Can chatbots do it better?

by ntegrity team
January 17, 2017

ntegrity’s Strategy Director and tech guru, Tony Lee, chats to JuiceFM’s Gosha and Michael about chatbots and robots taking over the customer service world…

TRANSCRIPT:

JuiceFM (Michael): We’re joined now by a man who loves technology, it is Tony from ntegrity. And Tony I often love social media and technology, but not when I’m trying to get some customer support.

Tony Lee: Isn’t that interesting, because more and more brands and consumers alike are now turning to their smartphones and social media to handle enquiries.

JuiceFM (Gosha): So how’s this going to work?

TL: Well in fact 60 percent of people who contact a brand on Twitter expect a response within 60 minutes. So this is actually something that is just naturally occurring. There are fully dedicated personnel at a brand level called Community Managers, and they are the ones writing back to you all your posts on a brand’s facebook wall. But Facebook is looking at introducing some more automated features to allow brands to use robots to automatically respond to customers.

JuiceFM (M): Yes, Zuckerberg released his 10 year plan a couple of days ago and was talking chatbots are the future. Artificial intelligence helping us with our customer service. Is this the idea?

TL: That’s exactly right. It’s all about instant service and also supplementing and replacing some of the traditional technology forms we already have. Zuckerberg is very much interested in an instant messager kind of environment and he wants to ensure he maintains that relationship.

JuiceFM (M): But Tony, I’ve got to say the current intelligence behind customer service is not that great. Is artificial intelligence going to be that much better?

TL: The research indicates that 77 percent of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand after a positive personalised customer experience. It does stand to reason that automation is not going to replace everything, but the more that brands are able to listen in to to people who have inquiries, the more they’re likely to build advocates for their brands. It’s worthwhile investing in, if you get it right!

JuiceFM (M): What happens to those Community Managers, people all around the world who until now have been hired to give customer service, and now they’re being replaced by a bot?

TL: Well I think it’s all part of the automation of our world. I think there’s a whole breed of new jobs in the future whereby we’ll be training robots instead of individuals. There’s probably a lot of consideration in that area!

JuiceFM (M): Well it’s a brave new world we’re entering.

JuiceFM (G): It’s a scary world!

JuiceFM (M): It IS a scary world! I’m looking forward to getting some advice from bots very soon and we will talk to you next week Tony and get advice from you.