Human in the Loop

Many businesses in recent years have invested heavily in AI tools. While these businesses often see a speed boost in their processes when they prioritize automation without oversight, they ignore some big vulnerabilities that this opens them up to.

• Mistakes are more expensive at scale: While some organizations might not hesitate when they learn that a certain tool “only has a small rate of errors,” what they aren’t taking into account is scale. Sure, that error rate might seem trivial at first glance, but when that is being multiplied across thousands or even millions of interactions customers are having with automated tools, that “small portion” becomes a big number all on its own.
• Loss of customer trust: When humans don’t QA automated interactions, mistakes get made, and customers are bound to be frustrated. That customer frustration can cost future business, both through attrition and bad word-of-mouth.
• Nuance is lost: Automated tools are best when utilized for the most common problems. But not all customer inquiries will be about common problems. Nuanced situations that require more finesse can be severely mismanaged when AI tools have no oversight.

Without adequate human oversight, companies that over-rely on automation run the risk of costly mistakes, lowered customer satisfaction, and a damaged reputation.