NOVEMBER - 20208Artificial intelligence is radically reshaping the modern customer experience, powering sophisticated support automation systems that enable businesses to deliver faster, better customer service at scale as their operations grow. Unlike their human counterparts, AI-powered virtual agents have the ability to provide uniform quality of service for customer engagements, 24 hours a day, with little or no downtime. However, while some have argued that these advantages will quickly make human support agents obsolete, they fail to account for the very real limitations of AI technology. Ultimately, modern artificial intelligence is only as "smart" as the data and input we give it. For the foreseeable future, human training, oversight, feedback, and -- crucially -- expertise will have a vital role to play in automated support systems. Support Automation on The RiseAccording to a report issued in January by global research and advisory firm Gartner, enterprise-level AI implementation has grown by 270 percent in the past four years, and 37 percent in 2018 alone. A more recent Gartner survey found that nearly 40 percent of service leaders are either piloting or actively using bots and virtual customer assistants in their contact centers. The value of AI in customer service is hard to dispute. Automated support systems allow companies to efficiently solve simple issues at scale, as AI-powered virtual agents have been shown to drastically reduce customer wait times. However, per Gartner CIO Research group Chief Researcher Chris Howard, "we still remain far from general AI that can wholly take over complex tasks." And as any service professional will tell you, human interaction in the world of customer support is far from a simple task.Complex Problems Require Human InterventionVirtual agents excel at helping customers solve simple problems quickly and at scale. Given a sufficient content library of information about a company, its products, and solutions to common customer complaints, they can easily retrieve appropriate responses to straightforward inquiries. For example, "The nearest store opens at 8 a.m.;" "Refunds are accepted until 30 days after purchase.;" "Just restart your phone to get it working again." Virtual agents can instantly deliver these simple solutions to customers when they need information fast. However, it's rarely that simple. Without human assistance, an AI-powered virtual agent is only as good as the data it has to interpret questions and deliver answers. And, if the virtual agent can't understand the customer's intent, it doesn't matter if you have a great content library for the virtual agent to pull from -- taking into account cultural and regional differences, company jargon and slang, the way customers ask questions is incredibly varied and difficult to decipher. Businesses need to build vast databases to give their AI enough information to tackle the wide variety of customer engagements and By Mike de la Cruz, CEO, DirectlyAI IS CHANGING CX, BUT HUMAN INTELLIGENCE STILL MATTERSMY OPINIONINMike de la Cruz
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