Human workers are being trained on data from the interactions of AI and customers

Companies are beginning to train human staff based on the interactions of artificial intelligence agents and customers, further paving the way for the rise of AI-powered workforces.

Companies are beginning to train people on data collected from AI interacting with customers.

Artificial intelligence-powered ‘agents’ and their interactions with customers are now being used to train their human colleagues.

That’s according to Zendesk chief executive Tom Eggemeier, who helms one of the world’s most popular customer service platforms which counts Uber, Grill’d, Catapult, Freedom Furniture, LJ Hooker, REA Group, MYOB and The Iconic among its clients.

Mr Eggemeier said Zendesk had determined that there were some tasks that AI agents just did better.

“One of them generally is returns. AI agents do a better job with consumer returns than human agents,” he said.

AI agents are the next iteration of chatbots, digital workers that arrive with far more compute power than their older counterparts, allowing them to move beyond simple question and answer services. Many can write emails, enter and use software applications, file reports and book in meetings and appointments.

Zendesk had begun to undertake deep assessments of the interactions between AI agents and customers, a process it was now able to do after it acquired AI-powered quality assurance platform Klaus in February this year.

With the new insights it was now changing the way it trains human workers based on those interactions.

“Sometimes if an AI agent is doing a really good job on something, we take that knowledge and present it to the human agent,” Mr Eggemeier said.

The company was also working toward a future wherein AI agents would be present in customer service transactions, providing advice to the human customer service agent based on their read of the conversation.

The comments arrive as many companies have begun to dial down investment in customer service, leveraging AI-powered bots to deal with tedious requests and other customer service issues.

The investment arrives as many have found that Gen Z, the next generation of consumers and workers, don’t care for face-to-face or human-to-human interactions like their Millennial, Gen X and baby boomers counterparts, preferring to get their refund or return processed in as little time as possible.

“We’re seeing a trend with consumers, while there’s still a segment that want to talk to human, most generations, particularly younger generations, are really happy talking to an AI agent as long as they know it’s an AI agent – knowing that is really important,” Mr Eggemeier said.

Companies say Gen Z doesn’t care whether a customer service representative is human so long as they get their return.

Aussie Broadband was another company banking on the AI agent customer service trend, launching a challenger telco which undercuts its own services in exchange for less humans to speak to when something goes wrong.

Mr Eggemeier said the new trend was better for a number of companies who could now provide around the click service via AI bots that could, if not solve a customer’s issue entirely, at least begin the process.

The rise of AI agents and automation is set to disrupt retail jobs with as many as one in four roles expected to be replaced by AI and automation by 2027, if a report released late last year by US software company ServiceNow is to be believed.

While the trend is only just beginning to catch on, Mr Eggemeier believes as many as 80 per cent of complaints and customers inquiries will soon be automated.

Australian start-up SafetyCulture is another jumping on the AI worker trend, having employed its first AI agent named Bosh earlier this. Bosh is able to chase leads and help convert inquiries into customers.

For now, Mr Eggemeier said that human workers still had a clear role to play in customer service, and much of it related to empathy.

“When you have a customer that’s extremely upset, what we’re seeing right now is that human agents are better than AI agents at giving the right amount of empathy,” he said.

“AI will say the right thing but there’s a lot of time when you just want that human touch … consumers want empathy from a company.”

Originally published as Human workers are being trained on data from the interactions of AI and customers