In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss how much automated support systems can do, and how many humans you need.
Thousands of customers of online brokerage Robinhood have been hacked, and have watched helplessly as hackers sold their stock and emptied their accounts. Robinhood does not have anybody you can call.
We've been trying to automate customer service for a long time, and it has never worked completely. The real world is messy and requires human judgment. Customers will accept chatbots as the first line of support if they are honest about their limitations. But you need to offer an option to talk to a human.
If you have a significant volume of requests, do play with chatbots. But if you can't build a business case based on saving less than 10% in support manpower, you need to way for the technology to improve. Wait for the automated solution to take over a significant volume of requests before you reassign anybody from customer service. And you will still need humans. A lot of them.
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Beneficial Intelligence is a weekly podcast with stories and pragmatic advice for CIOs and other IT leaders. To get in touch, please contact me at sten@vesterli.com