Human-in-the-Loop: An Intersection of People and Technology

Businesses that balance technology’s power with humans’ finesse can react quickly to changing customer expectations, refine their CX initiatives, deliver on their operational plans, and stay ahead in the competitive market.

By Execs In The Know

Unprecedented efforts are underway to understand, develop, and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the customer and employee experience. With its dramatically increased adoption, customer experience (CX) leaders are banking on the rewards of enhanced interactions, increased efficiency, reduced costs, and improved experiences.

Despite rapid advances in automation, natural language processing, self-service, and other related technology, humans still play a vital role in effective AI implementation and optimization. Many AI applications need human involvement to have maximum impact. This concept, called human-in-the-loop (HITL), is a blend of supervised machine learning and active learning where humans develop, train, test, and tune an algorithm. This practice unites human and machine intelligence to create a continuous feedback loop that allows the algorithm to produce better results each time.¹

Ways Humans Can Superpower AI

HITL practices can be used to improve the effectiveness of AI in many fields, and the increasingly widespread adoption of this technology in the CX industry offers great examples of humans and machines working in concert. Using HITL protocols can improve AI applications across the entire customer journey, but the support journey may benefit the most from this practice. Enhancing CX and ensuring the effective resolution of customer inquiries and issues is job one, and with more organizations relying on AI to augment (or even replace some portion of) live support, HITL is a best practice for leading brands.

Adding HITL elements can increase satisfaction and resolution as chatbots become more prevalent. Many organizations use chatbots to handle common customer inquiries on their websites or messaging platforms. However, when a query becomes too complex for the chatbot to handle, the conversation can be escalated to a live customer service representative who can provide personalized assistance. Similarly, HITL can improve the critical continuous improvement process. Although automated systems can categorize and route customer complaints, human agents are often needed to investigate the root cause of the issue, coordinate with relevant departments for resolution, and follow up with the customer to ensure satisfaction.

HITL can also improve the success of contacts that start with self-service but reach a dead end. Customers often need more help answering their questions than popular self-service options like searchable frequently asked questions or knowledge bases offer. In these cases, providing the option to have a human agent deliver a satisfactory resolution is a great example of an HITL practice. The interaction starts with a machine and, based on the reason for contact, routes to the appropriate live agent to complete the transaction. This applies to handling complex issues; some contacts may require human intervention due to their complexity or sensitivity. Human agents are best equipped to offer empathetic support and personalized solutions to resolve these types of issues.

Machine-to-human escalation can also occur in real-time. Although automated systems can do a great job of categorizing and routing customer complaints, human agents are best suited to investigating root causes, following up with the customer to ensure resolution, and identifying ways to close process or training gaps to help reduce the likelihood of the problem recurring.

Back-office systems that rely on AI can also benefit from having a human in the loop. Many quality assurance teams use AI to monitor interactions and flag those needing additional attention. Human agents should review these interactions to ensure that the provided responses are accurate, helpful, and aligned with the organization’s customer service standards. They can also identify the best next steps to address gaps and flaws when an interaction that does not meet the standard occurs.

Sharing feedback is a popular trend among customers and can generate mounds of data, which AI can efficiently collect and analyze across various channels, including transcripts, surveys, social media, and other online feedback/comment channels. Once the data is mined and analyzed, humans can review the trends and create actionable responses to address concerns and improve process gaps. Humans can also easily see where they need to step in and directly respond to a customer to resolve an issue and recover from a problem. The support AI provides to this work increases employee productivity and operational efficiency.

Benefits to the Customer Experience

Although many customers may be satisfied with AI interactions, depending on preference, need, and contact type, keeping humans in the loop can benefit their experiences. In addition to escalation and complex issue resolution discussed above, HITL practices help keep the human touch and the customer at the forefront. Customers often enjoy a more empathetic, engaging, and memorable experience when the human touch guides the interaction.

Research shows that “emotional motivators are a better gauge of customers’ future value to a firm than any other metric, including brand awareness and customer satisfaction, and can be an important new source of growth and profitability.”² Providing empathy and understanding to frustrated or upset customers is critical to a positive outcome of the contact — soft skills a human can deliver effectively.

Most customers expect to have a relationship with brands they choose to do business with; the service experience is a critical phase of that relationship. As brands look for ways to deepen their relationship with their customers, HITL practices can greatly benefit. Machine interactions can help deliver fast and cost-effective customer service for certain contacts, but companies must be sure they offer the best channel to improve customer connection. It certainly pays to do so: fully connected customers are 52% more valuable, on average than those who are just highly satisfied.³ And great human-to-human interactions help deliver that important connection!

Keeping a human in the loop also enables personalization, increasing the connection and strengthening the customer-to-brand relationship. Human intervention in automated processes can lead to more personalized and tailored interactions; human agents can better understand and respond to individual customer needs than automated systems alone. Customers will benefit from more personal experiences that are targeted to their specific needs and circumstances.

Another customer benefit of keeping humans in the loop is the experience’s adaptability. Interactions with human agents are more adaptable to changing customer needs and situations, providing them with more flexible solutions than machine-only options. Although AI-powered experiences are advancing and becoming more dynamic, customers can still benefit from human-to-human interactions that deliver creative and unique solutions to meet changing needs. Human agents are better equipped to handle nuanced contacts that adapt to customer scenarios that evolve before and/or during the interaction.

Improvements in the Employee Experience

While keeping the HITL approach benefits customers by adding a human touch to interactions, providing empathy and understanding, and allowing adaptation to accommodate changing needs, employees can also reap benefits from this practice. First and foremost, HITL processes provide job security in an innovative and dynamic work environment. Automation often leads to concerns about job displacement, but HITL requires human judgment and expertise to be part of the system. Employees will understand that by design, they remain an essential part of the automated systems being used in the organization; they will see that AI is an enhancement to the business, not a replacement for them. This security will help increase their satisfaction and retention. With AI systems as a partner, employee performance likely will improve as well.

Similarly, employee engagement is another benefit of keeping humans involved in automation. Employee involvement in HITL processes can increase engagement as they see the direct impact of their contributions on system performance and outcomes. For example, offering employees a way to tune AI tools (such as a thumbs up/thumbs down feature) is a powerful way to involve them in improving system performance. Being involved in decision-making processes and having the ability to influence the success of automated systems can also empower employees and help them feel more valuable to the organization.

HITL should improve employees’ overall work environment by combining customer-facing benefits. Employees are likelier to feel engaged and satisfied when they have meaningful opportunities to contribute to the organization and the experiences they deliver. They can see the results of HITL in their own experiences and those that positively impact the customer experience.

Finally, employees participating in HITL tasks have the opportunity to develop new skills in data annotation, quality control, prompt engineering, change management, and AI development, to name a few. Since HITL often involves a mix of automated and human tasks, employees are offered a variety of dynamic experiences without monotony. This creates a diverse and dynamic environment in a positive way, enhancing employees’ professional growth and job satisfaction.

Considerations for Uniting Human and Machine

The deployment of AI and automated systems in contact centers is at an all-time high and is still growing. “These days, it’s almost an anomaly when a major brand or business doesn’t have chatbots on its website — which speaks to their success, at least anecdotally.”⁴ But the real power is in the unification of humans and machines. Keeping humans in the loop has major benefits for both customers and employees. In addition, ensuring that HILT practices are in place is important to automated systems’ effectiveness, fairness, and reliability.

CX leaders are working to strike a balance between cost-effective automation and live service that delivers empathetic and personalized experiences to strengthen the relationship between brands and customers. Arguably, nothing builds connection like human interaction, while AI enables teams to harness data to reveal valuable insights; together, the human and machine teams can ensure continuous improvement, operational efficiency, and enhanced experiences. Businesses that balance the power of technology with the finesse of humans can react quickly to changing customer expectations, refine their CX initiatives, deliver on their operational plans, and stay ahead in the competitive market.

Links:

1. https://www.telusinternational.com/glossary/human-in-the-loop
2. https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions
3. https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions
4.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2024/02/13/machine-learning-meets-customer-experience-how-ai-is-reshaping-cx/