Automating with Heart: The Hybrid Model That Is Transforming Customer Service in 2025
A few days ago, I contacted the global eCommerce leader, Amazon. For the first time in 30 years, I had an issue with a package that never arrived. Since I work in this industry, I decided to test the option of resolving the problem through automated chat. What a surprise I got!
To keep the story short, the bot automatically refunded me $39.00 for the undelivered package. From my experience, the bot’s decision was unsupervised. Of course, that decision was backed by a lot of AI in the background. The bot surely knows I’ve been an Amazon customer since 1994 and have made hundreds of purchases. It probably also knows that it has authorization to issue refunds under $100 (just an assumption). That kind of logic.
The transaction was fast, direct, and effortless. The bot only asked for my order number and had me select the issue from a menu. Then, it asked if I wanted a replacement or a refund. When I selected the refund option, it asked if I wanted it to the original payment card or another one. I imagine that if I had chosen a replacement, it would have asked me to confirm the shipping address, and that would have been it.
Automation with bots is here, and it’s amazing.
The Problem
But what happens when the transaction isn’t that simple or when the emotional cost of resolving the issue outweighs the financial one?
Think about buying an engagement ring, taking out a life insurance policy to protect your children, or making a large purchase that requires a significant part of your savings.
In these crucial moments, many consumers feel anxious about trusting such important decisions to a bot with no human supervision. It’s not just about trust in technology; it’s about the need for validation, about feeling that someone on the other side understands the importance of the moment.
From my experience and from working with many people, most consumers making emotionally significant purchases—let’s not forget that first-time online or social media purchases are highly emotional—prefer interacting with a human agent at some point in the process, even when automation could technically resolve their request.
This reality creates a serious challenge for companies: How can they maintain automation efficiency without sacrificing the emotional connection that only a human can provide?
How to Solve This?
The key to solving this dilemma lies in deeply understanding consumers and their relationship with your business. Not all customers or interactions are the same. A detailed customer journey map will reveal critical touchpoints where automation shines and key moments where a human touch can make all the difference.
For example, routine inquiries such as order tracking, account updates, or simple refunds are perfect candidates for automation. However, complex decisions, sales objections, or customer frustration require immediate human intervention.
Keep in mind that chat interaction data offers valuable clues: long resolution times, repeated frustration words, or the transaction’s monetary value can act as triggers to automatically transfer the conversation to a trained human agent.
Large-scale companies like Mercado Libre in Latin America have implemented systems that detect when a customer is typing harder or using all caps, interpreting it as a sign of heightened emotion that requires personalized attention.
For me, the most important thing is to design the experience considering not just operational efficiency but also the customer’s emotional state at every stage of the process.
The Trade-Off: Convenience vs. Emotional Support
As with everything in life, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
When optimizing the customer experience through conversational commerce, the trade-off always comes down to convenience vs. emotional support.
So, as the great wise man Indiana Jones once said:
“You must choose. But choose wisely. For while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.”
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