Augmenting Customer Services with Chatbots
- Steph Locke
- Archive , Learning
- April 20, 2020
- Updated:
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Last week we kicked off our AIFightsBack series to help businesses understand how AI can be used to support a safe and productive business during COVD-19 and beyond. The slides and video are now available.
We started our series with a presentation from me focused on how chatbots can reduce the burden on customer service staff and improve customer satisfaction by removing long call centre wait times from their day.
Aimed at business people, the talk explains what bots are in and how they fit in with apps and digital assistants. I then move into key use cases and case studies, including the World Health Organisations COVD-19 bot. I live demo some bots, including a health care support bot, and you can actually give them a go over the next month (the page comes down on 16th May 2020).
Augmenting customer services with chatbots from Stephanie Locke
After use cases, I go into some of the technologies I recommend for bot development and how build a bot effectively.
Unfortunately, we had some bandwidth challenges (we'll be iterating to improve this) so the sound is a bit dicey on the video but you can now watch the talk on YouTube.
Chatbots are also an effective tool in the marketers toolbox. You can also check out our AI for marketers webinar from this series, covering other AI tools and capabilities that can change the game.
Get the full list of webinars to catch up on up on.
FAQs
What does augmenting mean in practice?
The word ‘augmenting’ in the context of chatbots and customer service is deliberate. Replacing human customer service with a chatbot is rarely the right goal — the goal is to handle the volume queries that do not require human judgement so that the human agents can focus on the complex, high-value interactions where their skills make the most difference.
In manufacturing, customer service queries often follow predictable patterns: order status, delivery timing, certificate availability, specification confirmation. These are queries where the answer exists in a system, the customer needs a quick response, and the cost of a human agent handling the query is disproportionate to the value it creates. A well-configured chatbot handles these queries accurately and instantly — freeing human agents for the queries where a conversation and some judgement are genuinely needed.
Why manufacturing customer service is a good chatbot use case?
Manufacturing customer service has several characteristics that make chatbot augmentation particularly effective. First, the query types are well-defined — customers are typically asking about specific orders, specific products, or specific documents, rather than open-ended questions. Second, the answers usually exist in operational systems (ERP, order management, certificate storage) that can be connected to the chatbot. Third, the volume of routine queries is high enough that the time savings from automation are significant.
The FAQ chatbot capabilities that GoSmarter offered as part of its early toolbox — and that have since been integrated into the broader platform — were built around exactly these characteristics. The technology has matured significantly since those early deployments, but the core value proposition remains the same: handle the routine queries automatically, and give the customer service team their time back.
About the Author
Co-founder & Head of Product
Steph Locke is Co-founder and Head of Product at GoSmarter AI — former Microsoft Data & AI MVP building practical tools to cut paperwork and automate compliance for metals manufacturers.
