By: Kate Shead - HR Executive at Telviva

The field of customer service is undergoing a profound transformation with the proliferation of communication channels, and as businesses increasingly adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in an effort to provide immediate service. Even as technology is infused into more areas of the business, humans will still have a crucial role to play. However, this will likely require new skills for service agents, and organisations will have to invest in training to deliver exceptional customer experience (CX).

We are seeing the growing capability of technology altering the role of human service agents. With AI and automation now handling mundane, repetitive and transactional tasks, agents are freed up to focus on resolving issues that require a more human-centric approach. For consumers, this means that they have access to customer service that is digital when they want it, but human when they need it.

Successfully combining technology and human capability to turn an organisation into a customer-centric one requires buy-in for the change from across all levels. Agents also need to be empowered to understand what they are doing and why it is important. This requires not only an understanding of how the transformation affects the company’s people, processes and its customers, but also the adoption of a culture where the business is continually striving for improvement.

Ultimately, it is about embarking on a journey of discovery to identify the best way in which to empower employees to deliver exceptional service.

Technical skills & EQ development are key

From the outset, the proliferation of communication channels means that agents require upskilling to become ‘orchestrators’. This involves mastering the use of these tools, managing transitions and ensuring consistency between channels, and managing the handoff between automation and humans, and vice versa. When agents have context from across channels, it allows them to have better quality, personalised conversations with customers.

The adoption of AI and automation means agents will be doing fewer routine and mundane tasks for the customer. Technology, including intelligent chatbots and self-service FAQs, is highly capable of addressing these basic issues, essentially becoming the first line of support, and this places new demands on human agents. Since automation handles basic queries, customer service agents must undergo further training to become more knowledgeable regarding the products or solutions they support or sell.

This requires investing in technical skills and establishing a knowledge base that is shared across the organisation. Agents need to be trained on how to troubleshoot, how to understand a problem, and how to apply the best solution. Furthermore, as automation handles more transactional interactions, human agents are likely to deal more regularly with complex issues and have interactions with distressed customers.

Solving these challenges requires more than merely reading out scripted responses; it necessitates applying judgment and responding with empathy. As such, emotional quotient (EQ) development also becomes crucial, and this involves equipping agents to be able to listen to the customer, understand the customer, diffuse highly emotional situations and solve problems as quickly as possible.

Driving CX success through the human experience

When reviewing their investments in employee development, there are numerous metrics that can be looked at, including better resolution times, increased self-service adoption, increased customer loyalty, increased sales, reduced headcount turnover, increased employee satisfaction and/or engagement, and even broadly used marketing metrics such as Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and Employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS).

As this human-machine collaboration becomes the norm, employee retention is even more crucial.  Given the increased investment in skills development and the value of exceptional, personalised CX having a stable and sustained workforce will be invaluable. 

Numerous research studies indicate that happy and engaged employees are more likely to create happy and loyal customers. Loyal customers, in turn, are more likely to recommend the brand to others. Both employees and customers thrive in an environment that is safe, supportive, and caring.

As technology makes customer service more accessible and efficient, the human experience will remain at the centre of it all, and this is unlikely to change. Automation might be here to stay, but so are the people. By investing in the technical and emotional skills of their agents, business leaders can ensure that the human element drives brand loyalty by consistently solving the most complex challenges.