According to a recent Gartner Survey, only 8% of customers used a chatbot during their most recent customer service interaction. Adding to the survey’s surprising findings, only 25% of those who did use chatbots said they would use them again. In fact, B2B customers demonstrated the most mistrust of chatbots, with only 7% of participants saying they used chatbots.
This shows a startling about-face in attitudes towards chatbots despite, or perhaps because of, the fast-paced advancement of AI technology. The question is, have people actually stopped chatting with chatbots, and if so, is this the decline of AI in the CX sector?
Rapid Development
With 76% of organizations believing virtual customer assistants/chatbots will offer high-value capabilities to their company in the next two years, chatbots are seeing rapid development. However, companies need to recognize that customers don’t find chatbots effective and introduce ways to elevate their usefulness in their customer’s eyes.
Customer Uncertainty
A major contributor to chatbot mistrust is the variations of their purpose and ability to assist. This confuses customers who are uncertain when they should engage. These variations seem to create a disconnect between customers and technology, with hesitancy about the chatbot’s ability to resolve issues. For example, do customers use the chatbot to answer questions about a product? Can they trust the chatbot to help them manage returns or order cancellations?
This perception of varied chatbot capabilities reflects customer intent. For example, when it comes to returns and order cancellations, chatbots facilitate up to 58% of resolutions, while billing disputes are much lower at about 17%. Some of the higher resolution rates include:
- Orders/purchases: 52%
- Account information: 42%
- Payment/transactions: 40%
- Feedback: 38%
- Troubleshooting: 36%
Resolution percentages start to drop for situations such as account changes at 27%, order status at 26%, and complaints at 25%.
Business vs. Customer Attitudes
While businesses feel confident their chatbots can resolve a long list of issues, customers don’t share this view and prefer human interaction. Despite resolution rates, only 2% of customers trust chatbots to assist with a return or cancellation over allowing chatbots to resolve their billing disputes. This explains why chatbots are falling silent when they should be providing answers — customers are using them for issues bots are less likely to resolve successfully.
Utilizing Chatbot’s Full Potential
Companies need to overcome the disconnect between their chatbot’s capabilities and customer perception. It’s also essential to facilitate the most direct route to resolution, ensuring human interaction is addressed for the most complex issues, especially where empathy is required.
It’s up to the company to decide what issues should be resolved by humans and which ones can be managed effectively by chatbots. By educating customers on the usefulness of their chatbots, they can allow chatbots to do their job.
This is achievable through on-demand chatbots that tell customers what they can do for them. Also, using specific prompts that introduce a chatbot into the conversation ensures they only appear for issues they can handle. On-demand chatbots help educate customers so they understand when to engage with chatbots. It provides a clearly defined purpose for chatbots and demonstrates their usefulness in improving customer experiences.
Award-winning Anexa can help your team leverage AI while building your customer service team up for the perfect balance of human interactions and AI-efficient customer service. Want to learn more about the powers of AI? Reach out to Anexa BPO today.