Jordan St. Laurent does social work and has to call hospitals, courts, and schools all the time — and they all have AI customer service agents.
“Nine times out of 10, it just ends up having me have to reach out to a live representative,” St. Laurent said.
Even when he can reach one, it’s still difficult.
“I’ve spent probably upwards of 15 or 20 minutes simply just trying to get a fax number for a hospital,” he said.
In an age where talking to ChatGPT and Gemini is so effortless, there is great hope for AI’s potential in customer service.
“Businesses are investing,” said David Schweidel, professor of marketing at Emory University. “They think they may be able to significantly reduce their costs.”
Have AI do the easy stuff, save the hard stuff for the people.
Forrester estimates call center staff could be cut in half in five years. According to Max Ball, a principal industry analyst at Forrester, despite the savings, companies aren’t ready to just hand the customer service keys fully over to AI — yet.
“Almost nobody’s ready for that at this point,” Ball said.
They need to know: Will AI make customer service any less miserable?
“It’s the million-dollar question, right?” said Emily Potosky, a senior director analyst at Gartner. |
