Why Support with Real Humans Matters More than Ever in the AI Era
The irony is not lost on me. Quintessentially, we’re an automation company that makes its money by helping humans “outsource” their work to (ro)bots.
Instead of migrating your data manually between Mailchimp and Salesforce, our integration does that for you.
Instead of emailing your sales rep to tell him about a lead who clicked an important link in an email campaign, our integration takes it off your plate entirely — your sales colleague can see that in real time.
At SyncApps, we use a lot of automation (not just our own solutions) internally too.
But there’s one thing that we don’t want to outsource to robots. Ever.
Customer support. Why? Because it’s what fuels our development, our marketing, everything.
Also, we absolutely hate talking to robots, and we’d never subject our clients to that.
(Sorry, had to get that one off my chest.)
Who Likes AI Customer Support?
Riddle me this: when was the last time you were greeted by a robotic voice on a support call or by a chatbot and you said “oh, yay, it’s my lucky day! This is going to go so well!”.
Never?
Yeah, I figured.
Listen, no one likes support bots. They might get things right once in a hundred cases.
But more often than not, they annoy the customers, who end up screaming, “CONNECT ME TO A REAL HUMAN” — or writing it in all caps in a chat window.
I’ve been there, you’ve been there, your customers have been there.
So let me answer the question above:
Companies Who Want to Cut Costs Like AI-Powered Support
Let’s be honest here: an AI chatbot is more affordable than a human support rep. I won’t even get into the conversation about AI stealing jobs, this is not the time and place for it.
It’s economics 101: most companies are pressured to keep prices down in almost every industry. To do that, they have to cut costs.
Robo-support is the easiest way to do it.
To some extent, customers like it too, especially if you ask them: “would you rather deal with AI support or pay $10/month for human support?” Try asking this question if you’re into expletives, you’ll hear plenty of them.
I just realized this sounded extra harsh. I don’t have anything against AI or AI support.
My qualm is with businesses who claim they use AI support to “enhance the customer experience” or “speed up the process.”
Sure, bots answer faster but in most cases they get it wrong and the customer ends up wasting more time until they get the solution they were looking for.
Why We Still Have Human Support at SyncApps, 24/7
We use AI to power our integration suggestions. We also have a very comprehensive Help Center. If you’re a DIY-er, that’s where you want to start digging.
However, not everyone is a DIY-er. And we take great pride in empowering companies without an IT department with proper integration solutions.
If they don’t have an IT department or a resident tech wiz, we help them out.
We even have 100% free calls for trialers and subscribers, where we go beyond regular support and we advise them on how to leverage integration to increase their revenue, boost donations and meet their marketing goals.
Here’s a use case demo we just did around Mailchimp for Salesforce record removal process. See how our support walks through it to boost efficiency on the marketing side.
Since we’re a business and we, too, like revenue and profit, we don’t do all this just because we want to be outliers. We do it because:
- It’s important to us. Working in tech can be isolating, and we like the human contact.
- We learn about our subscribers’ issues before they turn into chronic pains. Sure, we could read the AI transcripts but then we wouldn’t get to ask them open questions, ask for their feedback in real time, and more.
- It’s how we build new features: during these human-to-human conversations, our subscribers suggest new features and improvements. 90% of the new features of SyncApps are suggested by our subscribers.
- It helps with our retention rate. People are less likely to leave a human-powered team behind than they are to leave bots. We forge real relationships with our subscribers, and because we care, they care.
Case in point: all the independent reviews on websites like G2 mention our stellar subscriber support. This tells us that we made the right choice.
We’ve Been Human-Centric Forever, We Won’t Stop Now
AiI chatbots were a thing long before ChatGPT ever appeared, so there’s nothing really new here since the “AI Revolution.” Just more companies who think they are cutting-edge because they can add AI to their capabilities.
I promise you we’re not old people yelling at the clouds. It’s precisely because we know technology so well that we also know when to avoid it.
By the way, have we ever spoken? If not, you can email us here or schedule a call with our team here.
Our humans would love to meet your humans.
