sudden in a comprehensive way, without taking up anybody’s time to say, hey, here’s where our shortcomings are, here’s where they are not. Here are areas where we really need to improve. It might even be with a certain team that needs to improve…
Sara:00:20:20
Yeah.
Jim:00:20:21
…or a certain division or what have you. Uh, it really makes your decision making more precise and and more actionable. And I think AI is really only scratched the surface even to this day. There is so much left that can be done on the analytical side, um, of the house. I mean, you could do just about anything with it, with with sentiment analysis, you name it. Right? Um, then you can even start training itself, like, like the world is just going to change so much with artificial intelligence.
Sara:00:20:50
Yeah.
Jim:00:20:50
It feels bigger to me than even like e-commerce,
Sara:00:20:54
Right.
Jim:00:20:54
You know, because, I mean, when we were kids, if I couldn’t find something in a store, I had to call somebody, you know, like a manual order taker or whatever at a fulfillment center and give them information or like, fill out one of those postcards and, like, mail it in and e-commerce, I mean, it really just changed everything. I can’t it’s crazy that that was a world that I grew up in, and now this is going to change so much as well. Like it’s not going to replace anybody because we still need humans in the middle of this and there’s all this human touch stuff. But yeah, it just feels like such a big deal. And analytics is a big part of that.
Sara:00:21:25
Yeah. And it’s hard to. It really is hard to wrap your brain around all the potential ways in which this is going to integrate, not just within the CX industry, but our lives in general, for sure, can start to feel overwhelming. But I think it’s it’s most, um, opportune for us to think about the incremental ways that this can start adding and enhancing the experiences for our customers, and then it starts to make it, you know, less scary and more exciting, I guess, in terms of how we as an industry can, you know, drive forward. Ultimately, you know, why we get up and go to work every day, which is to improve and make people’s lives better by keeping the customer focus really at the heart of what organizations are choosing or choosing not to do as far as their their business. So I think maybe that’s a way to make it a little bit more, um, comfortable, I guess, uh, in some ways.
Jim:00:22:19
Absolutely. And it’s still whatever. It’s still new and daunting,
Sara:00:22:22
Right.
Jim:00:22:22
And I think but one of the biggest things that I encourage people to think about is just how it can give them a competitive advantage. Like, are there any companies out there, Sara, that are still doing manual order fulfillment over the phone?
Sara:00:22:34
No.
Jim:00:22:34
Like, no, they’re not, because any company who doubled down on that and said, you know what, this internet thing, it’ll be gone before you know it, like the snows of yesteryear, it’ll melt away and no one will care about the Internet anymore like they are obviously wrong. If that was their take. And now those companies don’t exist anymore. And I mean, you can go further and further back at all kinds of examples, even like bowling alleys back in the day, right before before machine pinsetters were invented.
Sara:00:22:59
Right. Somebody was putting them…
Jim:00:22:59
They had people at…
Sara:00:23:00
…out there.
Jim:00:23:00
…the other end.
Sara:00:23:01
Sure.
Jim:00:23:02
Yeah. Somebody had to go pick them up and put them back and like, there I haven’t been to a bowling alley with a person over there setting pins because they all went out of business if they didn’t adopt some level of automation.
Sara:00:23:11
Yeah.
Jim:00:23:11
So, I mean, there are million of examples of that. And AI is just the latest and newest one that can give you a real competitive advantage. So everyone needs to develop a level of comfort with it.
Sara:00:23:21
Yeah. And I think that’s an interesting point too, because we were talking earlier in our conversation about how AI can take the call volume that a agent manager would have to review and then provide those notes to that agent for an improvement opportunity. And so what would you what might you recommend to any customer service leaders who are out there, who maybe are working with a team of of agents and their agent workforce, is concerned about how AI is going to come in and potentially, you know, overhaul their their role within the organization. What can AI be doing to enhance the employee experience, the agent experience, to make it, you know, easier for them to serve their clients or what what advice might you have to those managers who are needing to take their their team through some of that change management?
Jim:00:24:09
Yeah, I one of the biggest things is they don’t have to do all the menial stuff anymore, right? Imagine a world like, how much would it cost, Sara, for you to have an intern who followed you around all day long and took notes for you and wrote them down and stuff like that? It cost a lot of money, but it would be pretty nice, right? They would, you know, like…
Sara:00:24:26
Haha. For me…
Jim:00:24:26
…they would take notes of your conversations…
Sara:00:24:27
Yeah.
Jim:00:24:28
…and put it. Yeah, it’d be nice for you. Right. But and this is like that and all of a sudden it’s a scalable, affordable solution to say, hey, it’s going to give you summaries of your calls. It’s going to take your notes for you to write it to your CRM, uh, you know, creating tickets for people so they don’t have to do all that manual stuff. It really unburdens them to, to with all the manual entry and things like that. It unburdens them in that way, which is nice. I would even say on the quality side too. I know when I was an agent, there were times that, you know, your supervisor says, hey, I didn’t like XYZ and I’m like, well, I like I feel like I was doing the right thing,
Sara:00:25:03
Yeah.
Jim:00:25:03
You know, and there’s some disagreement there. It can also remove some bias there and give really good clarity and just say, hey, like…
Sara:00:25:09
Objectivity.
Jim:00:25:09
…this is what happened. Like…
Sara:00:25:11
Yeah.
Jim:00:25:11
…and the objectivity. Yeah. Which, which is important. And it can even make your relationship with your supervisor a lot better, which is good too. And that that’s going to make the job easier too. Um, which is great. Um, so all of these things are it’s here to help. It’s not here to replace, um, some agents might even feel stressed and overwhelmed, like, oh my God, we have so many, so many people in the call queue. This is ridiculous. I’m trying to, like, keep up or whatever. It’s like, oh, now all of a sudden it becomes manageable. They get to think more creatively, deal with more strategic issues, like it’s it’s good all around. So I don’t yeah, I don’t want people to be afraid of it. I’m not afraid of it. Um, yeah. It’s it’s here to help. And I use it all day long to automate all kinds of things that I do.
Sara:00:25:49
Yep. And I think that there’s not many choices when it comes to getting on board with the fact that this is here and it’s changing, evolving quickly. And so leaning in, being curious, figuring out how it can make your your work life better, and ultimately how you serve your customers better is probably the best approach that any individual could take to, you know, adopting what the the evolution is going to be with AI in any case. Okay, Jim. Well, I think we’ve come to that point in the show where we ask all our guests for their take home value. If you could distill everything we’ve talked about today, the top points of the the report into what we call a take home value, the best tip or trick you could give to our CX leader listeners as far as AI and CX in the customer service space.
Jim:00:26:33
Yeah, absolutely. For me, it’s about not just thinking, hey, we need to add AI. It’s a thoughtful approach and thinking about extensibility. That’s that’s one of the biggest pieces for me, because if you just have AI point solutions cobbled on top of something or other, that it can create more problems. Um, so I’m a big proponent and advocate of taking a heavily integrated approach to the customer experience and saying, okay, here’s what we want our customer experience to look like, and then designing a solution around that. And that is going to lead you down the road to artificial intelligence regardless. Because like at the end of that road, that’s the best and most efficient way to do it. So take a thoughtful approach, layer AI technology on that allows agents to do their jobs better, make sure it’s highly extensible and across all channels, and that it’s designed and purpose built for that customer experience that you’re looking to curate. And life is going to be good up and down. And all of a sudden, your CX leader, you turn it to the company’s biggest hero.
Sara:00:27:37
Which is the goal.
Jim:00:27:39
That’s the goal.
Sara:00:27:39
Jim Payne is the director of product marketing at RingCentral. Jim, thanks again for being on The CX Leader Podcast. If any of our listeners want to get in touch to ask you about anything you shared as part of today’s conversation, what might be the best way for them to reach out?
Jim:00:27:54
They can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m very, very easy to find. Jim Payne. Uh, yeah. Find me there.
Sara:00:28:00
Great. Thank you Jim. And if you want to discuss this topic with one of the Walker experts, or have a great idea for a topic on a future episode, email us at podcast@walkerinfo.com. We’d love to hear from you! Be sure to rate The CX Leader Podcast through your podcast service and leave us a review. Your feedback will help us improve the show and deliver the best possible value to you, our listener. Check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com. From there, you can follow the show and find all of our previous episodes and a link to our blog, which we update regularly. The podcast is a production of Walker. We’re an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening and remember, it’s a great time to be a CX leader. We’ll see you next time.
Tags: AI customer support study Sara Walker Jim Payne RingCentral