Building trust in AI customer communication

AI-powered automation is becoming a normal part of how organizations communicate with customers and stakeholders. But trust isn’t keeping pace with technology adoption.

That’s the problem at the center of Twilio’s report, “How to Scale Automation Without Losing Customer Confidence.” Their survey found that AI agents already handle about half of customer service interactions, and they expect that number to rise to 63 percent by 2027. But those numbers haven’t led to better experiences across the board. In fact, you can create negative results by applying automation to the wrong problems, as we’ll talk about in a moment.

Here’s the biggest takeaway I found in this research: Your clients aren’t automatically opposed to communicating with AI. Twilio found that many people are just fine with AI handling low-stakes, routine tasks such as scheduling appointments, processing returns, or making reservations. For simple tasks with clear rules that need to get done quickly, automation can be the best way to remove friction.

But this comfort level drops rapidly when the issue involves personal information, financial matters, or emotional or complicated situations. It’s probably not a surprise that survey respondents were less willing to trust AI with medical questions, payments, loan applications, billing problems, or anything that requires empathy and judgment.

And your clients want to know that you understand the boundaries they expect. Twilio’s research found that 63 percent of consumers want a quick way to escalate to a live person, and 78 percent have tried to bypass AI agents to reach a human.

These findings underscore a truth that many of us had already guessed: The organizations that have gotten negative results from using AI and other tools to automate communication are those who focused first and foremost on the new technology and how they could apply it, without thinking about the full scope of challenges and needs to be addressed.

The better approach is to begin with the problem you need solve now and what you want to achieve long-term by doing so, then determine the best tool for the job.

That’s our approach at Skeleton Key. We recognize that AI and automation are incredibly versatile and valuable, but that they aren’t the right approach for solving every problem.

Again, the most important question for you to answer as you improve communication and collaboration is not, “How can we use AI?” or “What steps can we automate?” Instead, your focus should be defining what success will look like for your team and the people you serve, then determining the right processes and systems to achieve those results.

Here are some of the questions you should be asking as you do so:

• Are our clients or employees losing time because the same questions, updates, reminders, or handoffs depend on
• Which parts of our customer experience should be automated, and which moments still need human judgment, empathy, or escalation?
• Are your current systems giving your team enough shared context to respond quickly and accurately, or is important customer information still scattered across tools, inboxes, spreadsheets, or disconnected workflows?

It all comes back to what your clients need the most when they reach out to you. A customer asking for a shipping update wants a quick, accurate answer. A client with questions about a charge wants clarity, context, and an easy path to a person who can help. A customer who starts in chat and later calls you doesn’t want to repeat the entire story. These are different problems that require different solutions and different technologies.

The technology matters, but the design matters more.

If your organization is exploring AI, automation, or Twilio for customized communications with clients or stakeholders, we would be glad to talk through these questions with you to find the approach that creates the most value. Book a call with us today using the form below.