What machines should and should not do.
WHAT AUTOMATION DOES WELL
Acknowledging receipt Routing by topic Gathering standard information Answering purely factual questions Reminding about stalled tickets
WHAT IT DOES BADLY
Anything requiring judgement Anything emotional Anything where being wrong is costly
WHAT AUTOMATED FIRST-LINE ANSWERS RISK
Confidently wrong information.
WHY THAT IS EXPENSIVE
A wrong answer delivered instantly is worse than a correct one delivered in an hour.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
Restrict automation to questions with unambiguous answers Always offer a route to a person Measure how often people escalate past it
WHAT A HIGH ESCALATION RATE MEANS
The automation is not helping.
WHAT TO NEVER DO
Hide the route to a person.
WHY
It produces anger that lands on whoever eventually answers.
WHAT TO AUTOMATE INTERNALLY
Suggesting relevant articles to the agent Surfacing account context Detecting duplicates
WHY INTERNAL AUTOMATION IS SAFER
A human checks it before it reaches the customer.
WHAT TO MEASURE
Whether automation reduced volume or merely delayed it.
WHAT TO REVIEW
Automated replies, periodically, for accuracy.
