Do companies invest in technology to improve customer service, to reduce customer contact or to save costs? All three strategies were discussed during the presentation of the research results of the National Voice Monitor. In any case, the chatbot has an important role to play.

 

This research, to which the KSF joined as a partner for the first time, is a welcome addition and, as far as KSF director Roel Masselink is concerned, the results are (among other things) a guideline for the members of the KSF. Not only were more than 1000 Dutch consumers surveyed, expert interviews were also held with six organizations (ABN AMRO, Eneco, Municipality of Amsterdam, IKEA, Chamber of Commerce and Zilveren Kruis).

Phone is essential

Ziptone spent before attention to the research results of the National Voice Monitor, but a few outcomes are striking and were also discussed in the panel discussion. First of all, the telephone as a contact channel. Despite all the discussions about channel control (and the obligation to state a telephone number), this study also shows that the telephone is still a popular channel among all age groups. Robert Dijkhuis of the Municipality of Amsterdam was also quoted: Amsterdam has 180.000 low-literate people, who are not eager to use digital channels in their contact with the municipality.

Nevertheless, the researchers also see the use of technology and digitization of customer contact as an opportunity: you can use technology to solve translation problems, for example; conversational AI has enormously relieved energy company Eneco during the energy crisis of the past few months and IKEA managed to scale up considerably in (online) customer contact and e-commerce during the corona period, due to the closure of the stores.

Customer contact too expensive, chatbot quality too low

But the hot topic is and remains the chatbot. In the eyes of the consumer (at the moment), it can only answer simple questions. Or as the researchers put it: there is a big gap between feeling understood on the phone and feeling understood by the chatbot. In 50 percent of cases, follow-up contact (escalation to an employee) is necessary with digital voice assistants; that is 39 percent with the chatbot. Investing in improving that virtual employee is therefore unavoidable, while at the same time the costs per agent will rise. Because the other customer contact is becoming more complex and that requires more highly qualified personnel, or so it is generally argued.

Whether the sum of these leads to lower costs and/or better service remains to be seen. At the moment, many companies find the costs of customer contact too high – hence automation, outsourcing and offshoring – and consumers find the quality of the chatbot too low. The National Voice Monitor shows that the Dutch consumer places the malfunctioning chatbot in the top 3 annoyances of customer contact.

What is the performance of a chatbot?

The experts from the six interviewed organizations emphasize the importance of measuring customer-oriented KPIs such as CES, NPS or first time fix. The question is which customer contact organizations monitor the performance of their chatbots on KPIs other than NPS. become the abandon rate and first time fix of chatbots measured? And how does striving for a favorable CES compare to a long conversation with a chatbot that does not lead to a solution? How much repeat traffic does an underperforming chatbot generate?

The researchers of the National Voice Monitor therefore emphasize that implementing and developing a chatbot solution is a long-term investment. A working bot within two to three weeks, that is what some providers profile themselves with, but don't expect too much from that. Unless you explicitly choose one one trick pony, the researchers said.

No way back

Those who want to offer personalized services will have to work even harder to ensure that your chatbot can process more complex intents and has easy access to relevant customer data – including to verify who the customer is. Let alone that you can also do up- and cross-selling in addition to providing service. The researchers foresee: for those who start conversational, there is hardly any way back. The bot is getting smarter and therefore responding to more and more questions. Turning off the bot means calling the employment agency. Meanwhile, the recommendation (which is increasingly being heard in the industry) is: make sure your customer's expectations are managed. Make it clear to the customer: what can your bot help the customer with (and what not)?

Panel discussion: “human touch reserved for real agents”

At the end of the presentation there was a short panel discussion. Saskia Lensink (data scientist at TNO in the field of language and speech) is optimistic: she sees a lot of room and opportunities for improvement in chatbot technology. The question is whether we can achieve that, says Lensink. Consumers have high expectations of technology in customer contact, according to this Roel Masselink (KSF). “You only have one chance to make a first impression. If you lose the consumer now, you lose them for later.”

Also Florian Overkamp (Speakup) sees many opportunities for new technology, but at the same time states that the telephone as a contact channel remains fairly universal. In general, the use of voice over the telephone is decreasing somewhat, but it remains the same for customer contact: “Everyone has it. You don't have to think about it like with other channels: can I reach this company via WhatsApp?"

Despite all the limitations of the moment, ChatGPT gives the field a big boost, according to him Carla Verwijmeren (Y.digital). “Years ago, someone said during the expert interviews, it was predicted that telephony would no longer exist in five or ten years, but it is still a fundamental channel.” Verwijmeren does foresee that the channel will be used for more complex subjects or for questions involving emotion. Chatbots are not yet known for their ability to respond to emotions, says Verwijmeren.

The human touch remains (at least for the time being) reserved for humans, or so it seems during the panel discussion. Whether that is correct remains to be seen. Emotion detection technology has been around for a long time and ChatGPT is certainly capable of providing an scohesive and empathetic response to generate a question if you explicitly ask for it – and we are only at the beginning of conversational customer contact.

Chatbot: long-term investment

Then back to costs. Those who want to invest in chatbot technology must opt ​​for the long term: the costs come before the benefits, as was heard several times. More generally, there was opposition to the idea of ​​'the contact center as a cost centre'; where one says that the costs for service are simply incorporated into the product (which does not alter the fact that they can be reduced further), the other says that the contact center still has homework to show precisely that added value. Ultimately, adding value at the lowest possible cost must also be added – and the chatbot will definitely play a role in this. (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

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