Whenever people are asked about their vision of the future, some themes come up again and again: flying cars, hoverboards, and virtual reality which are among the most popular ideas. But what people really seem to want are functional robots.
A recent Forrester Research study named artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent agents as two of its top five technologies that have the potential to completely transform the world of technology by 2021. In particular, service to customers as a key sector that will be affected by this.
Asier Bollar, Marketing Director of Aspect for Latin America reports that although it is still far from having functional robots, walking and talking hidden among us, using artificial intelligence to help us with daily tasks, is already a familiar activity for many (like Apple's Siri), and it's expected to be a growing trend in the customer service sector.
“The way we interact with services is changing. "While most of us are probably not willing to have a real phone conversation with a robot, there are a lot more options available today when we want to contact a company, and some are already specially equipped with bots."
Is this the emergence of the robot agent?
Although some companies have enthusiastically adopted tools such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to be able to be where their customers are, Bollar warns that they should dip their feet when talking about AI and bots.
In this regard, the consulting house indicates that with more than three million users worldwide, messaging applications will also be the first experience of consumers with AI, so they will collide with AI, offering a change towards new conversation interfaces.
But are you prepared to face those changes? While this technology really holds great promise for the future, the executive notes that there are still big question marks about its launch. In order to work, he says, chatbots and robot agents will need to have a deep understanding of what is being asked of them.
Therefore, it will be the financial services sector that must be more careful. According to a Forrester report, the sectors that have made the most advances with AI are retail and communications, but not banking, since the level of customer experience provided by robots is not on par with that human agents can provide.
Another discovery from this report indicates that while many of the human-robot interactions reviewed went smoothly, in around a third of cases, artificial intelligence was unable to complete the customer's request and even offered a awkward experience.
“This is something that clearly needs to improve before people can get comfortable dealing with robots - especially when it comes to something as important as our finances. The good news, however, is that technology will improve - and it is already doing so at an impressive rate. Over the next two to three years, we can expect it to be ready for use in all sectors, including sensitive sectors such as financial services. ”
