As consumers search for the best price, product and service, the quality of customer experiences plays a significant role in long-term success. Companies with the best customer experience ratings outperformed their industry peers’ stock performance between 2019 and 2022 and doubled their lead over companies that provide poor customer experiences. While digital innovations promise to deliver rich experiences, in reality, 64% of consumers feel companies have lost touch with the human element of the customer experience. Can chatbots, automation and artificial intelligence solve customer service related issues? How do digital platforms contend with customers’ need for a human touch?

 In customer service, the human touch means treating people with respect, flexibility and empathy. Humans acting on emotions can get frustrated by the limitations of artificial intelligence. From baffled bots to automation absurdity, bad deployment of customer-facing technology can sabotage the overall customer experience and erode brand trust. 

Digital advocates want to demonstrate how automation, AI tools and data insights can feed into reliable service delivery, arguing that advanced tools have enabled seamless integration of front-end communications and optimisations to provide the means for fast, personalized services. However, customers value ultra-personalised responses to problem queries, expecting individual and personal interactions with service channels. Companies are faced with the challenge of combining the best attributes of human and automated interactions to retain their customers’ loyalty. 

This webinar hosted by the Financial Times, in partnership with Kin + Carta and Google Cloud, explored how companies are weighing up the benefits of both human and automated interactions to provide the best customer service. 

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