Encyclopedia
Customer service automation
What customer service automation is, what can be automated, and how AI agents changed it.
Customer service automation is the use of software, increasingly AI agents, to handle customer service tasks such as answering questions, resolving requests and routing, without a human doing each one manually.
What can be automated
- Answering repetitive questions from a knowledge base.
- Looking up an order or booking status.
- Routing a request to the right team or person.
- Completing actions such as scheduling, capturing a lead or issuing a simple update.
How AI changed it
Earlier automation relied on rules, macros and menus that broke on anything unexpected. AI agents changed the ceiling: instead of matching to predefined rules, they understand free-form requests and resolve them end-to-end, escalating only the cases that genuinely need a person.
How it is measured
The core metrics are the self-resolve or deflection rate (the share handled without a human) and the cost per resolution, which is typically lower than a human-only setup at any non-trivial volume.
From reference to practice
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