"Wants 'Faster Human Agent Connection' Over Advanced AI" [Bbengbbeng-i AI Call Center]④

Our Survey on Satisfaction with AI Consultation Services in Financial Company Call Centers
The Most Needed Improvement for Future Call Centers
"Reducing the Total Time Until Agent Consultation"

Editor's Note“It’s a ‘human,’ not AI, dear customer. How can I assist you?”
Call centers, which everyone has used at least once, have transformed from places where friendly agents promptly solved problems into inconvenient spots for financial consumers. With the emergence of incomplete ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) consultation services,’ the problem-solving process and time perceived by financial consumers have only been delayed. This irony arose as banks, card companies, and other financial institutions replaced human agents in call centers with AI consultation services. Accordingly, Asia Economy aims to look into the inside story of financial company call centers from various perspectives, including financial consumers and workers.

Although the financial sector is rushing to introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) services for call center customer consultations, research shows that what financial consumers truly need is ‘human agents.’ In particular, regardless of age group, respondents expressed a preference for ‘quick connection to human agents’ over ‘advanced AI consultation services.’

On the 6th, Asia Economy commissioned a panel survey of 500 men and women nationwide (aged 19?69) through the polling agency Embrain. When asked what is more needed in future financial company call centers (multiple responses allowed), 64.6% of respondents answered ‘shortening the time until consultation with a human agent,’ the highest proportion.

Next, ‘expansion of human agent consultations’ accounted for 41.6%, indicating that financial consumers feel a faster connection to human agents is more necessary than the advancement of AI. Respondents who answered ‘more advanced AI consultation functions’ were 34.2%, followed by strengthening auxiliary means such as applications (apps) at 19.6%, and activation of offline complaint functions at 10.6%.

Among digitally savvy young people in their 20s and 30s, the most common response was also the need for a faster connection to human agents rather than AI. In their 20s, 52.9% answered that ‘shortening the time until consultation with a human agent’ was most necessary, and in their 30s, 68.5% gave the same answer. This was not significantly different from those in their 50s (67.2%) and 60s (66.3%). This confirms that financial consumers feel the need for human agents over AI regardless of their digital literacy.

Especially, financial consumers across all age groups strongly perceive the limitations of current financial companies’ AI consultation systems. When asked why they think connection to human agents remains necessary (multiple responses allowed), 74.2% of respondents said, ‘There are many issues that AI services cannot yet resolve.’ Following that, 54.1% answered, ‘AI services still do not understand my requests.’

A significant number of financial consumers also experience difficulties using AI services. 20.3% of respondents said, ‘AI services are complicated and difficult to use.’ This issue was particularly prominent among the elderly, with 28% of those in their 60s reporting this. Other reasons cited for the need to connect to human agents included ‘AI services are still not trustworthy’ (14%) and ‘Responsibility is unclear when problems occur’ (13.4%).

Meanwhile, this survey was conducted by Asia Economy through Macromill Embrain from July 12 to 16, with a sampling error of ±4.38 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.