The poets, newspaper journalists, and novelists may be weeping into their embroidered hankies about generative AI (GenAI) being the death of original writing.
But contact center agents - whose performance is measured in the number of emails or tickets they reply to - are, no doubt, celebrating all the ways GenAI can make their jobs easier and their responses to customers better.
Of course, writing with AI comes with risks: the tool can give incorrect answers; overuse AI-typical words like “leverage;” and use a blandly positive tone that’s out of synch with the topic or simply grating.
For contact center agents, using GenAI is worth the risks. Answering customers’ emails all day can be like working on a factory assembly line; it just makes sense to use a tool that automates some of the challenging tasks of writing well.
Here are five ways to use (and benefit from) GenAI in writing.
1. Proofreading
A GenAI tool is better at proofreading than the tools many agents use now: Microsoft Editor or the spellcheck built into their CRM software. Editor is a cursed tool that frequently gives incorrect advice. (Editor told me I’d spelled “novelists” incorrectly when I spellchecked this article.)
The CRM’s built-in spellcheck will need customizing or it will flag product names and other brand wording as spelling errors. AI just makes proofreading easier.
Agents can prompt an AI tool to “List and fix the spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes in this draft email...” and the AI will provide a corrected version and a list of the changes it made.
MS Editor makes the writer figure out how to correct many of the errors it finds; AI tools just fix the errors. For contact center agents who must churn out email responses, AI is a better option.
2. Customizing responses based on email templates
To maintain efficiency and consistency, contact center agents use templates or macros to respond to customers. These prewritten “form letters” can be helpful aids, but agents must customize the templates to create worthwhile responses, ones that customers can trust.
Some templates include prompts for customizing, such as:
- “We’re sorry to learn you’re disappointed with the [insert product name] that you purchased on [date]...”
- “Thanks for contacting us. [Insert empathy statement.]”
But customizing something that’s already written can be a lot harder than it looks. While it’s relatively easy for agents to drop in a purchase date or a product name, weaving an expression of authentic empathy into a template or adding a correction of a customer’s misunderstanding requires substantial editing.
Agents must then be willing and able to add freetexted sentences into an already-written template. It’s hard work that has to be done quickly and separately.
GenAI can make it easier to prepare a customized response based on an email template. The agent would include the customer’s incoming email and the email template in the prompt. Yes, the prompt would be quite long, but most of the content would be copy-and-pasted.
Here’s how to prompt the AI:
“Using this email template [insert the email template here], write a response to this customer’s email [insert the customer’s email here].
Customize the email template by using details the customer has shared in their incoming email. Base your response on the email template, but do not use the template as-is.
Delete any information from the template that’s not relevant to the customer’s question and add customized information to make the response particular to the customer.
Use the customer’s details about what they purchased, what they want from our company, how they’re feeling, the questions or complaints about their purchase, or the type of help they’re looking for.”
3. Checking or changing the tones of responses
AI tools can help agents improve more than what they’re writing to customers; the tools can help agents adjust how they’re writing.
Shaping the tone of an email response can be a fiddly, time-consuming task, but GenAI can help with prompts like these:
“Revise this email response to give it a friendlier, more personal tone.
“Check the tone of this email response to ensure it is understanding without being conciliatory because we cannot agree to the customer’s request for a refund.
“Check the tone of this email to ensure it complies with our company’s Brand Voice and Tone Guidelines [link to Guidelines document] and edit the tone if it does not comply. List the changes you’ve made to the email.”
4. As a reading tool
Reading hundreds of incoming emails is difficult. Because customers are often asking the same questions or making the same complaints, their emails blend together.
The more emotional the customer, the more they write. Upset customers write long emails; figuring out what they’re asking for can be like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.
AI tools can digest detailed information quickly and prepare the agent to respond accurately and with less effort. Here’s how:
- Summarize a long email from a customer by listing the customer’s questions. Some customers write 10 paragraphs when one would be enough.
- Before replying to one of those 500-word email treatises, an agent could prompt GenAI to list the customer’s questions, both stated and implied.
- Summarize an emotional email from a customer by stripping out the feelings and creating a neutral version.
- An airline I worked with a few years ago received a 969-word email from a customer. He was heartbroken and furious because problems with his visa and other travel documents meant his international travel was disrupted, and he was temporarily detained at the airport mid-itinerary.
- He used emotional phrases like these:
- --I am extremely disappointed.
- --I have suffered your abuse of power.
- --I cannot express how frustrated I was.
- --I beg you for moral compensation for all the distress your staff created.
- --You have permanently broken my trust.
- The heightened emotion in the customer’s email made it harder for agents to understand what happened and what the airline could do to make things better.
- If GenAI had been available, the agent could have told the AI tool to create a summary of the customer’s email that focused on the facts of the complaint and stripped out the feelings.
Upset customers write long emails; figuring out what they’re asking for can be like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.
- Using the GenAI-created summary, the agent could have drafted a response that addressed the problems the airline traveler experienced. Specifically, the problems the airline could solve or compensate for.
- Then, the agent could have added expressions of empathy and sympathy that acknowledged the customer’s feelings.
5. For career advancement
Contact centers are the rare workplace where a person can start in an entry-level job (phone agent, paid hourly) and rise through the ranks to manager or director.
A star customer service agent becomes a QA specialist, then Team Lead, Training Manager, Workforce Manager, even Director. The contact center is a great place to grow!
However, many talented customer service agents have rough-around-the-edges writing skills. They usually begin their careers by talking to customers on the phone, so their speaking and listening skills are more important and noticeable than their writing skills.
GenAI can help, literally...but every person who uses GenAI is responsible for the product it creates.
Some agents have more product knowledge, emotional intelligence, and hustle than formal higher education. Their promotion to email, chat, or social media channels can expose weak or unpolished writing skills. This deficit can cause some agents’ career growth to stall.
Every career advancement in a contact center demands new and more sophisticated writing skills. When smart agents who want to climb the career ladder lack writing skills, they may never realize their ambitions.
GenAI can help, literally. When used as a proofreading tool, it can prevent the embarrassment that surface errors (like “alot”) cause.
When a former customer service agent-now-newly-promoted-Training Manager has to write an onboarding curriculum for the first time, GenAI can help. When a new Workforce Manager has to create a budget proposal, GenAI can edit the draft to make it more convincing.
It’s not “cheating” to use GenAI to write or even to fill in gaps in your writing skills, but every person who uses GenAI is responsible for the product it creates.
Whether the AI tool checked your writing for errors, drafted the entire document for you, or made it more interesting by shaping your tone, you - the writer - are responsible for ensuring the product meets the readers’ needs. When GenAI tools help smart people advance in the contact center, everyone wins.