Artificial Intelligence Service in 2020
AI or Artificial Intelligence is generally associated with an area of computer science that emphasizes the involvement and evolvement of intelligent machines.
Although the traditional goals of A.I. were limited to offer knowledge, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, learning, planning, and ability to manipulate and move objects, AI service in 2020 will be designed for general intelligence –the intelligence of a machine that has the capacity to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI), also known as machine learning, emphasizes intelligence demonstrated by machines.
According to Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (AIMA) written by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig.
AI describes any machine that mimics ‘cognitive’ functions that humans associate with the human mind, such as “learning” and “problem-solving.”
The field of A.I. research birthed at a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956 attended by experts from CMU, MIT, and IBM. They were limited by technology to further their research and development of AI, and it took another 30 years to actually develop A.I. tools that could do complete essential human tasks. Data mining, logical testing, and medical diagnosis were the early A.I. implementations. Today, A.I.is more or less used by anyone with the help of the internet, desktop applications, and mobile apps.
AI is classified into three categories
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI)
ANI accounts for intelligence in performing a single task with smartness and is the most basic concept of AI. Examples include speech recognition and voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
AGI accounts for both smartness and efficiency applied to do various tasks as well as learn and improve over time.
Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI)
ASI is the smartest and the most sophisticated of AI. Although theoretical, ASI highlights the super intelligence that surpasses human intelligence and takes into account abstractions that are impossible for humans to think.
Why A.I. will transform how customer service works?
As pointed by Naumov (Author of A.I. Is My Friend),
“Companies are looking for ways to adopt technology to keep up with that level of increasing customer expectations.”
Better customer experience is key to achieving long term business goals. Companies are always on a lookout to find reliable A.I. tools that can bring their customers close to them, while customers are always looking for easy, reliable, and fast service.
Automation
Automation saves time for both customers and companies. It helps to bridge the gap between user and communication by providing a tool to access information at go. Companies realized that automated customer service is the future of retaining customers.
Automation has been exclusively implemented by companies to provide better service to their customers. Chatbot, Analytics, and Reporting are some of the key Automation-tools that have already been implemented and improved for better user experience. Hence, the future of A.I. for companies lies in assembling the Automated Customer Service team.
Some of the major advantages of automated customer service are;
• Leaving no room for human error
• Allowing free time for human agents to excel in other areas
• Minimizing the wait time (load-time)
• Save on retaining new employees
• Minimize employee overhead cost
• Automation is easy to adopt and adapt
A.I. in different field/Business
A.I. has been successfully implemented in different fields of Businesses. Some of the most popular uses of A.I. in Business fields include;
Amazon
Alexa is a virtual assistant developed by Amazon. The company’s A.I. language assistant unit has been sold over 100 million times worldwide, making it one of the most recognizable tech brand.
Apple
Siri is a virtual assistant developed by Apple Inc. in 2011. The AI language assistant is available in every Apple product including iPhone, iPad, Mac, watchOS, and tvOS.
Banjo
Banjo is an AI that searches social media to identify real-time events and situations that could be critical for emergency services and helps organizations to operate faster. It was founded after the tragic bombings of the Boston Marathon 2013.
The AI implemented in Facebook helps to scan photos and located or alert the user appearing in the picture. Facebook is investing in AI development for future products.
How A.I. is changing customer service?
Customer Service relies on knowledge and can act or react like humans if they have abundant information relating to the business and users. With time, A.I. gets smarter at intervening with solutions, before customers encounter problems in their self-service interactions with a company’s digital systems.
Automation and Personalization are two key features of A.I. that have helped to carry out most customer-related problems with ease.
Uses of A.I. for Customer service
Salesforce’s Chief Digital Evangelist, Vala Afshar opines
The line-of-business that is most likely to embrace A. I.first will be the customer service — typically the most process-oriented and technology savvy organization within most companies.
Chatbot or Augmented Messaging
Chatbots, the automated software agents, is an essential element of natural language learning. The implementation of Chatbots on the website helps to interact with the visitors usually in a natural language such as English and operate tasks as requested by the visitors.
Siri in Apple products and OK.Google in Android application is the best example of Chatbots. At the enterprise level, the use of Chatbots is often to process customer queries, sales, and support.
It is worthwhile to note that chatbots can perform freely without A.I. as they are developed to understand language, however, without A.I. the chatbots could only comprehend a narrow set of language predefined by the programmers. If a phrase, sentence or command deviates only so slightly from the known set of sentences, a Chatbot will not be able to parse it.
Self-Learning Algorithm
A.I. facilitates web programming too. A.I. can perform a variety of basic tasks like adding, editing and updating the records to the database. It can also help predict what codes are most likely to be utilized to solve a certain problem. It can prompt web developers in adopting a particular solution based on the predictions.
Most software, both web, and desktop-based can easily create a full-functioning website with customized inputs. The A.I. takes in the request from the users and produces a product suiting the user’s satisfaction.
AI Organized Email Inquiries
A company may receive many emails which may take a customer agent a lot of time to read and react. AI helps to speed up the process by scanning and tagging emails to direct them to the right office. Organized email inquiry also provides customer service agents with macros and clips from the best past responses to quickly create a new response.
Self-Populating Analytics
Companies can now offer self-populating data and analytics to users. A digital agency like Hubspot and SEO.com provides a platform to generate automated reports on the website’s performance, SEO rankings, and SEO weight of any website.
Some web analytics can help for mining and graphing of data along with the analysis and implementation such as in Google Adwords.
Customer Relationship Management
The software such as CRM (Client Relation Management) works completely on automation. The robust tool doesn’t only help to digitize each process but also provides reports, data, and solutions. Sending out emails, newsletters, social media updates, reminders, updating the database, and reporting etc are few of the essential A.I. functions that are carried by CRM.
According to a 2016 report from McKinsey
29 percent of what customer-service representatives do has the potential for automation.
What are the challenges using A.I.?
The great inventions aren’t always uncontroversial. There are many benefits to A.I., but it has certain setbacks that make it a technology needing to keep improving with time.
Lack of the human approach
One of the major setbacks of A.I. is that lacks human approach to problems such as empathy and reasonability, which are quintessentially human abilities. A customer service agent can react to an emotional bond with the customer and react accordingly, which however is less likely possible with automation.
The success of a technology depends on its design
As with every machine, the usability depends largely on the design. If your chatbot doesn’t understand questions laid out by customers, the conversation will become redundant. This may chase away your customers.
Unable to resolve complex issues
Solving complex issues is human nature. If the A.I. only reacts to simple customer problems, such as purchase, billing, types of products, etc and fails to react to understand, negotiate, or find alternative solutions, it clearly becomes a simple machine. The development of A.I. is linked to finding solutions to complex human issues.
Model Errors
Artificial intelligence is not error-free. Sometimes, human prejudices seep into the system algorithms that may produce biased results. If the datasets are biased, any issues like that can cause AI to produce inaccurate outcomes.
According to Neoteric.eu
23% of respondents say that the main reason they haven’t further adopted A.I. is the fact that their company culture doesn’t recognize the needs of A.I.
The use of A.I. and human counterparts goes hand in hand. The practical use of both resources to gain the best outcome should be the key goal of any company. Moreover, companies should understand the need of A.I. for customer service and find ways to integrate it into their system to reap the benefit of technology.
Searchable Design is a premier technology company specializing in AI service in Des Moines.
