Why you can never fully automate anything

When I heard Klarna's claims of automating 90% of their customer service, I laughed. Then they followed by announcing a layoff, it wasn’t funny anymore. Having worked in customer service, I agree, you can automate it. But you'll be disillusioned when you can't get past 40% of requests. 50% on some occasions.

By the time your customers use your AI customer service, you have already failed them. Customers usually come to you when they've exhausted all resources and/or are frustrated. So you are already at a disadvantage. They come to you because the item they ordered is late. Because they can't find the cancel subscription button and they are about to get charged for an extra month. They come because they don't like the item they ordered, or it looks nothing like what was advertised.

For that first 40% of issues, if you have a well tuned model can classify and resolve their issues. But the next 40% becomes challenging enough that there is no easy way for you to satisfy the customer.

A customer will write a message that you will classify as forgot-password, but they will keep on writing until the AI escalates it to a human. You'll see a message like this:

So I can't login on the website anymore. This is really annoying and unprofessional. I already wrote to you 4 times and you never fully fix the issue. I created 3 accounts already. The first one was on my laptop, and it works fine, but I like to order from my phone because it's easier for me. When I use my password it says it is locked? I know my password, it's the same one I used since I was in highschool. I have another account that I use when I'm at my sister's house , but that one has my old address with it but that's the one that has all my order history. Can you just fix it so I can log in again? Why can't you like combine the accounts since you already know it's me? What are you like, a billion dollar company? I don't think it's too much to ask to fix my account.

Somewhere in this request, we know that the customer: - wants to reset their password. - has multiple accounts - is frustrated

But how do you resolve it automatically? The email they used to send this message may be associated with one of the accounts, but there are 2 chances in 3 that it will be the wrong account. If the solution is to combine accounts, chances are you don't have an API in place to automatically combine accounts. And it will be really problematic to merge the wrong accounts.

When it is escalated, the human agent needs to have a long conversation to fully understand what the customer needs and if it is possible in the first place to help.

That's what the next 40% looks like. Even if your AI can classify it, you probably don't have the API integration to resolve it automatically. Now what about the last 20%? If the middle 40% tests your system, the remaining 20 will test your patience.

Here not only you won't be able to classify it? Human agents won't be able to help either. Customers will argue in bad faith, or they'll make unrealistic demands. A customer asked for a refund for socks they had worn for 2 years. A simple request that an automated agent can check against their order date and validate against the refund policy. But the persistent customer ended up escalating the issue until it gained visibility in the higher echelons of the company. He got new socks and a gift card.

Working with clients, sometimes I couldn’t help but think about Kobayashi Maru. You just have to accept that some problems don’t have a solution.

This is not limited to customer service. In my own experience when I was fired by our automated system, it was due to the unrealistic confidence the company placed on their automation. They assumed that everything always works as expected. They never thought about a scenario where they need to stop the system in its tracks.

Klarna has reversed its course on AI and is back at hiring people. They could have saved some time and remain idle.

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