AI can answer the easy questions. What happens when the answer isn’t obvious?
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I recently made an online hotel reservation for my wife and me. The reservation was for two people, but the system didn’t ask for the second guest’s (my wife’s) name. Since my wife would be arriving before me, I wanted to add her name so she could check in.
What seemed like a simple request turned into a five-step process.
Unable to add her to the reservation myself, I turned to the chatbot on the hotel’s website. The solution was for me to talk to a live agent.
The agent said she couldn’t do it and told me to call the hotel directly. The hotel employee couldn’t make the change and told me to call reservations, even after I told her they told me to call her.
I called back, spoke with a different reservation agent, and was told, “I would be happy to do it.”
Problem solved!
I was fine with the chatbot not being able to help. At least it recognized its limitation and didn’t give me the wrong information. The friction came when the first live agent couldn’t handle what seemed like a simple request. Why could the second reservations agent easily do what the first one couldn’t?
Maybe it was training? Or maybe it was something else: Judgment.
Judgment Is the New Customer Service Skill
For years, customer service training has focused on teaching employees what they need to know and do. Learn the products, learn the systems, learn the policies, and learn how to properly answer customers’ questions and resolve their problems.
While those skills matter, technology (AI) can now handle many basic questions. AI can search a knowledge base, summarize the information and handle many routine questions.
So, what’s left for an employee? The harder stuff, which includes unusual requests, upset customers and problems that don’t align with the policy or standard operating procedure.
That’s why one of the important customer service skills of the future—right up there with empathy—is judgment.
Training for Judgment
I recently spoke with Rachel Orston, chief customer officer at Instructure, the most visited educational website in the world and the company behind the educational learning management platform Canvas. We were discussing how companies train customer-facing employees when she made an interesting comment:
She said, “I’m not even sure that we’re training the wrong skills. I’m not sure we’re training at all.”
Her point was that what many companies call training is actually information transfer. Employees watch a presentation, either online or in person, learn a process, take a quiz and start working with customers.
That type of information transfer works when teaching someone to find an answer, but it doesn’t teach them what to do when there isn’t an obvious answer.
You Can’t Learn Judgment from a PowerPoint Presentation
Judgment isn’t something you memorize. It’s developed. Often, employees bring judgment from their life and work experiences, but companies must help them learn how to apply it to their new jobs.
Judgment is developed from experience, practice, coaching and role-playing. Often there isn’t an obvious answer, which is where judgment comes in.
This is where AI creates an interesting challenge.
As companies automate routine customer issues, a chatbot or self-service solution can answer simple questions accurately and efficiently. That’s good for the customer and the company.
But Orston pointed out an unintended consequence. Those simpler interactions have traditionally helped new and less experienced employees ramp up their experience by answering basic questions and eventually becoming better prepared to answer harder ones.
But what happens when AI takes away that “ramp up” experience? Companies can’t automate the easy work and then expect inexperienced employees to magically know how to handle the difficult issues. If employees have fewer opportunities to develop judgment through real customer interactions, companies will have to become more intentional about how they train for it.
The Reasonable Department
Several months ago, I wrote about an idea from Bryan Stoller, global VP of customer care at United Airlines, who asked the question, “What’s the standard operating procedure for things that don’t have a standard operating procedure?”
His answer was the Reasonable Department the place where judgment, context and empathy come together to handle the difficult and non-routine stuff.
This concept is more important than ever. As AI handles more of the predictable interactions, humans will be asked to handle the unpredictable ones.
Train People to Think
None of this means technical training goes away. Employees still need to understand products, policies, technology and more. But, training can’t stop there. Employees must be trained to answer questions and solve problems when the answers and solutions aren’t so obvious.
Let them make decisions. Role-play unusual situations and talk about why one response might be better than another. Most importantly, give employees the authority to make reasonable decisions without immediately escalating to a manager.
For years, we’ve trained employees to know the answers. Now, we must also train them to know what to do when the answers aren’t obvious.
Final Words
Let’s go back to my simple request to add my wife’s name to a hotel reservation. Was this really an unusual, complicated or difficult request?
The chatbot couldn’t do it. The first customer service agent sent me somewhere else. The hotel employee couldn’t make the change. The second reservation agent said, “Happy to do it.”
I don’t know what was different about that final agent. Maybe she had better training and more authority. Maybe she had encountered the situation before. Or maybe she simply used good judgment.
This is the new opportunity and challenge for companies as AI handles more routine customer interactions. The people who remain on the front line won’t just need to know the policies, processes and answers. They’ll need to know what to do when those things aren’t enough.
That’s when judgment becomes a competitive advantage.
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