More efficiency in service excellence thanks to AI

Although the AI development is still in its infancy, it’s clear by now that customer satisfaction can be achieved faster than ever with its help. However, like with any new technology, the typical principles apply: First, AI remained a marginal phenomenon and only experts dealt with it, but after it got some media attention, it became the talk of the town. Then, with the first success stories, a hype develops that, unfortunately, attracts charlatans as well. High user expectations often result in disappointing practice experience, though.

But maybe it is a different story with Artificial Intelligence (AI), as its success story has developed somewhat differently than expected, too. In 1958, the US computer scientist John McCarthy started to bring the entire knowledge of humanity in a singular form of presentation; everything looked quite promising. Based on simple data models, machines automatically conclude from collected data (or experiences) without having clear instructions (scripts), and the term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined. It took them, however, another 53 years until AI got global media attention.

When Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated a chatbot application at the F8 developer conference around two years ago and Amazon launched its language assistant, it kick-started the hype. Everyone started to talk about AI and made people realize the potential of the technology: AI provides customers with intelligent services and becomes a core technology for customer loyalty and convenience. Now the question is, how long will it take us to reach the bottom of commercial applications and seriously deploy AI for our industry?

AI brings together key elements of a positive customer experience

Call centers, websites, emails and apps have always allowed service-oriented businesses to simplify the CX, while increasing process efficiency and reducing costs. However, many customers today complain about beefed-up procedures and twisted systems that hinder or undermine...Since service costs will have to come down and skilled workers are scarce, AI comes at the right time to bridge the gap. AI can help in customer service, customer care and customer management, virtually anywhere, as it recognizes the intentions of customers, derives the right business process from it, extracts the relevant business and personal data from unstructured textual information, and displays all the information on the professionals’ screen when needed.AI can deliver a customer’s sentiment in real time by reading what’s in emails and comments and recognizing customers’ problems. What’s more, when messages suddenly pile up on a new topic, AI raises the alarm. Artificial Intelligence is able to pinpoint a good 80% of recurring routine operations from 20% individual cases. In view of the looming shortage of skilled workers in some industries, this is a virtually no-alternative feature on the way to the digitization of processes, don’t you think?