No Humans Allowed: Finding the Balance Between AI and Human-Led Service
By Kristen Hayer
This week I had one of the worst customer experiences with one of the best products in its field, Starlink. Up until now I have been a huge fan of Starlink on our visits to Mexico. It has consistently worked great, providing solid bandwidth that I can count on for Zoom meetings in a relatively remote part of Baja.
Unfortunately, Starlink just changed its policies so we couldn’t continue to use their Roaming program for our place in Mexico. If we wanted to continue with Starlink, we had to set it up with a Mexican account and address. Sounds like no big deal, right? Wrong. Very wrong.
Long story short, what should have been a straightforward change involved 2 hours at a nearby bar with WIFI, a translation device, a (temporary) fake address because ours wasn’t “in their system” and quite a few salty curses that drew looks from nearby barstools. At one point I think I shouted, “I’m trying to give you money!” at my laptop. Ultimately, it was successful, but my opinion of Starlink soured in the process.
To get some value out of that unnecessary waste of time, I decided to share my thoughts on how going too far toward AI support can hurt your customer experience.
My Takeaways
1. Your customers are humans
Even when you sell to a business, your customers are the humans who work in that business. Humans have needs that aren’t always neat and tidy. We have language differences. Even in countries where there is a national language, you can’t assume that all your customers speak that language fluently enough for a business transaction. There is a variation in technical ability. For example, I can administer the hell out of a CRM system, but I don’t always understand technical terminology.
Additionally, humans have psychological needs. In my situation I was worried I wouldn’t be able to attend meetings the next day. I also wanted to know, for sure, that if I left the bar because it said my satellite was working that I wouldn’t have to drive back 30 minutes later to finish the job. If I’m being honest, I was kind of embarrassed that it took me 2 hours to fill out what should have been some basic forms.
If you want to rely on an AI-based support solution, you need to take these and other human factors into account.
2. AI is good, but not yet great
AI can do a lot of things. But it also still messes a lot of things up. For example, while I live in a more remote part of Mexico there is a large town 15 minutes away. I do have a street address. Yet, it couldn’t find our place on a map or in its “valid address” database. I had to choose a nearby address it did recognize, claim that as my own, and then swap it out later for the real one. I’m pretty certain that’s not what Starlink’s team was hoping for when they designed their UI.
I’ve also noticed that most front-line support relies on at least a first attempt at directing you toward an article or two. I admire the attempted cost savings, but the accuracy of these articles is usually pretty dismal. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say that in my own experience only about 10% of these recommended articles hit the mark. When I get the “Did this article answer your question?” survey, my answer is almost always, “No.”
AI can be trained and it is always improving, so I hope this gets better. However, it isn’t there yet.
3. If you lean into AI, you also need to lean into your UI
If you want to use AI as your primary support vehicle, you cannot let your customers suffer with a user interface that doesn’t cover all the bases. We first signed up for Starlink about 4 years ago when it was fairly new. They had a very streamlined UI, but they didn’t even offer their service in every part of the US at that point. They had a streamlined offering and their UI matched it. At the time that was fine.
Now, Starlink offers service all over the world, but their UI doesn’t match the complexity of doing business globally. Design assumptions like only using the national language of a country, only allowing phone numbers with that country’s prefix, and limiting payments that come from international sources don’t make the cut when you’re trying to be a global competitor.
It is important that your UI keeps up with your business realities. Without a solid UI, your AI support will never meet your customer’s needs.
AI is helpful, and I love seeing CS and Support organizations that leverage the best of it. While doing that we need to make sure we aren’t leaving our very human customers behind. This week I went from being a raving fan of Starlink to someone who sees it as a necessary evil for remote work. Don’t lose your advocates by losing sight of what makes a customer experience great!
The Success League is a global customer success training and consulting firm. We provide both CS Leadership and CSM training certifications, as well as a new coaching option for CS Professionals, CSM Edge. For more on these and our full suite of offerings, visit TheSuccessLeague.io.
Kristen Hayer - Kristen is the Founder & CEO of The Success League, a global, customer-focused consulting and training firm. Kristen’s background includes leading award-winning sales, marketing, and customer success teams in early and growth-stage tech companies. She is the host of several podcasts on CS and leadership, and has written over 100 articles on the field of customer success. The book she recently co-authored with 5 other CS thought leaders - The Customer Success Talent Playbook - recently hit #1 on Amazon in 5 categories. Kristen received her MBA from the University of Washington and splits her time between San Francisco and San Felipe, Mexico.