Understanding the AI Landscape
These days, I am getting asked by a lot of executives “what is going on with Artificial Intelligence”?
Well…that is quite the broad question, isn’t it?
After all, AI is a blanket term for things that have been around for some time. Whether it be machine learning or some other form of automating tasks, it is likely you and companies you have been doing business with have been using these tools for years.
The Evolution of Automation
There are many different iterations of software that can perform a simple “if this…then that” function. Think about it, when was the first time you called your bank and it read to you your account balance… 20 years ago? After you entered your account number into an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, it did a lookup in an application and read to you a number WITHOUT a human involved. Maybe it even took a step further and told you had an upcoming payment due or provided some other piece of pertinent information...an automated task, if you will. The point is, these efforts have been around for a while, but we are just now giving them this new terminology, dare I say “buzz word” that is getting tons of attention.
AI is the new Green
I recently heard a great analogy which talked about how when companies were saying they were “green”, it could have meant a lot of things. After all, did they create alternative forms of energy, or did they recycle? Both could be categorized as green initiatives and neither were bad, but they were totally different approaches to achieving a common goal, reducing harmful waste and/or improving sustainability. The same could be said for AI…there are many different ways to achieve efficiencies, leverage computing power and make intelligent decisions based on the input of data. It is the particular use cases and methods deployed that we are now intently focused on improving.
Automation in Customer Experience
What is really of most intertest is how companies are currently using technology to automate tasks and then, further, how they are applying them to support customers and internal workers.
Augmentation: Balancing Technology with Human Touch
Can a bot replace a person on some things? For sure! Think back to the system reading back information about an account balance or status of an existing order. Now this can also be done via a website or a mobile app and we can even give the bot a cool name for fun. However, often, the back-end technology is being used to AUGMENT a human. In other words, it can be looking up answers in the background during a live interaction and suggest a “Next Best Action” which will make the call center agent more efficient and make the experience for the customer better, faster and smoother. It also makes the knowledge worker (call center agent) happier by easing the workload in real time. In fact, I believe this is the more practical use of technology, for now, as it allows for there still to be the human interaction that we all covet, while at the same time improving business operations.
Finding the Right Blend
Finding the right blend of automation and augmentation is the real trick. You certainly want to gain all the benefits, operational efficiencies and cost savings but you do NOT want to frustrate customers and risk losing their loyalty and repeat business. The consensus among customer experience experts is that It only takes ONE bad experience to counter TEN good ones.
Conclusion: Embracing Human Expertise
Getting to the right balance can be done, but you must invest time to understand your customer’s journey, internal systems and processes and then choose the right solutions to pull it all together seamlessly. Of course, we would help you do that in addition to helping you pick the right technology platforms along the way and ensuring they are deployed correctly. After all, we are not machines!
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