AI’s lack of empathy as the top challenge facing customer support

Three years into the hype of AI, few practical use cases remain – even in the field where the technology has been historically viewed as most suited to operations. While chatbots have long been hailed as the future for customer services, a new study from Designit warns that the technology’s lack of empathy is having an adverse impact on customer support.

Since the public launch of ChatGPT, the excitement surrounding the “game-changing tool for businesses” of AI has reached feverish new levels. The reality has often failed to live up to that grand billing, though. An estimated 85% of AI-related business projects fail outright, while only 10% with succeed ever see a return on the investment.

The jury is still out on any one ‘killer app’, or solid use case – and while a fall in graduate employment is often cited as evidence that AI is already ‘replacing’ jobs, a sustained economic downturn looks increasingly like the reason most firms are actually scaling back their intake. Even so, studies have continuously suggested AI could play a key role in improving one particular area: customer care.

AI has increasingly been championed as the future of customer services work. At a time when consumer satisfaction is falling fast amid a sluggish economy, being able to more quickly serve consumers or forward issues to relevant departments via technologies, companies looking to make the most of their existing customers see AI as a huge opportunity.

The reality may be much less straight-forward than that, though. A new report from Designit – a Wipro-owned experience innovation company – has found that integrating AI agents with human talent, balancing “efficiency” with “empathy” to service customers is easier said than done.

Lack of empathy

While 32% of professionals across the design, creative and tech industries identified misrouted queries as the biggest obstacle to integrating humans and AI in a service scenario, slow human backup (8%), and inaccessible data (4%) were also cited. But a 56% majority of professionals said it was “AI with no empathy” that was really standing in the way.

With rising expectations for customer support that is both fast and empathetic, the importance of a human-centred approach to designing AI systems from the outset. An approach that doesn’t just rely on data and demographics – which can swiftly see AI delve into a deep reservoir of biases and bigotry.

Professional services have been touting this technology as the next big thing for years, however, so it might not be a surprise as to how Designit recommended solving the problem of unempathetic AI. More AI.

Anna Milani, senior service/experience designer and user researcher at Designit, commented, “Empathy is the missing link in AI-driven customer support, but the answer isn’t more data. It’s rethinking how AI is designed. AI designed to understand traditional personas is only useful for telling you who a customer is, not why they’re making decisions in the moment or how they might feel in a particular context. Designing with Mindset Archetypes goes beyond demographics, focusing on motivations, values, and the triggers that influence behaviour.”

Summarising something which critics would argue human agents can already do, without feeding further capital into AI’s black box, Milani added, “Two customers may look identical on paper, but have completely different priorities, emotional states, or decision-making patterns. By embedding this “mindset” thinking into AI systems from the outset, businesses can create experiences that adapt to shifting human needs, feel genuinely empathetic, build stronger trust and loyalty – and ultimately overcome this challenge of blending humans and AI in customer support.”