The Automation Is Coming

The notion of Artificial Intelligence has been around for a while.

Yet, unlike other prominent technological innovations such as electric cars or the processor speed, its progress has not been linear.

In fact, as far as industrial impact is concerned, there were times when allegedly there was no progress at all.

The widespread fascination with AI started several generations ago, in 80-s of the last century. This is when a pioneering work of Noam Chomsky on computational grammar led to a belief that human language capabilities in particular, and human intelligence in general, can be straightforwardly algorithmized. The expectation was that the AI-based programs will have a significant and lasting industrial impact.

But despite unabridged enthusiasm and significant amount of effort the practical results were minuscule. The main outcome was disappointment and AI become somewhat of a dirty word for the next 20 years. The research became mostly confined to scientific labs, and although some notable results have been achieved, such as development of neural networks and Deep Blue machine beating acting world champion in chess, the general community was largely unaffected.

The situation started to change about 5-10 years ago with a new wave of industrial research and development.

We now experience somewhat of a renaissance of AI with bots, semantic search, self-service systems, intelligent assistant programs like Siri are taking over. In addition, optimists of science are bragging confidently about reaching singularity during our lifetime.

The progress this time seems to be genuine indeed. There are indisputable breakthroughs, but even more impressive is the width of industries adopting AI solutions, from social networks to government services to robotics to consumer apps.

For the first time AI is expected to have a huge impact on the community in general.

There is this vibe around AI which hasn’t been felt in years. And with power comes responsibility, as they say, - prominent thinkers such as Stephen Hawking raised their voice against the dangers of powerful AI for humanity. Still, as far as current topic is concerned, this is all part of the vibe.

Despite all the plethora of upcoming opportunities, it is important to observe that we are yet to advance from anticipation stage. AI has not became a major industrial asset, an AI firm has not reached a unicorn status, and despite the fact that major industrial players such as IBM are pivoting towards  fully-fledged AI-based model it has not manifested itself in business results.

We are still waiting for AI-based technology to disrupt the global community.

The overall expectation is that it is about to happen. But it hasn’t happened yet.

We’ve all seen the numbers and they tell us that customers are more likely to make a purchase if they’re able to speak to a representative at the time of purchase. Study after study shows that if you can prevent even the smallest percentage of customer defection revenues and profitability can literally skyrocket as much as 80%. Just as important, the faster is your service the better is customer experience.

The same can be said for customer support. More than 70% of customers say that responsive customer support providing fast, courteous, relevant and contextual answers to their inquiries are the most important factors in determining the quality of customer service and the likelihood of that customer doing business with the company in the future.

As our world becomes even more “on-demand” and global, providing around the clock sales and customer support is quickly becoming a key differentiator. Customer’s desire to do business with companies on their own schedule and terms are driving financial growth and customer loyalty across all sectors and industries. Companies that neglect this “always on” requirement not only lose out, but need to find ways to be competitive.

Unfortunately, only the largest companies have the financial resources to deliver 24x7 customer support and sales operations. Still many of the largest companies can’t justify the expense of building out and staffing a 24 hour contact center. While outsourcing to a BPO is always an option, statistics show a diminishing return for outsource customer and sales support operations.

As customers continue to drive up the use of chat and social communications for customer support and sales, along with the incredible growth in Artificial Intelligence technology, smart companies on the forefront of customer service now have the ability to offer around the clock service for a large portion of their customers.

Think about this: While the average phone support call has previously been measured at almost 6 minutes, the average chat session lasts just 42 seconds, indicating that the vast majority of customer support issues are simple and only require limited information in order to leave a customer informed and satisfied with the interaction.

Today Artificial Intelligence can deliver a personalized, informed, and contextually relevant response to just about any question related to most customer inquiries. Add on the fact that AI actually “learns” as it interacts with people and information and the value to the customer and the vendor actually increases over time.  Wouldn’t we all like to have immediate service with zero wait times and fast, courteous response that immediately addresses our needs? I know I would.

Implementing Artificial Intelligence for customer service comes down to an application cost that, when amortized over the number of chat or social sessions it can handle, reduces customer support costs to as little as 10% of traditional contact center and agent expenses.

The one objection to relying on Artificial Intelligence in the contact center is the customer experience. There’s enough bad press out there about Chatbots and broken, robotic responses that are sometimes irrelevant that some customer support professionals are wary of any form or automation. My response to that is, while those were valid concerns; just take a look at Siri today vs. 2 years ago. The quality of responses has dramatically improved, as has the customer perception and usefulness.

What are your thoughts about Artificial Intelligence in the contact center? We’d love to hear from you.