“AI can make us much more efficient. But we really want to make sure that there’s still that human interaction,” he said.
That distinction shapes where AT&T is drawing the line. The telecommunications company is stopping short of using AI agents to handle cancellations, leaving its human employees to understand why a customer is leaving and potentially resolve the issue.
“We want to be able to understand from our customers’ perspective why they’re cancelling, and then be able to help,” Miller said.
Southwest Airlines is taking a similar approach, using agents to handle servicing tasks via chatbots, such as flight changes and completing transactions, while reserving human employees for what Megan Rauber, manager of technology at Southwest, described as “right here, right now” problems—situations where customers need immediate help and would benefit from the human hospitality that requires empathy and assurance.
Crocs is deploying AI agents both as a consumer-facing chat and voice bot called Rivet, and internally, where agents can help developers create promotions or categorize products on its websites.
But even as Crocs expands those use cases, it still has human hands on the tiller.
“There still needs to be a human in the loop as we’re still learning about capabilities and complexities of automation,” said Feliz Papich, SVP of digital technology and experience at Crocs.
Papich said some of that automation complexity gets lost in the rush to build increasingly sophisticated interfaces with AI vendors. The harder problem, she said, is making sure the data underneath those interfaces is good enough to deliver what people expect.
“Data is such an important conversation, respective to AI,” Papich said. “Sometimes that gets lost because you’re talking about the interface, and want to make the agent that delivers against expectations. The data foundation necessary to make sure that the quality is there—that complexity of that is not always communicated.”
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