SEPTEMBER 2023 RELEASES
September 2023 Releases
Debunking AI Agent Fears: "Will humans get frustrated talking to AI?”
When contact center leaders think about replacing human phone reps with AI Agents, one fear tends to linger:
“Customers are going to notice it’s a bot… and they’re going to hate it.”
There’s a deep-rooted assumption that AI freaks people out, or that it simply won’t provide a good experience on the phone—that the second someone hears an unfamiliar cadence or a slightly off response, they’ll get annoyed, hang up, and potentially drop out of the funnel.
But here’s the reality: customer get frustrated in sales and support conversations all the time—but it’s very rarely because they know they’re talking to AI.
If your agent is set up correctly, most of the time, your contacts won’t even know they’re talking to AI.
Let’s take a look at this fear a little more closely and go through all the ways you can mitigate it with Regal.
The scenario you’re probably dreading
A new customer calls in and has a nice, cordial back-and-forth with what they think is a human agent.
Then they pick up on something. Maybe it’s the cadence. Maybe the voice responds just a fraction too quickly. They think, “have I been talking to a bot this whole time?”
They feel like a transaction. They either hang up or ask to talk to a live agent immediately.
Human agents frustrate customers too
During human-to-human sales and support calls, frustration happens too. Every day.
Real reps put customers on hold for 15 minutes. They give inconsistent answers. They lose patience. They mishear or miss emotional cues.
AI doesn't eliminate frustration entirely. But it does give you the tools to quickly identify frustrations and know exactly where and how to address them.
What you need to do, is make sure:
- You have AI deployed for the right interactions.
- The agent sounds like a human.
- The agent has context to who each contact is, and can answer questions effectively.
With Regal, you have control over all of these factors.
Building AI Agents That Avoid Frustration by Design
The reality is: most people don’t even realize it’s AI
And they rarely care if they do.
Why? Because they’re getting what they need. And that will always be the most important part of any interaction.
We’ve seen it across insurance, healthcare, education, home services, lending, and more. If the experience is smooth and effective, people will not hang-up or ask for a human.
Clancy Relocation & Logistics, for example, replaced their human answering service with Regal’s AI Agents. CSAT remained above 95%. Inbound calls were answered 100% of the time. Customers didn’t even know they were talking to AI.
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Even still, every once in a while, your contacts are going to get frustrated. It’s only natural.
So, whether it’s building in protection from frustration from the jump, or identifying and reacting to frustration after it happens, you can follow the mitigation strategies below.
#1 Start with the right voice
The voice of your AI is the first thing your customers will notice, setting the tone for everything that follows. Choosing a voice that feels natural and well-paced sets you on the right path to building trust and comfort.
With Regal, you can choose from a range of voices across multiple vendors—including ElevenLabs, PlayHT, and OpenAI. And you’re never locked into one voice.
Our recommendation: Test different tones, accents, genders, and ages to find the voice that resonates most with your audience (across different types of conversations). Regal experts will walk you through the process diligently to help with set up and measure your agents.
In Regal, you can start with a template, or build your ideal voice agent from scratch (with the help of the Regal team):
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Older customers often prefer a calmer, steadier tone, while younger audiences might respond better to something more energetic. Regal enables you to target different audiences with different agents so you can maximize outcomes for different customer preferences.
Whatever the case may be, don’t guess—A/B test.
Before you select a voice, test. After you select a voice, continue testing. Regal makes this all very easy with native A/B testing as well as the expertise to help guide you through the process.
#2 Script for emotional intelligence
Voice is one thing, but the personality and emotional awareness of your agent are also very important when preventing or managing frustrations. You want to make sure the AI sounds like it understands what the customer is going through.
Within Regal, set up your agent to have a kind tone (to prevent frustration) and use validating language throughout conversations (to deal with frustration if and when it arises).
How you can do this:
- Voice temperature: Setting a higher voice temperature (1.25+) creates more emotion, and more variation in your agent’s voice.
- Language prompting: Use validating language. Phrases like “I understand how that could be frustrating,” or “Let me make sure I have this right,” go a long way in building rapport and making calls feel human.
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In Regal, you can define exactly how your AI speaks, down to the phrase, and easily adjust based on customer feedback and performance trends.
The goal is to design your AI to feel like your best rep—clear, competent, and kind.
#3 Make it easy to exit
You don’t want your contacts to ever feel “stuck” with an AI agent. If they’re frustrated, that will only make things worse.
There should always be a clear, simple way for them to exit any call and get transferred to a live agent.
That means:
- Building in easy escape hatches: Add in escape logic such as, “Press 0 to speak to a live representative,” or prompt your agent to escalate conversations based on certain spoken phrases (“I’d like to talk to someone else,” “Can I please speak with a live representative?”).
- Prompt for smart escalation: Don’t wait until a contact gets furious and demands to speak to a live agent. Prompt your AI to listen for signs of frustration. Phrases like, “this is not helpful at all,” can be your cue to have the AI ask, “I’m very sorry to hear that, would you like to speak to a live agent instead?” Or offer a callback if a live agent isn’t available.
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Regal allows you to build these exit and fallback conditions directly into the conversation flow, without code, to avoid dead ends and diffuse frustration before it occurs.
#4 Ground your AI with real knowledge
As we said earlier, as long as your customers are getting what they need, “human vs. AI” often won’t matter.
The information you arm your AI with is crucial to making it sound as smart as a human agent.
By connecting the AI directly to all of your customer data, interaction data, product documentation, and so on, you can ensure every call is actually helpful, resolving real questions/issues.
While building your AI Agent in Regal, you can provide all the context required by natively connecting all of your internal knowledge bases—your CRM, documentation, compliance docs, and whatever else.
With a curated knowledge base and emotionally intelligent prompting, you can mitigate the risk of your AI “guessing” or wandering (generally at a ~95% success rate).
It’ll either react with contextually accurate information, or respond with something thoughtful to note that it cannot help, like, “I’m sorry, but that’s not information that I have access to. Would you like me to connect you to a live agent who can help?”
All of these strategies together help prevent frustration in most cases. But even when frustration arises, your agent will be well-equipped to react in a human manner and take the correct action to escalate.
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Metrics to Monitor Frustration
Escalation Rate
This shows how often AI calls are escalated to a human—i.e. an indicator that contacts are asking to speak with a human.
If the rate is low, it’s a strong signal your AI is building trust and resolving issues effectively. If you notice a spike, it’s time to revisit your scripting, voice configuration, and fallback logic—something in the experience is making people lose confidence.
Containment Rate
Similarly, you can look at containment rate, which shows the rate of calls being fully handled by AI.
If your containment rates are high, then that means the AI is being pleasant, and is resolving customer issues and queries.
Regal AI Agents regularly perform to 90%+ containment rates.
Sentiment Score
Sentiment analysis tracks the customer’s tone throughout each interaction with your brand. You likely already have benchmarks you’re tracking towards for this.
Monitor sentiment when you start testing and launching AI Agents. If sentiment remains the same or improves, then the AI is not frustrating customers.
A downward trend after you’ve implemented AI could mean the AI isn’t picking up on emotional cues, and isn’t handling frustrations well. Consider refining the language for empathy or softening the voice pacing and tone, and see how that impacts sentiment.
CSAT
Customer satisfaction scores can also be a general indicator of frustration across your contact center comms. If your CSAT remains within your target, the AI is doing its job.
If you see a diminishing CSAT score after implementing AI, then it might be a source of frustration for customers.
That, however, is very unlikely. Generally, a CSAT score at or above 90% is considered excellent. Regal AI Agents regularly perform to 95%+ CSAT scores across different industries.
Great Support Doesn’t Have to Come From a Human
Yes, AI Agents can frustrate people. But it’s very rare, and will almost never be simply because it’s AI. The voice on the other end of the line doesn’t need to be human, it just needs to be helpful.
Designing helpful AI Agents is much easier when you have control. With Regal, you have that—the ability to tweak, test, and perfect how your AI stays ahead of and responds to customer frustration—from voice and tone, to fallback rules, to the scripts that guide emotional intelligence.
When you combine that with performance data and iteration, you’ll avoid frustration and drive greater satisfaction, all while saving time and money for your team.
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