Will AI Re-Humanise Customer Experience?

On my journey to the office there are six sets of traffic lights. I know because I counted them this morning to include in this blog.

Before I mindfully counted each set today I would have struggled to tell you just how many traffic lights I have to pass through. It is not that I am ignoring them (I pride myself on being a safe motorcyclist) it is just that I have become so used to them that the traffic lights no longer register in my consciousness.

Some things in life, like traffic lights, are so ubiquitous that we barely notice their existence any longer. Not everything we become blind to has a positive impact on our lives however, and in becoming blind to their existence we become blind to the resulting negative consequences.

Take the humble form. The form plays a pervasive role in our lives and the lives of our customers. The form is dangerous. The form destroys Customer Experience (Cx).

I recall, as a young boy, visiting my local Post Office in the 1970s. Every wall and table top was adorned with forms. Forms to pay money into an account and forms to take money out. Forms to send a parcel, forms to apply for a passport, forms to tax a car. For any conversation you wished to have there was a printed form to capture the right information, in the right format. If you didn't know which form to use, there was a form to explain which form should be used for which action. The form of forms.

The Post Office was not alone in its obsession with the form. In the 1980s every organisation was run by forms. The growth of process re-engineering gave rise to process standardisation to drive efficiency and maximise consistency. Forms are powerful at driving process standardisation. The resulting plethora of paper forms created vast storage requirements, with many larger organisations needing specialist archiving centres with teams of expert people to file and manage.

Looking back it now seems archaic. Organisations subjected themselves to the crushing burdens of bureaucratic forms and failed to foresee how this would dehumanise the roles of their workers, stifle creativity and limit the organic adaptions that are needed to drive continuous improvement.

Thank goodness that we have evolved and improved. Haven't we?

The technology advances of the last thirty years have been dramatic, but before we congratulate ourselves on our emancipation from the limitations of the form we should take a closer look. Every website or App is merely a poorly disguised form in more modern clothing. 

In effect the Digital Revolution has allowed the form to break free from the confines of the Post Offices and workplaces of the past, and has entered right into the heart of every aspect of our modern lives.

Our acclaimed advances in Customer Centred Design have focused on making our forms more attractive, allowed them to present more effectively on a mobile phone, make use of moving graphics, include some pre-population and allow the data to be a little more interactive. Make no mistake however, the strict structure and standardisation of the form still underlies our every interaction.

So the form is endemic, is this an issue?

If we care about Cx then the answer here is a resounding yes.

Humans, by nature, are hardwired to have conversations with one another. It is one of the driving forces that has allowed us to succeed as a species. Take away the opportunity to converse together and the human psyche, physiology and spirit are broken. This is one of the reasons that solitary confinement is such a powerful deterrent in the hardened environment of prison.

Conversations, by their very nature, are imprecise and have a tendency to meander as both parties explore subjects, check understanding and uncover underlying and associated topics. Prima facie such chatting may seem inefficient but in fact this is a very human way of establishing a deep understanding of needs.

Put simply, most people need to explore the information they are given; ask questions, clarify meanings and discuss implications. Very few can read and immediately fully understand anything but the most basic concepts.

So, while a form may clearly present data and do a good job of standardising input, its inherent structure and simplification is a poor way of ensuring that we fully understand the needs of the customer and that the customer fully understands what we are offering in return.

Furthermore conversations may not be quite so inefficient as we first think. Humans have an amazing ability to communicate and process the spoken word with impressive speed. The average person can talk at around 150 words per minute and can understand up to 450 spoken words per minute; for comparison generally we can type at around 40 words per minute.

So the spoken word may, in practice, be a fast way of transferring and understanding data as it calls upon the more advanced of our natural human capabilities to communicate and comprehend.

By contrast the form dehumanises our interactions. This dehumanising effect fundamentally undermines Cx.

In becoming blind to the form we have become accustomed to its associated impairing effect on Cx. We have become experts at making the most of a form based Cx but we are limited by its underlying fixed linear structure and standardisation of input. 

When Karl Marx referenced the flowers with which we adorn the chains of our oppression, he could well have been referencing our prettying up of digital forms rather than the human pursuit of religion.

So if the form dehumanises Cx, offers a less effective way to ensure deep understanding and is an inefficient means communication; what can we do about it?

In an ideal world we may allow every customer the opportunity to speak with an expert Customer Services person. We would allow information to be shown to customers through a number of formats (spoken, tables, pictures, video, interactive images) letting them explore the information via the format that works best for them on a device that they have to hand, and to discuss their thoughts and insights as they go. 

We would meander through a journey with them, exploring their needs and questions, clarifying understanding and resolving problems along the way. All with a single aim, to ensure that the customer gets precisely what they need and benefit from a comprehensive understanding.

There are however a few blockers to offering this type of service.

• Our current technology (including the technology underlying Call Centres) demands highly structured linear data collection with standardised input. Today's technology simply cannot support meandering conversations and any ambiguity. 
• The scale, cost and operational complexity of servicing all customers with a human expert, who is able to spend as much time as is needed, is inherently prohibitive;
• Customers have come to expect instant access, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Providing expert human support on this basis adds unachievable complexity and cost.

So are we doomed to always be beholden to the form, should we just accept the inherent limitations to Cx?

In a word, no.

Developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon offer us an opportunity to break free of the form. The shift to Conversational AI promises a move away from simple linear, transactional customer journeys. The technology remains very much in its earliest form and there remain some substantial challenges to overcome, but we are beginning to glimpse a whole new paradigm in Cx.

A move to Conversational AI will allow our technology to support the meandering, messy journeys that closely mimic authentic human conversations. While complex to orchestrate these conversations will:

• gently and naturally explore any points of ambiguity or misunderstanding; 
• allow customers to explore multiple intentions in a single interaction; 
• will allow true multi-modal experiences, representing information in multiple-forms on a multitude of devices to each customer;
• where requests become too complex for an AI agent to deal with, or become emotionally charged, the conversation will be seamlessly handed over to an expert person.

A true human like conversation, with all the convenience and simplicity of a digital service but backed up by a person where needed.

How far away is this technology?

In my personal opinion we are within two years of this becoming a mainstream reality. Many of the constituent technologies now exist, albeit some in a very early form. The complexity relating to ambiguity in language and meandering multi-intention conversational experiences is slowly being overcome. The rate of learning around the orchestration of these conversations now increasing at a vastly increased pace as more and more organisations try these concepts at scale.

It is hard to imagine the impact of such a fundamental shift in technology and Cx. Having been entrapped for so many years by the form, the implications to our products, services and industries cannot be understated.

The change will bring with it substantial challenges. While the technology may seem like the primary blocker today, the fact is that the softer elements of how to design and manage non-linear AI conversational customer journeys presents a far greater challenge. For many it may be a challenge they have to meet at pace while trying to keep up with the disruption that this change will cause in their industry.

The form, for so many years unnoticed, is about to be screwed up and thrown away. When this happens the comfort of so much of how we operate today will fundamentally shift. Our customers will finally be freed to have the experience they deserve and will come to demand. The associated transformation challenge for organisations will be substantial.

As the lights shift from red-amber to green the race to adopt and adapt will begin.