Can chatbots completely replace humans ?

This is an interesting topic and AI geeks keep telling us that by 2020, more than 90% of the human interaction in customer services will move towards IVR and chatbots - essentially meaning the death rattle for BPO and call centre industry.

Before we delve into whether it can or cannot, lets analyse a few facts objectively :

1. Customer service is no 1 priority for any business - in the world where only the fittest survive, its imperative that every organisation tries to improve its level of service to its customers. To my mind, bot is just another additional tool that will provide an enhanced level of service with zero waiting times.

2. To be successful with bots you need move beyond commands to conversations. I think that’s where the real work is happening now. However given the dynamics of our business and customer care, the depth of penetration one can get in this area is debatable.

3. One of the reasons why we are even thinking of bots replacing humans is the fact that the majority of the conversations that we have today is with 'dumb' human agents. Empowering agents to use a bit of their grey matter only helps them survive in their bibs longer !

4. When we think of Customer Service, we tend to think only of complaints. However, that's not an accurate representation of what happens in contact centers. Based on Gartner's recent study, only 60% of support tickets are complaints, with the balance 40% split evenly between queries and requests. From personal experience and anecdotal evidence, chatbots can outperform human agents for answering virtually all customer queries.This is mainly because what is used in most cases here is a decision tree. However, for resolving complaints, AI and machine learning is needed and for the time being, chatbots simply are not sophisticated enough to entirely replace human presence – if indeed this would ever be desirable.

5. Forrester research reveals 75% of UK consumers are yet to even speak with a chatbot. So for all the noise and hyperbole, it is worth remembering that chatbots remain in the early adopter stage.

6. In the days of the e-commerce boom, there were predictions galore that it would be the end of the Retail market outside the cyber world. A couple of decades down the line, that's still far away from reality. What essentially the online platform has done is provide an additional channel of sales leveraging increased spending power of the customer. And by the same yardstick, with increasing spending power, there is a need of increasing levels of service which is where AI and chatbots come into the picture.

So by all means, whilst we do anticipate cost savings and efficiencies with advances in technologies, use of tools like chatbots will only provide businesses the opportunity to utilise their human workforce in more value adding tasks rather than mundane operations.