Interview with Tom Cox, Founder and CEO of 15gifts
As Telco providers become more reliant on digital tools to engage customers, research by 15gifts found that a quarter of consumers are frustrated by chatbots’ inability to answer specific questions, and 20% have abandoned a purchase entirely due to chatbot failures. Tom Cox, CEO of 15gifts, explores how telcos can bridge the gap between current chatbot capabilities and customer expectations.
What specific chatbot limitations do consumers find most frustrating when shopping for telco services?
According to research by 15gifts, one-in-four (24%) consumers are frustrated by chatbots’ inability to answer specific questions effectively. And their limitations aren’t just slowing down or frustrating online buying experiences, they are often ending them altogether. One-in-five (20%) consumers admit that they’ve completely abandoned a purchase purely because of a chatbot’s limitations. Dissatisfaction is also being driven by an inability to emulate the tone of the user, length of time to respond to users and a tendency to send irrelevant material when responses are given. The issue is many chatbots today don’t have the sophisticated functionality to replicate the sales techniques used by human sales advisors in successful face-to-face interactions, leading to lost sales opportunities.
How often do consumers feel the need to switch to a live agent due to chatbot issues?
Our research found that the inability to have specific questions answered online is also the biggest reason why customers choose to speak to a live agent on the phone. This was reported by 28% of telcos in the UK themselves. Consumers also bypass chatbots altogether due to an inherent mistrust, with their preferred alternative likely to be an interaction with a live agent or a visit to a physical store. Customers know they can receive a better experience from talking to a human sales advisor because they can address concerns, such as price or product capabilities, and offer alternatives where needed.
Are there specific types of questions or issues that consumers feel chatbots consistently fail to address?
Consumers often discover that it’s when they need to find out a specific detail about a product that a chatbot falters, or when they seek support halfway through the buying journey without wanting to restart the process from scratch. Chatbots also often struggle to effectively direct customers to alternative products when the initial recommendation doesn’t fit their needs, leading to dead ends in the sales process. When a customer isn’t interested in a suggested product and they are not offered a personalised alternative, it results in frustration and potential drop-offs.
How are telco providers currently measuring the effectiveness of their chatbot support?
There are a number of ways that telcos can measure the effectiveness of their chatbot deployments, such as handling times, time to resolution and conversion rates. Some providers are looking towards their NPS scores to decipher if chatbots are having a positive impact, but the adverse is often true. Customers may turn from indifferent to active detractors when the chatbot experience is perceived to be falling short of expectations. With chatbots being an expensive outlay, (almost half (47%) are spending over £1million on them annually), telcos can’t afford to integrate solutions that have this type of negative impact.
Are there any particular customer demographics (e.g., age, location) that experience higher levels of frustration with chatbots?
While every age demographic struggles to have specific questions answered by chatbots, our data shows that consumers over the age of 55 (28%) are more likely to say that this is the case. The older demographic have had more experience of completing transactions via the phone or heading into stores to speak to an advisor and so are also more frustrated at the inability to access real-time support from a human (23%).
What are the biggest challenges in implementing advanced AI solutions to support customer interactions?
AI is currently being used by every telco surveyed to enhance the customer experience, but some of the biggest challenges in implementing AI-driven solutions effectively comes from consumer concerns. Our research shows that 33% of consumers believe that AI can’t replicate human expertise, it’s not monitored or corrected by human teams (33%), it’s not clear when they are talking with AI or a human (32%) and fears about unethical use (28%) and bias (19%). It’s clear that despite a commitment to bring in AI, these tools are still failing to incorporate the human element that consumers are looking for.
How do telcos plan to bridge the gap between current chatbot capabilities and customer expectations?
Rather than making potentially disruptive wholesale changes by replacing chatbot technology, sophisticated tools, such as virtual sales agents, can support them to handle the customer experience in the same way that a human salesperson would. So far, many telcos have invested in tools that bring consumers as far as the website, such as bid-based online advertising platforms (40%), SEO strategies (25%) and social media paid promotions (25%). However, they are falling at the last hurdle by not converting that traffic. There needs to be a focus on building a more sophisticated sales journey that helps customers build confidence in their digital purchasing experiences and proactively guides them to a sale.
Tom Cox
