Over the past ten years, the advancement in the customer support technology have taken much of the responsibility out of the agents’ hands. The tools which are utilizing the artificial intelligence, they help streamline the process so that the clients don’t always have to rely on agents to get answers for their questions. The biggest example is the chatbot. These tools have evolved from the simple automated response programs and are now able to use the predictive analysis regarding the customers needs to provide the dynamic solutions. So does that mean the customer support agents are coming to an end? It is not necessary always. However, there are several areas where a chatbot can cover all the bases for a support team and also allow them the live agents to focus on the other things. Here I am discussing about how chatbots are changing the live support agents.

Omnichannel Support

Actually, if a customer needs product assistance, they would simply call or support team. But now-a-days, customers can move between different channels simultaneously. As an example, if they start a chart conversation or they get a portion of information what they need, they could be directed to the knowledge base or live agent. It may sometimes happened in a messy situation. As many businesses can streamline an omnichannel experience with customizable customer support software, the process is totally seamless. The omnichannel also supports a more dynamic skill set.

A better Self-service Experience

B2B organizations are providing self-service support options that allow their client to find solutions of their own product questions. This is a very popular feature which many people expect from their companies. By accessing a knowledge base, clients can search for content related product issues and resolve them without the help of an agent. Chat-bots take this technology even further. By using artificial intelligence, a chat-bot can provide the direct links to the knowledge base content within the chat conversation.

Self-service Experience

Less Emphasis on Phone support

The biggest impact chatbots had on the customer support industry because they have reduced the need for the phone interactions. Eventually, the live agents won’t need to interact with the clients over the phone unless it is a major emergency. Also it does not mean that the support agents will be obsolete. In fact, when chatbots take the emphasis away from the phone support, they create the other opportunities for agents to expand their skills. Such impactful areas like video chat, social media support are still fairly new and require agents to work behind the scenes. Also, the chatbots will still need oversight by live humans to give the agents a new opportunity for learning.

chatbot emphasis

There are some limitations of live agents. They are

  • Accessibility

Human agents need to go home at night to sleep and prepare for the next day work. Human being are only available in working hours unless we employ a team to be on call around the clock. But in an emergency case, fewer customers still need assistance in the middle of the night. So chat-bots are not advantageous still in every aspects.But chat-bots don’t sleep. They can be deployed 24 hours a day and also 7 days in a week.

  • Slower Response Time for basic questions

Human agents can handle so many chats in same time. Although their responses are generally more thorough and relevant than those of the chat-bots, it sometimes may take longer time to answer their question. That means customers are waiting longer for a response.

Drawbacks of Chat-bots

Chat-bots are robotic

Sometimes it becomes frustrating to ask a question via live chat and get a robotic answer that misses the nuances of our issue. Humans have empathy and the ability to understand the complex variables in customer quarries which the chat-bots don’t have.

Difficulty in answering the complex questions

When a visitor asks a chat-bot a complex question that it can’t answer, it will more likely to ask for the visitor’s email address so that it can get back to them with an answer. That is because the chat-bot does not know how to answer that question.

 

Conclusion

So the answer is “no”  as the chat-bots can’t replace the live chat agents any time soon. But it is really difficult to predict the distant future.