Will Bots Really Replace the Human Customer Support Role?
Perhaps it took longer than expected, but the rise of the machines is now at hand. Artificial intelligence is fast becoming more advanced and is now being used in a host of applications. It’s changing the technological landscape as we know it, bringing us closer to Cyberdyne System’s Skynet computer.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, folks. We’re currently working on and perfecting AI functions that can help us humans do simple, labor-intensive ‘narrow’ tasks across different industries. A neural network controlled by a sentient AI computer is still far from reality, but with the way things are going, it’s not impossible.
The progress we’ve been making in the field of artificial intelligence has been no less impressive. Machines can now perform predictive analysis, deductive reasoning and natural language understanding, which are all needed in understanding and predicting what the user needs or maybe offer recommendations for the next action.
Now that we’re taking the development of AI in the right direction, it is found to have good use in the field of customer service. Chatbots are now all the rage in the tech world, simulating conversations with people to address their questions or perform simple tasks. These bots are now booming not only in text conversations but in verbal exchanges as well. Yes, we’re looking at you, Alexa.
AI’s Role in Customer Support
Businesses need a fast and efficient customer support service to address all their customers’ concerns. This helps them forge good relationships, making it an essential factor in running a successful business. And with chatbots now taking the place of humans in online conversations, they are revolutionizing the customer service industry.
Chatbots automate conversations with real humans by delivering the right responses according to how they are programmed to do so. With language processing now an integral part of AI, conversations are more seamless, as if you’re having one with a real human being. Advancements are set to further make it harder to discern if you’re chatting with a person or perhaps Threepio.
Many companies embrace a chatbot’s functions as a means to complement or even reduce the need for call centers. As human-to-human chat conversations become a thing of the past, this will significantly reduce operating costs.
For now, chatbots are used to collect basic information, with the more advanced versions providing resolutions for increasingly more complex issues. This speeds up response times and frees agents for more challenging work that requires a more advanced brain. Yes, the one responsible for creating chatbots in the first place.
Why Bots are Here to Stay
The bots we’ve read about or seen in fiction were made to serve humans, and their purpose hasn’t changed one bit in real life. Now that AI-driven chatbots are being extensively used in the field of customer support to perform repetitive and simple tasks, they are proving to be invaluable.
Despite being relatively basic, bots can help relieve humans of the grunt work, which can streamline any process and make things move along faster and a bit easier. This saves loads of time and money for the company during the technical support process. Here’s how it works:
Process Efficiency
When calls come in, human agents go through the motions of collecting information from the concerned customer before they proceed to address the issue. AI-driven bots can streamline this step and cut the time it takes to complete this task, so a human agent can resolve the issue at hand. Although support ticket qualification is a fairly simple task, automating it can result in huge time savings.
Cost Efficiency
When processing time is lessened to a considerable degree, more calls can be processed within the day. This significantly decreases the operational cost by taking in more customers who need help in a single day. When AI becomes more advanced, pretty soon there will be more stages in the operation that can be taken over by bots. This will allow humans to focus on more difficult tasks and become even more cost-efficient.
Better Customer Experience
Once the process is streamlined to a point where your service addresses all customer concerns in a reasonable period of time, you will leave them feeling satisfied with the whole interaction. The bots help make the process faster, and the human touch becomes more focused on a customer’s needs. All this leads to a better customer experience, creating a competitive advantage for your brand.
Timeliness
Machines are all about speed and precision. They help cut work time to achieve results faster, which is the reason why AI-driven bots are increasingly becoming popular. Additionally, the risk of human error is basically non-existent. So, when it comes to menial tasks, bots are faster and more accurate – it really isn’t much of a competition.
But Will They Replace Humans?
With AI being able to handle increasingly sophisticated tasks, many believe they’re a growing threat to us humans. People are under the impression that they will start taking jobs away from us, and before we know it, they will gain sentience and start making slaves out of us ‘fleshies.’ That is one dystopian future nobody wants to become a reality.
But before we get in over our heads, AI-driven machines aren’t about to take us out. We are still at a stage where we are finding ways to make machines help make our jobs easier. And regardless of how far we’ve made them more advanced, there will always be a need for a human touch.
Humans take a lot of things into consideration when making an important decision. There are intangibles involved, such as emotions and creativity, which they combine with logic to arrive at the best outcome from any situation. On the other hand, bots based theirs purely on data and may be limited in scope.
Final Note
The advancements happening in AI technology are something to look forward to, but for some, they could be a threat. Even tech magnate Elon Mask has expressed concerns about AI warning us that it may create an ‘immortal dictator that we can’t escape from'.
But fret not! There won’t be any T-1000s hunting us down anytime soon. The whole point of AI-driven machines is to help us humans from labor-intensive tasks that can shorten the process. This makes the combined efforts of AI and humans more effective, with humans still overseeing that everything is going the way as planned.
Your job is safe. For now at least…
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