“If you build it, he will come” is ranked as number 39 of the top 100 movie quotes. In the current rush to build and implement conversational ai agents, both developers and Customer Success executives should reflect on that quote and think about the assumptions that they are making. Will the customers really be willing to use these resources? Can they accurately describe what they want? Will the responses from the ai be understood? Will they be perceived as valuable, able to be implemented by the customers? In the end, will the promised deflection of service requests to ai agents be fully realized?
A Question of Willingness
Will customers really use them? Chatbots have been around for many years in different forms. Most people have had experience with IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technologies when calling companies for customer service. Not all of those experiences have been pleasant, and many are quick to start screaming REPRESENTATIVE! as soon as they realize what’s on the other end of the phone. Others are perfectly comfortable in conversations with agents such as ChatGPT, Amazon’s Alexa, or Apple’s Siri. There seems to be some demographics in play, with younger and more educated customers being more willing to use the resources. Are you giving your customers a reason to use your chatbot? (Offering no alternative is not an incentive!) Are the conversations interesting? Fun?
Asking the Right Questions
Being able to ask the right question requires that the customer first diagnose the problem to some degree. From many hundreds of hours on the Support hotline and in writing user manuals earlier in my career, I know that assuming people can accurately describe symptoms or identify issues is not a good beginning. Will the chatbots be smart enough to ask the right questions of the user? To effectively guide the conversation? In short, will the chatbot be reactive, or become proactive?
Do you know the questions that your customers are asking? Or that they *should be asking? Chatbots can be an incredible resource, but they are not an instant cure-all. There is a lot of research and design work to be done before you can reliably answer the question: “If we build it, will they come?”
Recommended Resources
For a complete list of conversational ai vendors, see:
https://www.customersuccessassociation.com/library/the-customer-success-ai-vendors-registry/
