This comes as no great surprise. Think about the last time you were in auto-attendant hell with no way to escape. It’s maddening. If you don’t give users the alternative to speak with real human you risk losing them as a customer.

By E&T editorial staff – The research from analytics leader SAS revealed that just 13 per cent of respondents would want to use digital-only options to interact with customer services. Automated tech which lacks intelligence can’t rival human interaction, respondents said, with three-quarters (74 per cent) expressing  frustration when they realise they are communicating with a robot.

Almost nine in 10 (88 per cent) said that speaking to a human is an essential part of the customer service experience, with 64 per cent of these mentioning that this is because they feel better understood when speaking to a human.

At the same time, customers also said that they would switch to another provider if they didn’t get a satisfactory response in five minutes or less. Additionally, the research also found that 75 per cent of customers would change provider if a competitor offered a faster service.

The results indicate that businesses need to make consumers feel like they are being understood by delivering quality experiences and outcomes quickly and efficiently. The current views reflect the fact than online services primarily consist of basic robotic process automation and unintelligent chatbots, rather than the fast, intelligent online experience that is possible with hyperautomation. In fact, less than a quarter (24 per cent) of organisations have currently implemented hyperautomation, which SAS defines as the simultaneous use of digital operating systems, workflow, robotic process automation and artificial intelligence – typically via the cloud – to deliver high-value autonomous processes through intelligent decisions. Read On: