CX Trends 2023 – Consumers Expect AI to radically transform service
I chose this topic to my reaction paper due to personal interests. Through my background on marketing and studies on customer experience, this report caught my eye. For about one year now, I have been wanting to study more about AI and its potential, but unfortunately have had no time to do my research. I would like to utilise AI in my future career in marketing and customer experience, and to become an expert of AI. In AI one of my special interests is human cognition and intelligence, and how it can keep up with the fast paced, forever evolving technology.
Although I have been working on marketing and updating my skills on technology more or less for about 8 years, I have not gotten very familiar with Moore’s law. According to a Zendesk report I have just read, Gordon Mooren formed a theory that computational capabilities doubles every year. Moore’s law became known back in 1965 but since then it has had major updates. According to computer scientists at the University of Aberdeen in the UK, the frequency is nowadays 6 months for AI-powered computing capabilities.
For me this does not come as a surprise, because I have been aware about the fastening pace of technology development. I have also gotten familiar with evolution and cognition which has led me to think the human brain possibly cannot keep up with all the constantly changing technology. The research that was done by the computer scientists proves that the pace is really fast and leads me to wonder if people can keep up with the development. Human brain has barely changed at all in a century, so will there be a point when all this processing of information becomes too much to handle for regular people?
Despite the worries about keeping up with the technology I, like seemingly many others, have been filled with optimistic curiosity and impatience towards artificial intelligence and its possibilities. However the question arises while reading the Zendesk report, if there is enough professionalism to use AI and develop customer service to its full potential at this point. How can we make sure we have enough professionals to use and improve AI services for small businesses? How about AI companies providing full service on adjusting the use of AI for specific companies? Should all small business owners get familiar with AI, or is there a better way of getting the full potential out of it?
For this paper I do not have the answers, and maybe no one has. Maybe only the future will show how far we can go using AI. Personally I believe, small businesses would need the help of bigger companies and affordable full service packages to use AI at this point. I was an entrepreneur for 5 years in the marketing industry, and I met dozens of small business owners who had no idea how to use social media for marketing at this point. This led me wondering if the majority of small business owners are ready for AI solutions at all. How are they able to comprehend and maintain these AI powered solutions? Does a small business even have to reach its full potential on the market, or is it enough to do what the owner is good at? These are deep ethical questions by nature.
On the other hand, AI is not just used by small companies, but also large multinational companies that are desperately in need of fast and profitable tools for customer service for example. The use of chatbots has been increasing but according to the report, 74 % of consumers agree that most companies could improve the transition to a human agent. For me it seems companies using chatbots may not be as up to date as it seems on the first look. AI is not (at least yet) capable to replace human agents, nor evaluate always correctly if there is a need for presence of human agents. Technically the information the companies have collected should be enough to evaluate much more than they do, and it seems 59 % of consumers eagerly expect companies to put the information to better use, which leads us to the next point; empathy on customer encounters. 7/10 consumers say AI should be able to understand and respond to their emotions, and 64 percent think AI is getting better at understanding and responding to their emotions. Considering this it would not be a bad idea at all for AI to be set automatically to connect to a human agent when it encounters certain feelings.
Speaking of emotions – personally I do not think AI can possibly be empathetic enough compared to a real human being, despite its capabilities of recognising human emotions. True empathy requires being able to relate to the feelings the opposite is experiencing. Therefore I don’t think it is likely that AI will completely replace human agents in the near future. However it can be used in various tasks to help human agents and it still has a lot of potential unused.
