Dive Brief:
- Self-service and live chat are expected to overtake traditional channels, including phone and email, as the most important customer service and support technologies within two years, according to a Gartner survey of 265 customer service and support executives.
- Advanced voice-of-the-customer analytics, data management tools, knowledge management systems and agent assist solutions will also become increasingly important, according to the survey released last week. Nearly three-quarters of customer service organizations will implement agent assist solutions by the end of 2025, according to Gartner.
- “To stay ahead, customer service leaders must focus on leveraging enhanced analytics, optimizing knowledge management, and using agent assist techniques to enhance the assisted-service experience,” J.J. Moncus, principal of research in Gartner’s customer service and support practice, said in a prepared statement.
Dive Insight:
Customer service and support teams are rapidly adopting self-service portals, AI chatbots and other technology-enabled solutions to reduce staffing requirements and costs.
The promise of agent assist solutions is that they can help customer service professionals resolve complex cases more efficiently, according to Gartner. However, both customers and CX leaders are skeptical that AI agents will significantly expand and improve self-service.
Self-service can help customers quickly resolve common issues if businesses have the policies, tools and systems in place to ensure chatbots, FAQs and other solutions actually work. Knowledge management systems are “the backbone of robust self-service,” according to Gartner.
But self-service often doesn’t live up to its promises, with nearly one-third of customers saying self-service has not improved their customer service experience, according to a survey by Five9.
A 2024 Gartner survey found that self-service fully resolves just 14% of customer service issues. As a result, nearly 9 in 10 customer service journeys beginning in self-service are ultimately resolved through multiple channels, such as phone or email, according to Gartner.
Poor self-service options can frustrate customers and agents, leading to more calls, lower customer satisfaction, consumer distrust and higher costs.
Many businesses, however, are adopting AI-powered chatbots and other self-service solutions, even though they aren’t ready. For instance, more than one-quarter of CX leaders say their organization is ready to deploy agentic AI, even though they have no governance policy in place, according to a recent Genesys survey.
That could backfire and lead to consumer backlash. About 2 in 5 consumers would stop doing business with a company following just one bad customer service experience, according to the Five9 survey.
