[PODCAST] How the Contact Center is Poised to Change in the Next Five Years, Pt. 3

Chatbots are the new IVR. When you’re not talking to a human, they’re incredibly dumb (and not very helpful). Some companies built them right—but they usually have big teams of engineers behind them.

The ideal experience is speaking to a human instantly.

Rowan Trollope’s very first question to a chatbot is, “Are you human?”

If it’s not a human, he doesn’t bother.

The innovation needed to develop a truly conversational chatbot requires a whole bunch of labeled data. 

In the case of Starbucks, the problem was, “How do you know the million ways that a person could ask for a latte?” When they tried to create a bot that was a conversational interface (a.k.a. a virtual barista), they didn’t have any way to get that data. The project stalled and failed.

We’re quite far away from a test-passing virtual aid that compares to a human.

However, we’re much closer to “augmentation for agents,” where the human is still in the middle, but the AI is giving that human superpowers by literally listening to the conversation in real time and giving predictions and recommendations about what to say next.

Check out more of Rowan’s thoughts on the intersection of AI and humans in contact centers by listening to the latest episode of That’s Genius! Listen here.