Do you know why AI sucks at customer support?  

Because it doesn’t have empathy.  The problem is that support is not entirely about solving problems. Customer support is service.  It is about making sure that your customers are happy.  It’s about taking angry customers and ensuring they feel heard and validated. It’s about taking upset customers and helping them feel better.

It’s a soft skill not a technical one. AI can’t do it.  

One day, customer service will involve AI that has some  empathy. But until that happens, we still need to take advantage of AI tools, and we still need empathy. 

How do we move forward as customer-centric organizations? 

First, your service organization needs to train your team to be empathetic.  Too many organizations fall into the trap of trying to close tickets quickly. The metrics and focus on are on speed, not quality.

This is a dangerous place to be because your customers will recognize that you’re rushing. They know when the metric is “time to close” rather than satisfaction. Your team needs to recognize and address big emotions like anger, confusion, and panic. This may prevent them from immediately sending a “how-to” video and closing the ticket.

Second, any AI tool that you can use to get answers more quickly, you should deploy.  Yes, this will be a barrier to empathy in some ways. At the end of the day, we still need to solve problems quickly.

AI can read a ticket and suggest a knowledge-base article, for example. This is great! The key is that you shouldn’t treat this as an interaction with the client. You still need someone, a human, to reach out urgently to make sure that the customer’s issue was properly understood and resolved. Ensure that your team is still providing a human voice for your customers.

Finally, account check-ins are invaluable and under-utilized. You need to have regular contact with your customers, especially your best customers. You need to have somebody reach out preemptively to see how your customers are doing. If you can do that in a conversation rather than email, that’s a huge advantage as well.

Most support organizations have check-ins at go-live and if there are significant problems. Check-ins should also happen on a regular basis. This is the best way to connect with most of your user base. 

Reaching out regularly is at its core customer-centric. It’s a proactive activity that requires your team’s time. The return on this time is a connected customer who hopefully feels that you’re a member of their team. 

If you lead a team dedicated to support, it’s critical to incorporate AI without sacrificing empathy. Train your team, use AI as a booster, not a replacement, and be proactive with check-ins. 

When we over-emphasize the value of efficiency, we sometimes miss the necessity of empathy. Fostering an empathy-first culture on your team make you stand out. AI tools are helpful, but only if they make it easier for your team to connect with customers.