New research provides concrete evidence that generative AI can drive increased productivity for customer service agents, especially new recruits, by providing live scripts and linking to technical information. 

There’s new evidence on how generative AI tools can supercharge customer service agents.  

A study from Stanford and MIT researchers found that when ~5,000 customer service agents at an unnamed Fortune 500 company received real-time suggestions from a chatbot for how to respond to customers, they resolved 14% more issues per hour.   

The AI would monitor customer chats and provide wording suggestions for how agents could respond, as well as links to technical information that could help them troubleshoot problems.  

The chatbot was particularly useful for new, less-experienced agents: It essentially acted as a way for recent recruits to automatically receive advice without more experienced agents having to personally pass it on. The study also found that the tool improved customer sentiment and reduced employee turnover overall.

While anecdotes and predictions have pointed to generative AI’s ability to increase productivity, this study is some of the first empirical evidence showing its impacts in the real world. Notably, the AI tools weren’t replacing customer service agents, but augmenting them by helping them do their jobs more efficiently.