Is AI Enhancing Customer Support, or is Customer Support Enhancing AI?

This article answers the question: Does AI enhance customer support, or does customer support enhance AI?

Answer: AI enhances customer support when it handles routine tasks and empowers employees to focus on complex, high-value interactions, but when customers rely on humans to fix AI’s shortcomings, customer support ends up enhancing AI instead.

It used to be that technology enhanced customer experience. A customer would call for support, and if the company had up-to-date technology, the employee would have the customer’s history in front of them, be able to search for the answers to a customer’s questions, and more. Overall, customer support was a human-to-human experience enhanced by technology. 

Over the past few years, this has shifted. More companies offer self-service options that are driven by powerful AI-fueled solutions. These tools are great when they work. For many simple questions and issues, these do work. However, when an issue or question becomes complicated, a human still has to step in and provide guidance, support, good judgment, and even empathy that customers need and, in many cases, hope for. 

So, are we reaching a point where AI enhances customer support, or where customer support exists primarily to fill the gaps AI can’t handle?

Many organizations are trying to flip the model. Not that many years ago, employees used technology to deliver a better experience. Today, customers often start with technology and only reach an employee when it fails to help. My annual customer service research confirms this. More than half of U.S. consumers (53%) say they have received incorrect information from an AI self-service bot. 

Think about the times you’ve been stuck in an endless chatbot loop, repeating your issue over and over before finally reaching a live representative. When an employee or customer service agent joins the conversation, their first job is often not about solving the problem but instead solving the customer’s frustration that came as a result of the technology.  

That’s why the best companies aren’t using AI to replace customer support. Instead, AI acts as a filter, handling the routine questions, simple transactions, and repetitive tasks that slow down employees. When used correctly, AI frees up employees and customer service reps to focus on situations that, as already mentioned, require critical thinking, creative problem-solving, judgment and empathy. 

The danger comes when companies become so focused on automation that they forget the purpose of customer service. Customers don’t care whether their issue is resolved by a person, AI, or a combination of both, as long as it’s resolved quickly, easily and with low or no friction.  

When AI helps make that happen, it enhances customer service. When employees spend their time fixing problems that AI can’t solve, customer service ends up enhancing AI. 

The goal shouldn’t be to remove humans from customer support. As a matter of fact, the companies that have tried to do this have found that it doesn’t work. The goal should be to use technology to make humans more effective when customers need them most. The best customer experiences happen when technology enhances people, not when people are forced to compensate for technology.