More companies are expected to deploy various forms of artificial intelligence next year and it looks like many customers aren’t going to be all that happy about it.
As companies optimize their customer service approaches, chatbots will increasingly become alternatives to email. And as they look to reduce costs and headcount in contact centers, more businesses will push customers to digital and chatbots, according to a new 2018 AI forecast by Forrester.
The bad news is that the transition to AI will be somewhat bumpy, which will have a negative impact of customer satisfaction, according to the Forrester forecast.
Companies will apply AI to specific customer-facing channels next year, discovering that machine learning often requires a highly manual process of categorizing text, speech or visual customer interactions not recognized by AI technology.
Essentially, the machines will have to be taught some of the things they don’t yet know.
This early form of blending technology with the correct amount of human-assisted processes to improve machine learning will be a big disruptor next year, according to the forecast. Among the Forrester predictions relating to artificial intelligence:
All of this movement into more automated processes will cause service levels and customer satisfaction to suffer, due to management expectations of AI automation.
This will lead to customer service numbers being harder to locate on corporate websites and in apps, since the companies will want to route customers through technology rather than dealing with them directly, which is more expensive, according to the Forrester predictions.
Deploying AI solutions can have great long-term benefits. The risk is that companies don’t devote enough resource to getting it right before counting on the returns.
Tend to agree; expectations are running high and fast. It's not often that maximizing profits via automation means higher customer engagement/satisfaction/etc. Maybe AI can break that pattern.
It is the the shiny object of the day, Patrick.