As AI agents take on a growing share of customer interactions, the moment when automation hands a customer over to a human advisor is becoming a critical test of trust.
In this CX Today interview, Nicole Willing speaks with Craig Cotton, Global VP of Product Management at Concentrix, about why broken AI-to-human handoffs can quickly turn a frustrating experience into a loyalty risk.
While much of the AI conversation still centers on containment rates and cost reduction, Cotton argues that organizations need to pay closer attention to what happens when a customer reaches the edge of what automation can solve.
That moment matters because AI is no longer handling a small pool of low-risk interactions. As voice bots, chatbots and AI agents scale from thousands of conversations to millions, tens of millions, and potentially billions, even a tiny failure rate can create a significant customer experience problem.
Cotton explains that if just 1 percent of AI-led interactions fail, brands could still be dealing with millions of unhappy customers. For customers, the frustration is often simple: they spend several minutes authenticating, explaining their issue and trying to get help from a bot, only to be transferred to a human advisor who asks them to start again.