A quarter of customer service and support operations will include virtual customer assistant or chatbot technology within two years, an increase from less than 2% last year, according to recent predictions from Gartner.
More than half of businesses already have invested in virtual customer assistants for customer service, according to the research firm.
"As more customers engage on digital channels, VCAs are being implemented for handling customer requests on websites, mobile apps, consumer messaging apps and social networks," stated Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner. “This is underpinned by improvements in natural-language processing, machine learning and intent-matching capabilities.”
Gartner made additional predictions for the next two years. Among them:
After implementing virtual customer assistant technology, businesses report a reduction of 70% in call, chat or email inquiries, according to Gartner.