Human Or Robot Better For Customer Service?

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In our various businesses, we get a lot of phone calls, and people tell us all the time, “I just wanted to call because I want to talk with an actual human being; I don’t want to talk to a machine,” well, is that actually true?

According to this article from The Hill, many people prefer robots over humans. Is that true? What do you think? Would you rather deal with an automated system or an actual human? What are the statistics? Let’s take a look at the details.

According to the article, the survey was watching people in a grocery store checkout area. As a customer approached the checkout area, they would scan the options and ultimately decide to wait in line for the self-checkout instead of walking up to the available human cashier. So they started doing surveys, and the response said that “I don’t want the human cashier looking at what I’m buying; I don’t care for their opinions of what I’m getting,” So, is interacting with a person directly more of a negative or positive experience?

Well, I think it depends on the environment. You may not really need the help of a cashier; you may not need to ask questions or get advice. Sometimes, but typically not. What about areas where you do need to ask questions? Maybe it’s professional advice from an attorney, an insurance agent, or another technical professional. Do you prefer to deal with real people or automated responses from emails or chatbots?

There seems to be a trend where a substantial amount of the public wants to deal with robots because they feel that humans are opinionated, and machines tend to leave the impression that they’re not, although they’re programmed by humans. Some of it is about minimizing time consumers; you may be able to go faster through an automated system. A lot of it has to do with not having to deal with the drama of talking to another person. 

What do you think? Do you prefer human interaction or a robot or chatbot type of interaction? Which is better?

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