Dive Brief:
- Humans may be the key to customers trusting AI: 4 in 5 consumers say they are willing to use AI-powered customer service when they know a path to a live representative is available, according to a survey of 3,000 consumers released by Five9 last month.
- The availability of human agents improves trust in AI even when it has no bearing on the technology’s efficacy. More than half of consumers — 55% — say they trust AI when offered a clear human contact option, compared to about one-quarter when no human option is available.
- The survey found that 41% of customers say they are less likely to use a company if they use AI for customer service, and that share rises to 53% if there isn’t an option to reach human-based support.
Dive Insight:
Consumers recognize that AI has the potential for improving customer experience, but they want clear disclosure and human agents available to serve as safeguards.
Customers are generally interested in how AI can improve speed and convenience rather than accuracy, according to Christopher Sladdin, senior director analyst at Gartner. The firm’s research has found that the top three factors that would make customers use AI over a human agent are 24/7 availability, the ability to save time, and the option to transition to a person if needed.
Distrust regarding accuracy was reflected in Five9’s study, where consumers reported some issues that AI can handle but shouldn’t without oversight.
For example, more than half of consumers say they believe AI is capable of looking up order and account statuses accurately, but just over one-third say it should handle this task alone — without human help, according to the survey.
Disclosure is key to winning customers’ trust, according to Sladdin. Gartner research found that about three-quarters of consumers want to know when they’re interacting with generative AI-produced content, but many customers aren’t aware.
This is a problem for businesses as well. Contact center decision-makers cited consumer consent and notification as one of their top three AI implementation challenges, according to Five9, which also surveyed 600 customer experience and contact center decision-makers. The only challenges that surpassed it were data security and privacy and reliability.
Disclosure and human support are both essential parts of an AI experience customers can trust, according to Sladdin.
“It doesn’t matter whether it is a chatbot, a virtual customer assistant, AI-generated summaries of customer reviews or AI-driven personalization,” Sladdin said in an email. “Every AI use case needs to be labeled, disclosed and explained, with opt-outs and ease of escalation or recourse, and always with the option for the customer to reach a human where they deem it to be necessary.”
