Customer service leaders face a conundrum.
Customer expectations are higher than ever, according to 82% of service professionals – and teams are under pressure to deliver hyper-personalised experiences at every touchpoint. Yet, reps spend less than half of their time with customers, because of an avalanche of admin and siloed systems.
This presents a false choice: drive ruthless tech-enhanced efficiency to cut costs at the risk of customer satisfaction, or invest in the empathy that builds loyalty.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. AI technologies mean leaders can scale their teams effectively; where human connection isn’t replaced, but made stronger.
So how can service leaders create the perfect balance of humans and AI, to deliver the empathy and efficiency that keeps customers and drives growth?
What are the biggest challenges for customer service teams?
Striking the right balance between automation and human support for customers is notoriously difficult. Customers expect your organisation to know what they want, and when they need it, with efficiency in high demand.
But at the same time, empathy is crucial to loyalty – and it can be hard to know when customers need the human touch.
Customer service teams are also facing talent challenges. There’s high attrition in the industry; 12% of service employees left their jobs over the past year, and the desire for better work-life balance and higher salaries are complicating rehiring.
Admin is placing a significant burden on teams, leaving only 46% of service reps’ time free to spend with customers. But at the same time, those customer interactions are often longer and more complex – requiring more effort, shorter breaks and greater potential for burnout.
Siloed data remains a significant challenge for service teams, who might struggle to access key information or lack context on customers’ previous interactions when they move channels. All of this can make it difficult to keep up with customers’ needs and deliver the added value needed from human interactions.
How to balance empathy and efficiency with agentic AI in customer service
Use customer journeys to guide where AI is used
Empathy and efficiency should go hand in hand for customer interactions. A lack of human feeling risks complaints, negative NPS and unhappy comments on social media.
But at the same time, any business that doesn’t adopt AI will fall behind to competitors – who can resolve issues more quickly and provide more personalised service.
It all depends on finding the right balance by using data. Build out customer journeys, exploring relevant case submissions and the most common causes for customer contact. Then explore how AI could best support with these issues.
Is it first contact resolution without a human? Or information gathering so that a customer service rep has enough insight to resolve issues when they reach them? Finding the right places for AI to support your teams is the best place to start.
Explore autonomous and assistive AI to supercharge your people
Autonomous and assistive AI have different roles to play. Autonomous AI can provide 24/7 digital support, responding to customers, providing information and even resolving issues. Multimodal AI – which can handle voice, text, chat and visual inputs – is creating even more opportunities for multichannel customer support.
Used in the right places, this can be hugely beneficial for customer satisfaction and efficiency – and of course, frees up people to focus on higher value issues where empathy and trust really matter.
But equally, autonomous AI can take tasks away from human colleagues in the background – whether that’s documentation that needs classifying, or admin to be completed after calls. In fact, 65% of teams with AI report more opportunities to focus on developing relationships with customers.
Assistive AI has an equally important role to play in helping humans deliver the best experience possible, without burning out. Colleagues can be equipped with tools that increase their efficiency, acting as a digital assistant to gather data and cross-reference information. All of this can not only improve customer outcomes, but support service reps’ morale – mitigating the risk of burnout.
Perfect your data foundations
Effective customer service depends directly on data, no matter how much AI is involved. Service leaders need a robust data strategy, delivering access to the right data, no matter the channel, with clear context on how and where to use it.
Work with your teams to map the systems and platforms they access, to understand which data is required to resolve issues. Rather than looking at the data in one go, you can begin with your key journeys and use cases, mapping data to them.
Security is also fundamental to protecting customer relationships – and 75% of IT security leaders believe AI-driven cyber threats will soon outpace traditional defenses. Ensure you have good governance for the ways data and AI are used.
Explore how Salesforce uses agentic AI to resolve 75% of visitor issues on the Help site.
The future of customer service
Balancing empathy and efficiency has always been central to high-performing customer service teams. At a time when demands on teams are high, agentic AI offers a way for leaders to scale their customer service while better supporting employees.
But it all depends on how and where agentic AI is introduced. Focusing on the customer journey, employee pain points and exactly when the human touch is most valuable are essential steps in creating customer service that’s efficient and empathetic.
Watch our latest Agents of Change video with Chris Bayley, CTO of Audley Travel, for more on balancing efficiency and empathy in customer service.
