TONY Stark stands overlooking the Pacific Ocean, readying himself for the test of all times – the high-altitude flight. With a roar, he rockets into the sky, passing through clouds and climbing higher and higher.
Suddenly, the suit begins to tremble. Ice crystals form on the suit. The Mark II starts losing control, the repulsors flicker.
Jarvis’ immediate warning comes on, “May I suggest immediate descent before complete system failure, sir?”
Jarvis is no human, he is an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, carved out from what can be the fantastical potential of generative AI (Gen AI).
Imagine having a Jarvis by your side as you work, guiding you on what to do and how to respond skilfully in a complex or stressful situation.
Now, imagine this in a customer service role in current times. An agent is unable to locate that “very important” parcel, while the person on the other line is getting ready to blow their top! Not a good picture.
As technology takes over the more mundane role from filing paperwork to giving you your real-time bank balance, chatbots and automated responses fall short of providing real answers!
Chatbots do well in answering simple single-step answers like quick access to historical data, but wouldn’t you rather hear a person’s voice on the other end of the phone in an emergency? Like when your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere?
Yes, I don’t discount the fact that there are simple tasks that Gen AI is better at.
But it works the same the other way round; there are things that humans do, and will always do better.
My vision for a world-class customer experience, is when AI works in the background to process vast amounts of data, offers real-time support and provides accurate and relevant information to the service agent.
What I really want to hear is a reassuring voice that says, “Don’t worry, we will get this resolved. This is what we will do for you ma’am!”
Just about every organisation touts “commitment to excellent customer service” as their core mission. But few are meeting expectations, especially in a heightened, fast-moving retail environment.
A company is only successful if its customers are delighted and satisfied. This means seamless customer service before, during and after in a world where the cost of human agents has become premium.
The power of Gen AI
Have you ever been put on hold for hours in a hotline and passed on from one department to the next or got caught in a never-ending messaging loop trying to get a clear answer? The frustrations of waiting plus the angst that the agents are unable to solve your problem can be a deal breaker.
Companies know this all too well and have adapted Gen AI to maximise what their support agents can do with the power of technology.
The ShopBot feature on eBay helps customers filter through the items it has, using text and voice prompts as well as photos.
What’s gained? Time of course!
Colonel Sanders’ KFC collaborated with a search engine from China called Baidu to use Gen AI to recommend an item from its menu based on what you might have had previously, using facial recognition.
So, not sure between a bucket of spicy fried chicken or a Zinger? You won’t even need to crack your head deciding.
Fancy doing some shopping at Heathrow Airport? The AI for customer experience will design a synthetic design assistant, a personal chatbot, and a content and knowledge assistant. You simply need to input what you might be interested in, and the app will lead you directly to it.
Marrying the two
I posit there are many things Gen AI can do obviously, but one of them that we often overlook is actually being an adviser of all sorts to those who need it.
For instance, there are times we call an airline to re-book a flight and the agent has all the information and easily quotes the price, time and journey of the new flight.
We also remember when a newbie picked up, and had no idea how to access your previous flight ticket or personal information, fumbling over attempts to re-book an earlier flight out.
Now who says you need to pick a human or robot? What if Gen AI was there to hand-hold the ones who need it, providing relaxed, easy training-on-the-go?
It’s important to realise that in an enterprise setting, the one thing that humans cannot do is comb through millions of data points and find the exact one a customer or client is looking for. Perhaps at one point, using a Google link or Excel sheet might have sufficed but it no longer does today.
The more advanced technology gets, the larger amount of data is being stored each day.
Picture that. Everything we buy, eat, shop for and even browse through is being stored somewhere.
As we fine-tune this tech, Gen AI will go from being a glorified calculator to the best wingman that can crack a joke, lend a hand and actually build a bond with us to serve our customers and genuinely put them at the heart of the business.
Just the Jarvis we need to support our frontliners, the real superheroes that can make or break your business!
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This article was first published in the StarBiz 7, Issue Sept 28 2024; Final huddle to big takeoff
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