How will a virtual agent respond to an emotional person?

With the rise of Artificial intelligence (AI) in the world, virtual agents may be the next additions to call centres.

The suggestion that virtual agents might be the next best thing comes after complaints that call centres struggle to offer personal customer experience.

But how will these virtual agents give a personal customer experience to an emotional person who just lost their luggage in a foreign country?

Ryan Falkenberg, CEO at Clevva says these virtual agents will have a combination of data and language processing models with adaptable personas to deliver a hyper-personalised response.  

Human-agent vs virtual agent

Falkenberg makes a compression between human and virtual agents. An example he uses is of a customer who just lost their luggage. When they call the call centre, they are first welcomed with different service options such as “press one for payments, two for sales, but not a specific option for lost luggage.

“When the customer finally gets to speak to a human agent, factors such as language ability, influence their experience.”

He mentions that even if the customer does not feel ‘chemistry’ with the human agent, they automatically give the agent a negative rating.

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He says virtual agents can be designed to give customers accurate information based on specific context clues, behavioural insights and historical or real-time data. “These virtual agents can also clarify, analyse or diagnose before offering a solution in line with rules and regulations.”

In addition, he believes these virtual agents will be different from the chatbot because people usually feel like their issues are not really getting resolved.

Virtual agents to give personalised experience

Falkenberg says virtual agents will allow customers to pick exactly what they need, from a choice of language, the flight number and where one boarded. “If any information is required, the virtual agent will ask for it before working with back-office systems to track it down. It could even trigger a workflow to get the luggage delivered to a requested address.”

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Through doing this, the virtual agent will take on a persona that best suits the passenger. They will be programmed to be able to adjust their voices, language, and tone to give customers a good experience. “This is important as people respond not just to the message but the messenger.”

Virtual agents will allow companies to cater to different types of people, in a way that feels natural and comfortable. “An example, if it was a customer interacting with a human agent, the student will interact with a persona that is more upbeat and humorous, while the pensioner might prefer a more empathetic response or slower explanation.”

Difference between chatbots and virtual agents

Falkenberg says chatbots were actually poor at personalising digital conversations, whereas this is at the core of virtual agents. “They can have rich, human-like conversations, specific to each person while remaining on process-bound guardrails”

When people are interacting with businesses and brands, they do not want to feel like they do not matter.

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“They want to know that the businesses they support know them and understand their needs. It is no longer enough to segment people into categories defined by age, gender and geographic location, brands need to build hyper-personalisation into every customer touch point – including the call centre.”

He adds that businesses would rather opt for virtual agents, not just because they’re cheaper, but because they allow them to finally nail hyper-personalisation at scale.