How to design a CX that saves money and minimizes customer effort

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The past few years have been turbulent for business, and unfortunately the short-term economic outlook, with rumors of a recession turning into a near-constant tremor, looks murky at best. For CX managers, these precarious times usually mean two things: reducing costs and automating as much as possible. To these ends, doubling the number of chatbots and customer-facing automation solutions is certainly an enticing proposition, so it's no wonder the chatbot industry is set to grow to a $102 billion industry. by 2026, up from $17 billion in 2020.

Chatbots cannot outperform humans

However, the current generation of chatbots have an abysmal reputation among consumers and businesses that deploy them. And, of course, you still need to employ human agents in the most valuable customer service conversations. Therefore, the success of customer experience in this next chapter of our economy will not be determined by who automates the most via chatbots. It will be in their ability to best deploy a division of labor between bots and human agents that puts bots in the best position to succeed at lower cost, and humans in the best position to impact outcomes.

Here are three ways CX leaders can start doing it today.

1. When deploying bots, “value-based routing” is a must

The sad reality is that I see little to no attention to routing when it comes to chatbot deployments. There seems to be a "deviation at all costs" mentality where the first line of engagement is always a bot. As consumers, we've all experienced horrible results: no matter what your request is, you inevitably encounter a bot at first, and it's only after you've exhausted your patience and asked for a human that you are transferred to another channeler. (I hope it's human, but it's often a support email or FAQ.)

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CX managers need to take a much more thoughtful approach to routing by first understanding that not all requests need to be attempted by a bot first. The upfront planning to determine which types of interactions are best left to human agents will pay huge dividends in CSAT and NPS scores.

To maximize savings while maintaining or even improving the quality of customer service interactions, CX managers should implement a “value-based routing” system to deploy bots. This means that low value interactions will automatically route to bots, and high value interactions will automatically route to humans. Value is measured by the risk of revenue loss and the potential for revenue gain.

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