Workforce Management Featured Article
Reports Address AI Adoption, Best Practices
It’s early days for artificial intelligence. But the trend seems clear that AI is poised to alter the way we do things in both our personal and professional lives.
Customer service is one discipline poised to see big change at the hands of AI.
Gartner famously suggested that 85 percent of all customer interactions will be managed by AI bots by 2020. And IDC (News - Alert) estimates that 40 percent of digital transformation initiatives will use AI services by 2019. By 2021, IDC adds, 75 percent of enterprise applications will use AI.
“From predictions, recommendations, and advice to automated customer service agents and intelligent process automation, AI is changing the face of how we interact with computer systems,” notes IDC.
But while businesses, suppliers, and industry analysts tout the benefits of AI, some remind us that artificial intelligence can’t do it all alone. For AI initiatives and solutions to succeed, they’ll need to rely on good human-created design and they’ll need to work alongside people.
“AI has not, and should not, completely take over responsibilities handled by human beings, especially because of the intricacies of human emotion in customer engagement,” according to a Forrester (News - Alert) Consulting report commissioned by Genesys. “As such, savvy customer service and customer experience professionals must take a measured look at the strengths and weaknesses of both AI and human modalities — and how blending them together can deliver a powerful end-to-end experience for customers.”
This report goes on to suggest that AI is ideal for helping with simple things like password resets. That can quickly add up to significant cost savings, it says, and work as proof points for additional AI initiatives down the road.
Edited by Maurice Nagle