A Framework for Conversational AI Bot-to-Human Handoff

This thesis makes a contribution to the contact center industry and concerns the deployments of bots with bot-to-human handoff capabilities. Kovac (2009) states that “Trimming customer service costs while boosting customer satisfaction — and hence loyalty — is challenging in the best of times.” Cost cutting in the contact center through automation and ‘intelligent’ services is not new but advances in conversational AI technology have created new opportunities for contact centers to better attempt the balancing act of managing and cutting costs whilst improving the customer experience. For a number of reasons, primarily grounded in the immaturity of the technology bots and human agents will, for the time being, work in harmony to attempt to deliver good customer experiences, while cutting costs. There is an existing gap in the knowledge around how handoffs should be conducted between bots and human agents....