According to a recent Zendesk study, 62% of the B2B and 42% of the B2C customers showed increased interest in purchasing goods online after experiencing positive customer service. The same study also mentions that 66% of the B2B and 52% of the B2C customers stopped buying after a bad customer service interaction. Conclusion: customer support is a vital part of most companies. [1]
Because of that, most companies have invested in customer support, which is sometimes also available online, through for example social media (Facebook, Twitter) or a chat option on the website itself. A downside of the latter two examples however, is that it is quite labor intensive. Most customers expect a fast reaction when they ask a question through online service, the Zendesk study mentions that it is the most important factor that defines the quality of customer support. [1] This is not the case for many companies so far however, as according to a study conducted by Harvard Business review, only 37% of businesses responded to a lead within an hour. [2]
This is where the opportunities for AI become apparent: AI customer support will never be offline and will always be quick to respond. Consequently, many businesses tried automating their chat rooms, but to no avail. The lack of success had many contributing factors, of which one was most apparent: it was obvious that customers were talking to a computer, as it often gave wrong or irrelevant answers.
That was in the past, however, and ever since there have been developments. AI have gotten closer than ever at beating the Turing test [3] and machine learning developments have received more funding than ever. Soon, the average customer will not be able to differentiate man from machine, not online at least. Over time, AI will probably replace traditional customer support, at least in the chatrooms and on social media. It is only a matter of time until other manners of customer support, such as phone calls, will be replaced by AI as well.
[1] Zendesk, 2013. Customer service and business results. Available at: https://d16cvnquvjw7pr.cloudfront.net/resources/whitepapers/Zendesk_WP_Customer_Service_and_Business_Results.pdf
[2] Harvard Business Review, 2011. The short life of online sales leads. Available at: https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads
[3] Todorovic, A. 2018. Has the Turing test been passed? Available at: http://isturingtestpassed.github.io/
