Artificial Intelligence in customer service

17

October

2017

No ratings yet.

Almost 40% of all major companies have already implemented artificial intelligence for customer service and slightly more than 40% are going to implement artificial intelligence for customer service by 2020 (Zhou, 2017).

Currently, there are two distinct ways in which artificial intelligence can be used in customer service. The first is by using artificial intelligence for computer programs to communicate directly with customers, without having humans intervene. Basically, this means that artificial intelligence is used to train the computer program in order to have them successfully answer questions, mostly just simple to answer questions (Zhou, 2017; Francis, 2017). An obvious advantage of this is that the company is able to save costs, for example for training customer service employees, since the computer program only has to be trained a singly time (Schneider, 2017). These types of programs also provide advantages for customers. The first advantage is that customers don’t have to wait for the program to respond, since the program can respond to every customer immediately. The second advantage is that these types of programs are available during the entire day (Hyken, 2017).

The other way artificial intelligence can be used for customer service is by supporting regular customer service representatives with their technology. This for example means that a customer service representative is given possible ways to respond to the problem of the customer, which the artificial intelligence can do since it has already tried interpreting the customer’s question. This obviously saves time for the employee, meaning that the same amount of employees can serve a larger amount of customers, saving costs (Zhou, 2017).

Obviously there are still some challenges and AI is still limited in some ways. For example, from a survey in America it became clear that 86% of customers expect to be able to be transferred to a live person (Francis, 2017). Similarly, AI bots still can’t answer a lot of questions of employees by themselves and therefore customers still need to be able to contact human employees in a lot of cases (Francis, 2017). But over time artificial intelligence will improve more and more and that clearly signals how important AI will become in the customer service industry.

Francis, N. (2017). The Truth About AI in Customer Service. Retrieved 17 October 2017 from https://www.helpscout.net/blog/ai-customer-service/

Hyken, S. (2017). AI And Chatbots Are Transforming The Customer Experience. Retrieved 17 October 2017 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2017/07/15/ai-and-chatbots-are-transforming-the-customer-experience/#550ed641f7bd

Schneider, C. (2017). 10 reasons why AI-powered, automated customer service is the future. Retrieved 17 October 2017 from https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2017/04/10-reasons-ai-powered-automated-customer-service-future/

Zhou, A. (2017). How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Enterprise Customer Service. Retrieved 17 October 2017 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/adelynzhou/2017/02/27/how-artificial-intelligence-is-transforming-enterprise-customer-service/#6eb5db401483

Please rate this

China, sustainability and the electric car

9

October

2017

No ratings yet.

Pollution is becoming more and more of a problem in China. That’s why the Chinese government is now in a major attempt to try and decrease pollution and have a better impact on the environment. One of the up and coming innovations that can definitely help with this and have a good impact on the environment is the electric car, and the Chinese government seems to realize this as well, putting in measures in order to increase the amount of electric cars on the road.

Electric cars are a means to decrease carbon emissions. Petrol cars emit significantly larger amounts of carbon dioxide than electric cars. For example, if an electric car uses electricity which is generated from renewable energy sources, then it would be able to produce up to six times less carbon emissions than a regular car (Fischer & Keating, 2017). Obviously, replacing all cars on the road with regular cars would be a very effective measure if you were looking to have a positive impact on the environment and there are several ways governments can help achieve that, for example by subsidizing electric cars and by establishing an infrastructure for electric cars (Van Wee, Maat & De Bont, 2012).

It therefore make sense that the Chinese government is currently putting in similar regulations in order to increase the amount of electric cars on the road. For example, they’ve currently been subsidizing electric cars as well as electric car charging stations, making them more attractive to purchase and produce (Schmitz, 2017). Very recently, more drastic measures have even been proposed, for example to ban the production of all petrol and diesel cars in China itself and to impose sales quotas for electric and hybrid cars, so that by 2025 at least 20% of the cars sold in China are these types of cars. (China to ban, 2017; Schwartz & Jourdan, 2017)

It will definitely be very interesting to see if these types of regulations are actually going to implemented and enforced and to see the impact of the electric car on the environment in China and the rest of the world.

 

China to ban production of petrol and diesel cars in the near future. (2017). Retrieved at 9 October 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/china-to-ban-production-of-petrol-and-diesel-cars-in-the-near-future

Fischer, H. & Keating, D. (2017). How eco-friendly are electric cars? [online] DW.  Retrieved at 9 October 2017 from http://www.dw.com/en/how-eco-friendly-are-electric-cars/a-19441437

Van Wee, B., Maat, K., & De Bont, C. (2012). Improving sustainability in urban areas: discussing the potential for transforming conventional car-based travel into electric mobility. European Planning Studies, 20(1), 95-110.

Schmitz, R. (2017). China moves to increase number of electric vehicles on its roads. [online] NPR. Retrieved at 9 october 2017 from http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/25/525412342/china-moves-to-increase-number-of-electric-vehicles-on-its-roads

Schwartz, J. & Jourdan, A. (2017). Global automakers call on China to ease ‘impossible’ electric car rules. [online] Reuters. Retrieved at 9 October 2017 from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-autos-electric/global-automakers-call-on-china-to-ease-impossible-electric-car-rules-idUSKBN19Y1RC

 

Please rate this