Recently, Shopify reverted a change it made to how it offers customer support. While it initially offered human support, the company began to adopt an AI-first customer service model over the last year.
But after frustration and pushback, it once again made it easier to reach out to a human for support. This serves as a cautionary tale to businesses about solely relying on AI for customer service.
Shopify Once Again Makes It Easier to Reach Out to Human Customer Support
In a recent change, Shopify simplified the process of speaking with human customer support by adding a button on Help Center pages that puts you in the lineup to speak with an agent. The company says that in most cases, you’ll be in contact with human support within five minutes.
This move comes after many merchants were frustrated with Shopify’s recent AI-first approach to customer support, and how difficult it was to reach an actual person. While Shopify has offered human support for years, in the past year, the company moved to an AI-first model, which made it hard to get in touch with a human.
The implementation of this model has been less than perfect, as many merchants report issues ranging from getting stuck in infinite AI loops to AI abandoning conversations, and many others. Some even claimed that Shopify’s AI customer support wasted days of work by confidently providing wrong answers.
While all Shopify members may have faced these difficulties with AI support, Shopify Basic, Shopify Grow, and Shopify Advanced members likely faced the brunt of the issues. This is because Shopify Plus members have access to 24/7 priority phone support and a Shopify Plus Live Agent chat.
The Growing Trend of AI Support
However, despite the pushback that AI-powered support receives in some cases, it’s still growing rapidly. According to research, the global AI for customer service market is expected to explode from around $13 billion in 2024 to nearly $84 billion by 2033.
The growth makes sense, as AI-powered support may speed up customer interactions, is available 24/7 with no breaks, and can decrease costs. It’s also a scalable solution, so you can handle more requests without having to hire more agents.
Not only that, but many customer experience (CX) leaders believe in the technology, as more than two-thirds of them think that AI can help them provide warmth and familiarity in customer service (even if they have millions of customers), and 70% of them feel that chatbots are becoming skilled architects of highly-personalized customer journeys.
However, as this move from Shopify shows, AI-powered support isn’t perfect and may not be the home run that many experts think it might be, at least not yet.
This Move Serves As a Cautionary Tale
This change by Shopify should serve as a cautionary tale to any ecommerce website, brand, or platform thinking about solely using AI for customer service.
While AI-powered customer service certainly has its place, it often lacks the nuance and specialized knowledge to help with certain issues customers may face. As a result, if it’s the only support option available, there’s a good chance some customers will be unhappy about the level of support they receive.
Using AI support in some capacity is fine, such as for answering basic questions or directing people to the proper resources to get the help they need, but you should consider blending AI support alongside human support.
This is the best of both worlds as the AI can help with many basic questions and tasks without taking up valuable employee time and effort, but you still have human agents ready to help with more detailed or specialized questions when needed.
