We can count customer service as an industry being infultrated by AI. This is likely to have an impact upon jobs over the next decade as the technology improves.
For the moment, companies are using this as an adjunct to what humans are already doing. However, as we know, when something is faster, cheaper, safer, and better, it becomes the standard.
The experience is being enhanced by with avatars.
AI Taking Over Customer Service
This is the future.
Call centers are respositories for data. AI starts with the feeding of data, hence it is an ideal combination.
Customer service is, to a large degree, is the regurgitation of information. Companies are structuring account information in a way that the dataset can be accessed without the assistance of humans.
This is why LLMs are becoming so popular. The ability to understand natural language means interaction with humans can be undertaken by the computers.
It is a way to save a great deal of money while also, hopefully, improving the service people receive. ONe major problem, up to this point is that people are not accustomed to dealing with computers as such.
Instead, they want to deal with humans. This is what the goal of the technology is.
The move is taken to another level when avatars are added.
Powered by generative AI and agentic AI, digital avatars are boosting efficiency across industries like healthcare, telecom, manufacturing, retail and more. According to Gartner, by 2028, 45% of organizations with more than 500 employees will use employee AI avatars to expand the capacity of human capital.
One of the biggest advantages is around the clock availability. This is crucial in a field such as healthcare.
For instance, a medical-based AI agent can provide 24/7 virtual intake and support telehealth services. Or, a virtual financial advisor can help enhance client security and financial literacy by alerting bank customers of potential fraud, or offering personalized offers and investment tips based on their unique portfolio.
It doesn't take much use of image generation to see how generative AI is capable of creating lifelike images. Going one step further, some companies are bring avatar technology to a more realistic level.
2024 Technology
To see what is happening, we need to look passed the present.
Anything we see today is dealing with 2024 technology. What does this look like in 2027 or 2028? That is how industries get disrupted.
We know that technology will be more advanced as we move towards the end of the decade. Even if AI technology is slowing, something many dispute, 36-48 months is a long time in the technology world.
One area where we see a consistent standard is with AI compute. It is still doubling every 6 months. That held for most of the past decade and indications are things are keeping pace.
Compute is at the center of this. It is why a company like xAI pays a premium to get early delivery of the latest chips.
It is easy to see how automation is going to completly overtake customer service. My forecast is that we are looking at a 12 month buffer once the technology is available to automate these jobs. What this means is around 80% of jobs will disappear. There will, naturally, still be a need for some humans but the total is much less.
For the moment, we have not seen the technology up-to-par. OpenAi showed a conversation piece earlier this year but, thus far, it is not on market. Once something like that hits with the capabilities reqiured to handle most inquiries, then it is simply a matter of feeding the company data in.
We might still be a year away from the software being fully available. That said, we are not looking at something that is decades away.