Preserving the human touch in AI-powered CX

In both the US and UK, official customer satisfaction indices have been in decline for a number of years but according to Chip Bell, it isn’t all due to corporations delivering worse experiences. In fact, it is at least in part due to a continued rise in customer expectations.

In this interview with CX Network, Chip talks about using AI to build customer relationships, the impact of expectation transfer and his new book, Vacation Cereal.

CX Network: You have always had a close eye on the evolution of the human connections that make CX what it is, but the rise in the use of AI for CX is clearly changing the dynamic between customer and organization. How do you see the relationship between AI and customer engagement playing out?

Chip Bell: The ideal is that, for me, people who are leaders of customer experience or participants in the whole service process, do not forget that CX is about a relationship.

Too many times I think we get enamored with technology. We all like toys; I get on an airplane, and think where's my laptop? So, the challenge is not letting that dominate what we do in terms of maintaining a quality relationship with the customer.

Technology certainly provides great promise in terms of what CX can do. But we lose sight of the fact that fundamentally, what happens between a service provider and a service receiver is a relationship. And while there are mechanical sides of that relationship, like there are in all relationships, the core is how we maintain the emotion, how we maintain the human side that makes us uniquely human.

I never will forget a number of years ago, I was doing a keynote and my slides didn't work. They were not going to work at all, period, and I was supposed to speak for an hour.

That forced me to speak from the heart and the feedback I received at the end showed that people were moved by that.

It was a strong reminder to me of, let's not allow the technology take over what's fundamentally about our humanity. That's my biggest concern and my biggest hope: that we don't lose sight of that balance.

Technology, in terms of what we offer, is focusing now on lots and lots of things. For example, omnichannel, which is all about presence wherever the customer is, and we're looking at conversational commerce, which is all about how we can make the language of technology more palatable to the way humans genuinely talk.

We also look at all the benefits from enhanced data analysis that comes from technology and there are a ton of aspects that come from that, which I think are of merit to us, but only if we keep the right balance! That's my greatest hope.

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CX Network: The US and UK are both seeing continued declines in customer satisfaction, dating back to before 2020. What do you see as the driving factors for this decline and how would you describe the state of CX at present?

Chip Bell: I always ask, is customer service getting worse, or are the expectations of customers getting higher? The real answer is probably a combination of both.

I fly a lot and I see airlines as they worry about their margins and cutting costs, and sometimes the byproduct of that is a lower quality experience for the customer. But I know at the same time I can go on down the list of different kinds of industries that are facing obstacles because of tough margins.

For example, in the US right now, we’re talking about the cost of food and there's a tendency in our political environment to say it's the grocery store charging more to make more money, but a typical grocery store only makes one penny for every dollar consumers spend in-store.

The margins are not very good because we have seen a lot of consolidation among grocery chains, and it's easy to lambast the organization for gouging and that kind of thing, but we ultimately miss the bigger picture.

The other side to this is that we sometimes forget customer expectations are higher than they have ever been. And there is a reason for that: there was a time when we got poor service almost everywhere, but now organizations are figuring out ‘I can reap benefits by delivering really great CX’ and when customers experience that, it elevates their expectations for all service providers.

I like to say when I visit Disney they treat me like a long-lost cousin, and then I go the next day to visit a company and unfortunately, that company gets compared to Disney, whether that's fair or not.

There are service providers who, no matter who I deal with, are always glad to see you, they’re warm and they’re friendly. Then you go through a fast-food restaurant drive-in, you get the opposite and they get painted with the same brush.

Service is declining, but expectations are increasing and that's part of the reason it's a complex answer!

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CX Network: Returning to the relationship conversation, we see a lot of brands letting AI do the heavy lifting when it comes to customer relationships. What are the potential pitfalls of taking this approach and allowing AI to replace, rather than supplement human connection?

Chip Bell: It's all about remembering the role AI can play and the role it can't play.
We’re all excited about AI. I'm excited about what all it can do in terms of the ability to take away the routine kind of things. For example, AI can take over a lot of the basic roles a contact center operator traditionally has had to do freeing that operator to handle more complex tasks.

That’s all great and very important, and we need to enhance that capacity. But at the same time, we need to keep the quality of the human, as I said, in the middle of things and recognize that no matter how sophisticated AI may be, it can't feel, it can't emote, it can't anticipate in the way a human can, and it can't creatively problem solve in the way that humans can.

Recognizing those limitations is where we need people.

For me, I worry about putting in an AI solution when it is really a people solution that needs humans to solve it. When it doesn't, when AI is misused, misplaced, the customer sees it and feels it, etc. That’s the blessing and the curse!

I think AI now is handling probably 70 percent of most contact center contacts and, it has the ability to create the kind of data analysis, even voice analysis today that customers would say, ‘I like this, it seems to know me’.

But at the same time, there is a limit of things it can do and obviously, there's also an ethical consideration. Do I want AI to be involved in things that are fundamentally ethical and unethical? We're already seeing examples of that in our political process with fake ads, fake reviews, the kind of things where AI is being misused.

I worry about that and I think consumers are starting to worry about that too, quite a lot, which could play out very interestingly for organizations.

We have to be careful about managing AI with a sense of ethics, a sense of morality in terms of how it serves the consumer.

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CX Network: You have been a premier authority on CX for a long time; defining the concepts, writing the books. What would you say is the most interesting thing happening in experience management right now?

Chip Bell: I'm working on a new book, and I'm seeing examples that I've been able to use in some of the writing and training. The book is called Vacation Cereal and it’s a phrase my daughter-in-law uses to explain how when you go on vacation, you don't eat healthy stuff.

You don't have chores like you usually do, you get to sleep late, you get a lot of little cool things that are unique to vacation, but you know when the vacation's over and you get back into routine, it's all going to be different.

If you apply that to customers, you go, okay, what can we do to deliver “vacation cereal”? By that, I mean those little things that happen once in a while, not as a habit because you would go bankrupt if you kept doing them, but they provide that sense of compassion and warmth, and experiences for customers that go above and beyond.

I'm a frequent traveler with Marriott and when I check into a hotel, I always want a particular kind of floor and view and that kind of thing. During one trip the associate on reception checked me in and said, “I think you're going to like this room”.

I get to the room and it's a two-bedroom suite with a panoramic view, two bathrooms and a kitchen. It was a huge penthouse! I called reception and said, “This blows me away”. And the response was, “Well, we do that once in a while for customers like you.”

It was set up so I would know it was over the top, but it was also clearly set up as an exception.

When you take this concept of vacation cereal it can do some magical things in terms of the customer in the marketplace.

CX Network: Can AI help organizations to deliver the concept of vacation cereal?

Chip Bell: AI could be a resource to suggest tailor-made options to the service provider to surprise a customer. It could also provide boundaries and guidance, so vacation cereal remains an exception and does not risk becoming a customer expectation.

AI could keep a history of what lavish actions have been taken in the past with a particular customer, so such actions remain fresh and special. It could even play the role of coach and mentor to frontline associates in effective use of vacation cereal. 

Vacation Cereal is due out in 2025. Keep up to date via www.chipbell.com

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