Can humans hand over tasks to a machine without losing control? Yes! And in our fast-paced world, we need machines that make our work easier. There are already different areas where chatbots are used - and there are more and more. Of course, chatbots are not humans and therefore cannot answer all queries automatically. But in the right places, the division of labor with a chatbot works great. Here are 10 reasons why a hybrid approach between humans and chatbots is absolutely necessary.

  1. Increased customer satisfaction

Customers do not want to be left alone with their questions. They expect an answer from customer service as quickly as possible. Everyone knows this phenomenon and, as we know, customer-centric companies rule the world. In many companies, human employees handle all customer inquiries. Often, however, simple questions are asked that a chatbot could answer independently and immediately. The customers would thus be satisfied immediately. And the human employees have more time to process more complex inquiries and respond personally to the customers. A win-win situation.

  1. No success with chatbot alone

However, if the chatbot can only answer a small part of the incoming questions, this quickly leads to frustration among the users. Therefore, it is advisable to consider the chatbot not as a replacement, but as a supplement. When introducing a chatbot, it makes sense to start with a predefined area and cover it as best as possible. For example, if you use a chatbot for the recruiting area, you should start with questions about the internship and then expand this with questions about entry-level opportunities, applications and job offers. Any inquiries that the chatbot cannot answer should be immediately forwarded to human employees.

  1. Constant improvement of the chatbot

By collecting questions that could not be answered and the corresponding human answers, the chatbot can be further trained and expanded. This ensures that the chatbot only contains the questions and answers that are actually desired by its users. Irrelevant content is not even learned by the chatbot. As a best practice, it is recommended to cluster all queries and then gradually add the most frequent questions. This ensures that the chatbot is constantly improving.

  1. Intelligent distribution of requests

The chatbot can help prioritize the messages. If the tasks are too complex or too important, the human still steps in. In an online store, for example, the chatbot can answer questions from users whose shopping cart is empty or below a certain amount. Queries from customers with full shopping carts are then handled by a human.

  1. Insights about customers

By collecting all chat histories, exciting insights about the target group can be gained. With a chatbot, unlike websites and apps, all requests can be viewed in plain text. Therefore, it is possible to read out requests directly. Via a Sentiment analysis can be used to analyze the emotional state of the users and constantly track the brand's reputation.

  1. Support for the human being

Artificial intelligence can not only answer customer queries and thus save time, but also actively support employees in their work. Once a human handoff has been made, answers are suggested to the human agents and associated documents are made available. This relieves the employees and ensures a higher quality of answers. Furthermore, time-consuming tasks can be handed over to the bot. Let's imagine we have a customer service channel and an important step to identify the problem is to read out an error code. Once the readout is done via the chatbot, the conversation can be immediately returned to the human.

  1. Capturing conversations that get out of hand

Even if the users do not directly ask for a human handoff, human agents can take over a conversation if it gets out of hand. This can happen not only by monitoring the progress, but also when the user's emotional state shows a negative value.

  1. Uniform environment for man and machine

For the interaction between chatbot and agent, it is imperative that both parties operate in a unified system. This ensures a smooth process.

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  1. Analysis of the chatbot potential

You are still unsure whether a chatbot is suitable for a certain use case? Or how exactly the chatbot should be designed? With a human handover in combination with the Wizard of Oz method, the potential of the use case can already be analyzed after a short test phase. The chat is operated by a human, but for the user it looks as if he or she is writing with a chatbot. A wide variety of chatbot flows can be set up and tested against each other with this variant.

  1. Building a chatbot

The collected histories from step 9 can then be converted into a chatbot. This can be done manually but is very time-consuming. It would be better if the handover system would make suggestions for individual user intentions. The supreme discipline lies in tagging progressions that belong together by humans and then automatically transferring them to the chatbot. System integrations can be marked at the required points in the conversation and then integrated into the chatbot by an expert directly afterwards.

By the way, our Conversational AI platform BOTfriends X offers a handy Human Handover feature.