What this episode is about
Anne-Marie Vissers answers the question she hears most often: does she support AI and chatbots in customer service? Her answer is yes, with one important condition. The goal you set for AI determines whether it helps or hurts your customer experience.
The question you need to ask first
Before deploying any chatbot or AI tool, Anne-Marie identifies the single most important question every business must answer:
- Are you using AI to reduce workload and save staffing costs?
- Or are you using AI to actively improve the customer experience?
Both are legitimate goals. But they require different setups, different boundaries, and different success metrics. Confusing the two is where things go wrong.
When chatbots work well
Chatbots handle simple, repetitive questions effectively. Where do I track my package? Is this item in stock? Answering these at scale frees up customer service teams for more complex conversations. Anne-Marie supports this use case fully, as long as customers can escalate to a human when the question gets more specific.
When chatbots create the opposite effect
Anne-Marie shares a recent personal example: she contacted her bank with a specific question, was routed to a chatbot, and had no way to reach a human. The result was frustration, an unnecessary follow-up email, and a negative experience. The chatbot did not just fail to help. It actively worked against the company. This is the risk of deploying AI without a clear escalation path.
Where AI genuinely raises customer experience
One area where AI delivers clear value: complaint analysis. Collecting customer complaints and using AI to identify recurring patterns gives businesses actionable insight fast. Spotting a complaint that keeps coming back, and then fixing the underlying process, is exactly the kind of work that turns AI into a customer experience asset.
The core takeaway
AI will not improve your customer experience on its own. Human action is still required. As Anne-Marie puts it: AI stays a tool, and tools need people who know how to use them.