AsiaIndustrial NetNews:robotReplacing human work, this is the bridge in science fiction movies. With artificial intelligence advancing by leaps and bounds in recent years, this scenario is getting closer and closer to reality. Especially since the beginning of this year, the demand for intelligent customer service has increased significantly, and it is possible that customer service will become the first industry “captured” by artificial intelligence.
Yesterday, in an interview with reporters, a number of interviewed artificial intelligence R&D and sales companies said that it is a matter of time before artificial intelligence replaces traditional customer service in a large proportion with the currently available technology.
Status quo E-commerce giants deploy intelligent customer service
Artificial intelligence testing the waters of customer service industry first appeared in the field of e-commerce. As early as 2013, Taobao has enabled intelligent robot customer service to deal with the massive inquiries every day. At first, these intelligent Robots were only used as Taobao’s official automatic reply. Later, Taobao launched a seller version of robot customer service. Today, on the platforms of mainstream e-commerce giants, it is not surprising that when consumers consult and purchase products late at night, they encounter robot customer service responses.
Liu Hui, Dean of JD Data Research Institute, said: “In the field of pre-sales consulting, in several categories, the customer satisfaction rate of robot customer service consulting has exceeded that of human customer service. During the big promotion period, when there are more customer service robots, we probably exceed 50%. All customer service tasks are completed by artificial intelligence robots, and more than 80% of consulting customer service will be realized by artificial intelligence in the future.”
In foreign countries, the use of artificial intelligence is more “avant-garde”. At the end of 2016, Amazon has launched the world’s first unattended convenience store. There are no shopping guides and no cashiers. Consumers swipe their mobile phones when they go in, and then they can take them as they like, and leave after they are finished. All consumption is settled through sensor artificial intelligence.
Xi’an intelligent customer service is very popular
In Xi’an, smart customer service has also begun to be favored by more and more enterprises and institutions.
Ms. Wang from the Office of the Provincial Digital Certification Center told reporters that the center has been using the intelligent customer service system since April 2015. “It’s very convenient, and it can be on call 24 hours a day, because we serve the whole province, and many times the inquiries can’t be called. If you choose artificial intelligence customer service, it may be done in two minutes.”
In Ms. Wang’s view, another advantage of intelligent customer service is that the cost is low. The cost of the intelligent customer service system used in the center is only 5,000 yuan per year, which is equivalent to the salary of a human customer service agent in less than two months. If there are any system problems during the period, the platform provider will follow up.
However, in the opinion of Li Hang, deputy general manager of Xi’an Stooges Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd., such intelligent customer service is still a little simple. They are promoting another more “smart” system. Intelligent customer service needs to be able to complete “calls” with customers, and can also improve business capabilities through “learning”.
Li Hang said, “In this system, all conversations of human customer service will be stored in the ‘cloud’ to form big data, and intelligent customer service will find out the most frequent replies, or the replies that the inquirer is satisfied with and rated the highest. When encountering the same question, the intelligent customer service will choose it as the answer.”
According to Li Hang, this kind of intelligent customer service system is more expensive, with a mid-range price of 1,800 yuan/seat/year, and 1 seat corresponds to 1 customer service. “In the beginning, local companies thought it was expensive, but after getting in touch with it, I found that compared to its price, it was still worth the money.”
“Currently, the replacement rate of intelligent customer service for traditional customer service software is less than 10%, so the market still has a lot of room for growth.” Li Hang said.
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