Contact Center Agents vs. ChatGPT

Human expertise will always reign supreme

The customer service industry requires a wide range of things for its sustainability. Even though ChatGPT is adept at many things from the list, it somehow lags what contact center agents bring to the table. There are many reasons why contact center agents will always be preferred over the exclusive use of ChatGPT, including:

• Empathy and understanding: When a customer is facing a problem, he/she will want to interact with someone empathetic and understanding of their predicament. Contact center agents are trained to be patient and polite while dealing with customers. No matter how adverse the situation is, an agent will respond to questions with utmost sincerity and continue to aid until the problem has been resolved.
• Practical experience: ChatGPT is a generative AI model that has been trained on huge chunks of data sets. ChatGPT can offer answers to questions and prompts that are already present in its knowledge repository. On the other hand, contact center agents are exposed to unique problem statements daily. This makes them adept at handling distinct buyer personas and answering customer requirements in their preferred style and composition.
• Personalization: Though ChatGPT is a beneficial tool, it cannot be customized to suit the needs of every customer out there. Humans are social creatures. They look forward to interacting with fellow humans for answers and solutions. Contact center agents have the experience of interacting with customers that have different natures and belong to distinct backgrounds. Hence, they can easily provide personalized solutions for every problem/request and interact with customers in a way that pleases them.
• Factually accurate: There is no denying that ChatGPT can respond to most kinds of prompts and questions, but it doesn’t guarantee 100% accuracy for each of its answers. OpenAI has trained ChatGPT on vast amounts of data from the internet written by humans up until September 2021, and the information available on the internet isn’t always accurate or completely true. Contact center agents work as a team with a mutual understanding that enables them to fact-check with each other and other credible sources of information during and before customer interactions.
• Strategic customer engagement: Humans are not as swift as AI-based chatbots with most taking baby steps to achieve something substantial. Contact center agents have the intellect and knowledge to understand the severity of a situation. Unlike trained bots, they do not resort to a cookie-cutter approach for all kinds of problems. Agents are capable of creating a holistic customer experience journey that ensures effective solutions with favorable outcomes and peace of mind for customers.

Contact center agents ensure the much-craved human touch

Embracing AI will help human agents to improve and succeed in several departments. But, relying on ChatGPT for every task concerning customer support leaves an opportunity for an experience that is embraced in empathy and understanding. While ChatGPT has many benefits that can help to reshape what CX looks like, a human plus digital experience will always be preferred – helping to build rapport and loyalty.