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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/

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Over the last few years, 3D printing has become a hype. At the start, almost 40 years ago, these printers were only suitable for creating plastic. These printers have been undergoing quite some changes the last years. Up until only a few years ago, modern 3D printers had essentially three big limitations:

• The speed of the printers;
• The type of materials they could print.
• The cost of the printers.

 

The speed of the printers
Since the developments from the last few years, 3D printers have gotten 40 or 50 times as fast as conventional printers. Machine parts that used to be made in 12 hours now only take 15 minutes to create. This improvement opened up a lot of options for the usage of 3D printers.

 
The type of materials
The oldest 3D printers could not print many different metals. This means that products couldn’t be created with the same characteristics that would be possible in a factory. This however, is changing as 3D printers become more and more capable. Nowadays, 3D printers can create products of the same quality, and can create products made of metal and fiber instead of just plastic.

 

The cost of the printers

The cheapest quality 3D printers in 2014 used to cost at least $2000. Nowadays, not even 5 years later, they are available for less than half of that. Technological progress and increased demand has caused a plummet in prices, it is likely that the prices will decrease even more as time passes.

 

How 3D printers will disrupt the industry
It is incredibly difficult to assess what the future impact of this development will be. Businesses will start and have started using 3D printers to manufacture specific products. It is entirely possible that 3D printers will replace some factories, as the printers are more flexible and can produce small amounts for less. Another possibility is that 3D printers eventually become so advanced and cheap that it becomes a household product, like a pc is now. If that happens, entire industries would change, as a lot of companies would become obsolete when people get the possibility to create, for example, their own clothes. Clothing companies would have to start selling designs instead of the clothes themselves.

 

There are many more possibilities for 3D printing, what do you think will happen once 3D printers become cheap and mainstream?

 
Sources:

Goldberg, D. (2018). History of 3D printing: it’s older than you are. Available at https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/history-of-3d-printing/

Reichental, A. (2018). The future of 3-D printing. Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/01/23/the-future-of-3-d-printing/#2f7ac3b65f65

3Dinsider, (2018). How Much Does a 3D Printer Cost? Available at https://3dinsider.com/cost-of-3d-printer/