How To Help Your Customers Trust AI

By Mads Fosselius CEO and cofounder of Dixa, the all-in-one, conversational customer service platform.

AI is taking the CX industry by storm, but many customers aren’t ready to trust it yet; a KPMG study found that 73% of people are worried about the potential risks. Customers are especially concerned about cybersecurity breaches along with loss of privacy, harmful uses of AI and AI serving inaccurate information.

How can you help your customers trust AI? By taking the same customer-centric approach as you would with any other aspect of CX.

Here are six ways to help your customers trust AI.

1. Be Transparent About AI Use

According to a 2023 Dentsu report, over 70% of customers say brands should disclose when they’re using AI. Tell customers how you’re using AI in your business. Are you training your chatbot to give more empathic answers? Gathering insights to improve your customers’ experiences? Be specific about what tasks AI is doing for you.

You can make announcements via email or on social. Add content to email signatures, web pages and chatbots to let your customers know when they’re interacting with AI. I also suggest being open about AI’s limitations and what you’re doing to mitigate them. Customers will appreciate your honesty and willingness to grow in public.

2. Ensure Data Privacy And Security

Customers are looking for reassurance that their data is safe when you use AI. Protect your customers’ data by building a robust security policy for your AI. For example, you can anonymize data or add random noise to prevent data from being linked to specific individuals or groups. Be clear about what data you’ll collect, how you’ll use it and who has access to it.

I also recommend auditing your AI data collection policy regularly. Check that you’re staying compliant with regulations, and look out for any potential issues. Tell your customers what you’re doing to keep their data safe. Be transparent and give them control by telling them how to opt out of data collection.

3. Build A Knowledge Base

AI plus a strong knowledge base is a powerful combination, allowing your AI to quickly find and return information. For agents, that means instant access to up-to-date customer data so they can offer faster and more accurate customer service. For customers, that means a chatbot that can answer their queries and point them in the right direction without the need to bounce from department to department.

However, stories of AI errors (called hallucinations) abound and can make customers antsy. No one wants to worry about whether a customer service AI chatbot is giving them the right information.

Reduce the risk of AI hallucinations by building an accurate knowledge base written and verified by humans. This will help your AI generate truthful, valuable answers for customers and agents alike. As it collects data about customer questions, you can continuously update and refine your knowledge base to further improve the information available to your AI.

4. Focus On Human-AI Collaboration

One of the biggest fears I hear when talking to agents or customers is that AI is here to steal human jobs. Agents naturally want to know that AI isn’t here to take away their paycheck. Your customers want to know you’re not the sort of company that’d use AI customer support to cut corners or avoid hiring human staff.

AI isn’t an enemy but a helpful assistant for agents. By finding, collecting and analyzing information quickly, AI can save agents time. A chatbot can answer repetitive questions, freeing up agents to deal with more complex issues. AI can also serve up canned responses that agents can edit rather than having to look up all of the information from scratch each time.

The Yale School of Management found that customers will choose a human over an algorithm 75% of the time. However, when the algorithm was renamed from simply “algorithm” to “machine learning algorithm,” they were willing to choose the algorithm 66% of the time. Showing that the AI was continuously learning helped customers feel more open toward using it.

You can leverage this effect in your business by encouraging your customers to become collaborators with your AI. Explain how your AI learns from interactions with them and how they’re teaching it to provide smoother customer service. Let your customers know you’re a company that puts people first and uses AI customer support to create better experiences all around.

5. Ask For Customer Feedback

No one knows your customers’ experiences with AI better than your customers, so ask them about it. When customers interact with an AI, such as AI customer support or personalized product recommendations, ask for their thoughts. Let them rate their AI interaction and tell you what could have made it better.

Don’t forget to let customers know what you’re doing with their feedback and what you’re changing as a result.

6. Educate Your Customers About AI

People fear what they don’t understand. AI is the current buzzword, and there’s a lot of conflicting information around it. In February 2023, Pew Research investigated public awareness of AI in everyday activities in the U.S. and found that only 30% of respondents had a high awareness of it.

It’s clear that more education is needed to help customers understand and trust AI so they become familiar with it. Harness the power of guides, tutorials and AI success stories to help them understand how you’re using it and why.

Tell your customers how AI positively impacts them. Does it help them get faster customer service? Can it help them analyze buying options? Are you using it to give your agents more complete information so they can handle queries more easily?

Building Trust Takes Time And Consistency

AI is here to stay, and you can stay ahead of the curve by baking trust and transparency into your process from the beginning. Be open with your customers and make them feel comfortable about the use of AI and how it enhances your customer service. Honest conversations now will help you build trust as you and your customers explore this new world of AI.

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