The post Agentic AI Is Elevating The Role Of Digital Avatars In Customer Service appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News
Agentic AI is a new form of artificial intelligence that’s making waves lately for its ability to act with increased autonomy, making decisions and taking actions on behalf of users with minimal supervision. And if there’s one scenario where it’s likely to have a real impact – soon – it has to be the customer service industry.
No matter if a customer is making a simple purchase inquiry or asking for something more complex, they have come to expect a timely and accurate response from the brands they’re dealing with. Simply put, customer service teams need to be able to deal with their customer’s problems and solve them amicably in the shortest time possible, and do it in a friendly way.
That’s why agentic AI has such incredible potential in this industry, as it’s able to step up and handle many aspects of the customer contact center, automating outcomes and relieving the burden on overstretched human workers.
Why Chatbots Don’t Cut It
Most contact centers already use some form of AI. Chatbots, for instance, are incredibly common, designed to handle simple customer inquiries and direct users to the most appropriate resources, or reroute more complex requests to human agents. According to one study by IDC, 41% of organizations already use AI chatbots for customer service, while 60% have implemented the technology in their IT help desks.
But these first-generation chatbots can only do so much, and they cannot replicate human interactions. And even though customers appreciate the speed and efficiency of chatbots, there are many situations where all they want is a human that understands them and is sympathetic to their needs.
Until recently, AI simply wasn’t capable of doing this, but agentic AI sets a new bar in what automated systems are capable of, paving the way for the creation of more realistic “AI avatars” that look and sound just like humans. The time has come where AI agents can engage with customers in such a lifelike way that it’s becoming difficult to tell them apart from real humans. They can even display what appears to be genuine empathy, which is precisely what’s needed to ensure satisfactory outcomes for any customer with a problem.
AI Avatars Drive Humanlike Interactions
If you don’t believe that AI can possibly be that realistic, take a look at what Antix has been doing lately. An innovative Web3 company, Antix is the creator of the Avagen platform, which anyone can use to create an AI avatar for any kind of scenario they can possibly envision.
Antix is not so much building AI avatars as “digital humans”, combining a powerful graphics engine with an array of advanced algorithms. It’s a powerful combination that enables the creation of ultra-lifelike digital humans that look and act just as real humans do, with the ability to show real emotions, be understanding and empathetic, and solve extremely complex problems.
Antix’s avatars use AI to understand the context of their interactions with real people, so they respond just as a human would do to almost anything they’re told. So if someone is in tears after losing their prized concert ticket, its AI avatars will be able to recognize this and respond in a more sympathetic way. It’s a far cry from the stale, robotic responses of old-world chatbots.
In addition, Antix employs the powerful Unreal Engine 5 graphics engine to ensure its AI avatars look incredibly realistic, which means they can even be deployed in video calls or on websites, creating even more lifelike experiences.
Increasingly, fewer people are able to tell that they’re engaging with an AI agent rather than a real human, and that has significant implications for the customer service industry.
A Complex Interplay Between AI and Humans
While some fearmongers raise concerns about AI taking away jobs from humans, the reality is expected to be more nuanced, and in customer service what we’ll most likely see is AI avatars working alongside their human counterparts, handling the more mundane aspects of customer interactions.
AI avatars will continue to assist with the more repetitive and time-consuming tasks in contact centers, such as handling the initial interactions with customers, answering common queries and managing simple transactions. The biggest difference is that it will be able to handle these tasks better than before, with more empathy and friendliness, increasing customer satisfaction.
As AI avatars become more knowledgeable, they’ll get better at understanding their own limits and when they need to make the handover to a real human agent. They’ll use techniques such as sentiment and voice analysis to recognize when a customer is becoming angry, frustrated or upset, allowing them to bring in a human before dissatisfaction sets in.
They’ll enable a smoother handover, too. Just as they can talk to customers, they’ll also be able to fill in their human colleagues by providing them with the case details and answering any follow-up questions the agent has, so he or she knows exactly what they’re dealing with and won’t need to trouble the caller by asking them to repeat everything. This will help to make customers feel as though they’ve been listened to and understood, and it will lead to quicker resolutions.
While AI avatars will certainly take on greater responsibility in customer service, it will be humans that continue to have the final say in matters that require empathy, nuanced decision-making and ethical considerations. For example, a human agent can be authorized to offer customers a much higher discount than AI avatars are allowed to offer. Of course, they’ll also be called upon to come up with more creative solutions when necessary, and understand the unique circumstances of each customer.
But even here, AI avatars will play a role, helping their human counterparts to think of these more creative solutions. AI has the ability to quickly look at and summarize all of the contextual data available, and consider other information about each customer, including their previous interactions and purchases. By considering all of this, AI can help humans to find the shortest path to a satisfactory resolution, making the experience better for everyone involved.
A Better Experience For Customers
AI avatars are coming to contact centers. It’s the beginning of a new era for customer service, where the boundaries between human and machine are increasingly blurred, and where they work much more collaboratively than before to achieve better outcomes than previously possible.
This unique interplay will help to boost the efficiency of customer service operations, enhancing the overall experience. In the future, human agents and AI avatars will both become indispensable in helping companies to ensure their customers are not only satisfied, but perhaps even pleasantly surprised by how easy it was.
