AI is being touted as the path to efficiency in customer service. Efficiency saves money. Saving money means more profits. Good, right?
Well, perhaps not always—for the very simple reason that humans are not robots. If you want to perform a function that requires a few clicks, by all means use the robot. However, in some situations, the ever-more present robot can be detrimental to a brand because a robot, no matter how lifelike the voice can sound, is still not a person. There are things that robots are not (cannot?) be programmed to do, and that is to be fully human.
Instead of writing this, I was supposed to be at a family funeral in Texas. I am not. Weather delays and a flight cancellation and an inability to reroute the flight mean that I’ll be watching the service on a livestream. After three hours waiting at Laguardia, I was not angry—flight delays and problems are nothing new. I was resigned but determined to figure out if there was a solution that would have gotten me there in time. There was not. I won’t be able to hug family members, bid goodbye in person to a loved one, or laugh over memories. You know, the things that people do when they are together over an event like this.
That is not the point of this post. It was the aftermath of the cancellations that changed my perception of three companies, based on their customer service.
First the bad ones:
Both Hertz and Marriott have elaborate AI phone systems. It is virtually impossible to get through to a human being. Their functions are limited, and it is not possible to explore other options. For example, for a short time, it seemed like I might be able to fly into another airport, but neither company in their AI, or ultimately with a person, could examine what those options might be. I could cancel and make new reservations, which is certainly what would finally be the outcome, but I did not have the ability to assess what might be the best way to proceed. When I finally (finally) did reach a person, they were simply a human extension of the AI. They were not in the U.S., and they were not empowered by their technology to engage in nuance.
Contrast that with American Airlines. After a few clicks on my phone’s keypad, I reached Melody in customer service. I don’t know if it helps that I have a fairly high status on the airline, but Melody was amazing. She apologized for her allergies, which made her voice sound a bit raspy, and she went through as many permutations and potential solutions as she could find. Ultimately, none of them would have worked, but she stayed right there in trying to find a solution, acknowledged the gravity of the situation, and when we couldn’t resolve it, told me how sorry she was for my loss. I don’t think this took any longer than my battle with the bots at the other companies, but the result was entirely different. When Melody signed off, she said she was sorry for my loss, and I said I hoped her allergies improved. It was a human moment, and when you’re standing in an airport in the process of grieving and feeling disappointment, feeling heard by a person is invaluable. As a brand statement, it stresses that the customers are more important/as important as efficiency. Sadly, that’s a standout in today’s customer service world.
So, what does this have to do with toys and the toy industry? Well, I think that the customer service experience overall is a powerful brand statement—and builder. That is where your consumer interacts with you directly, and it surpasses any mission statement or branding exercise. In essence, on an individual basis, your brand is only as strong as where it touches the consumer. That’s in two places: your products and your one-on-one interactions.
Starting with Millennials and the rise of social media, consumers have changed their relationship to brands. Whereas in the post-World War II years and the rise of television and Mad Men style advertising, brands talked to consumers, in recent years, brand relationships have become a dialogue. Moreover, these technologies have allowed brands to become communities. Admittedly, they may not be huge, but people do share about their experiences, particularly negative ones, both for support and validation. It may be “death by a thousand cuts,” but I don’t know any brand manager currently worth their salt who doesn’t pay attention to online comments and reviews and has a team to respond to them.
I’ve recently been reviewing studies going back to about 2013 talking about online comments and reviews. While people post both praise and criticism, it seems negative comments get more traction. Perhaps it’s schadenfreude?
We’re not going to get away from AI in customer service, but it seems there are tactics that can make it more intuitive, from expanding the language models to multimodal integration, i.e.: allowing a consumer to upload a picture of a broken toy, and it will only become more important as AI becomes more sophisticated and consumers interact with it more.
At the end of the day, though, we are still humans buying things, being loyal to brands, and making choices of how we spend our money based on our interactions. When efficiency is the enemy of humanity, we have lost one of the things that makes a brand—our personal connection to it. Speech recognition is not the same as being heard, and word of mouth is still one of your most powerful promotional tools.
And even if you can’t control the conversation, at the very least, you need to be part of it.
