How This Co-Founder Balances AI and a Human-Centered Customer Experience
His company, ROI CX Solutions, is focused on building better customer experiences.
With all the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), it can be easy to assume that leaders are looking for ways to replace human talent as quickly as possible. But as anyone who has ever had frustrating conversations with a chatbot online or over the phone can attest, completely removing humans from the customer experience is often far from the best choice. A 2025 report found that half of companies that had been planning to replace their customer service teams with AI were expected to reverse course after poor results.
Han Butler, president and co-founder of ROI CX Solutions, takes a more balanced approach to AI, viewing it as a way to help contact centers deliver better, more efficient results, while still keeping the human element in place. By deploying AI in targeted areas, he believes his team is able to unlock the full potential of their human contact center representatives.
Agent enhancement, not replacement
The biggest reason to use AI in customer service, at least in Butler’s view, is to improve the workflow of customer service representatives. “One of our main goals with AI deployment should be assisting the agents in their role. How do we make each call go more smoothly for them, so we can reduce their stress and help them feel more confident in their work?” he says.
“For example,” he continues, “with AI agent assist programs, we can provide real-time support during live calls. The AI agent can provide policy clarifications when needed, serve up answers from a knowledge base or even pull up a caller’s history so the support agent better knows how to address their needs.”
According to Butler, this can go a long way in reducing the stress associated with each individual call, which in turn can help reduce the risk of burnout that is so common in the industry. Gallup research has found that 76% of employees feel burnout at least sometimes, with unmanageable workloads, unclear communication, and unreasonable time pressure being some of the most common contributors. AI assistance can directly address these common issues.
Butler also notes that AI can be a powerful resource for employee training, helping provide tailored support that helps individual agents improve their skills. “Agent coaching tools are able to learn from customer interactions to give agents real-time suggestions on what type of response will work best for a given situation,” he explains.
“But AI can also provide training scenarios to help agents improve their emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills. It can listen to an agent’s interactions and then use that information to provide personalized feedback and coaching. It helps us give meaningful feedback much faster so agents can start working smarter that much sooner.”
A better caller experience
Using AI to support human customer support representatives can also influence the caller experience. The human touch still matters, even in the age of AI. A SurveyMonkey study found that 79% of Americans “strongly prefer interacting with a human over an AI agent”, with the overall perception being that an AI-only experience actually diminishes service quality.
Of course, this isn’t to say that human agents are always going to be ideal, either. There have been enough studies on the impact of poor customer service to prove this point. This is why Butler believes bringing AI support to human-led customer service interactions is ultimately the best solution for customers, as well.
“When a customer contacts a call center, they’re mainly looking for one thing: to get their question or concern resolved as quickly and effectively as possible,” Butler says. “They don’t want to be bounced around from one rep to another, or wait for a callback to figure things out. AI helps us avoid these kinds of problems by first helping route the right caller to the right rep, and then also giving that rep the information and resources they need to quickly and accurately resolve the problem.”
By reducing wait times and improving first call resolution rates (as well as the speed at which those resolutions can take place), strategic AI deployment can help improve customer satisfaction, which can potentially help increase retention and lifetime value.
Finding opportunities for agents and customers alike
Ultimately, Butler views AI as another tool that, when used properly, can greatly benefit both customer experience agents and customers alike. Rather than being a completely separate entity from human customer service teams, he argues that targeted implementation of AI is essential can help create win-wins in the customer service space.
“When a customer support rep has the tools and resources they need right at their fingertips, they can feel more confident as they help a customer navigate a problem,” he notes.
“At the same time, the customers benefit because they get faster service and are more likely to get their problem resolved the first time around. In this case, technology isn’t replacing the human connection that is so essential to good customer service. It’s just helping it work better for everyone.”
As Butler’s example reveals, AI and humans in customer support shouldn’t be viewed as an either/or proposition. Instead, the question that teams need to ask is how they will get the two to work together to deliver the best possible experience.
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