In addition to the discussions about eliminating simple and unnecessary customer contact, it's time to start a discussion about eliminating customer contact jobs. AI and AI chatbots will turn the field upside down in the short term.

 

Yes, jobs will be lost when using AI and AI chatbots, although Lenhard Los does not want to speculate on how many, the FD said last week. Even Teleperformance CEO Daniel Julien literally called AI 'the elephant in the room' during the explanation of the annual figures. He obliquely noted: “In a few cases, AI replaces the human employee.” Also Robin Gareiss, CEO and chief analyst at Metrigy, makes no bones about it in trade magazine No Jitter: “For years, a major concern about AI has been that it would take away people's jobs. For the first time in our research, we see measurable redundancies as a result of the use of AI in the contact center.”

In our own country, players such as Bol, Cygnific, QuandaGo, Engaige, Randstad and Genesys all indicate that the number of Dutch customer contact employees will decrease in the near future. During the last PvKO Winter Festival in January this year, there was actually a brief philosophizing about what you as an organization would rather NOT ALLOWED loses: a customer or an employee?

Will they take everything from us?

For the gut thinkers: of course there remains customer contact work in the Netherlands, because not everyone can or wants to fall back on automation or offshoring. But customer contact professionals may assume that 'the more complex customer contacts of today' are the 'simpler customer contacts of tomorrow'. In addition, the idea that agents will mainly focus on more high-quality and complex customer contact in the next few years is becoming less and less tenable. With thanks to, among others, the FNV trade union, which seems to pay little attention to consumer behavior, choices of outsourcers, their sourcing strategies and the BPO business who likes to get a piece of that. From that perspective, customer contact is indeed a value center.

Soon in the industrial waste

Yes, using 'chatbot 1.0' is an insult to your customer and indeed proves the need for human agents. But that chatbot will soon be disposed of as industrial waste. I wonder to what extent this applies to the large group of agents, QA employees, coaches, supervisors and team leaders in our country and at offshore locations. Many contact center managers find it a strange idea that machines should start talking to each other instead of people. Are they the new Luddites? One thing is certain: relocating employees will become difficult if the machine bureaucracy (which is the contact center) starts to automate fully. Anyone who is already thinking about retraining programs for customer contact professionals is certainly not too late.

PERCENTAGE

In practice, 50% to 60% of customer contacts do not have to be resolved by humans, he said Lenhard Los in the FD. He rightly notes that the use of chatbots (for the automated handling of 'the more simple customer contacts') is a signal that you do not have your processes in order. The respondents from the aforementioned Metrigy survey are, if possible, even clearer. To the question 'Does AI fill the gap between business growth and the lack of agents to handle that growth?' 84,2% answered affirmatively.

Some other quotes and percentages of “yes-sayers”: AI reduces the number of customer interactions that require live agent support: 51,4%. AI reduces the time of conversations/interactions: 50,5%. And: AI reduces the time needed for follow-up calls: 49,2%. According to No Jitter, about half of respondents are using AI to alleviate agent shortages: more calls per agent and higher quality are the common thread.

'AI is the death knell for call centers'

" 'Human in the loop' is the cry of the moment and that makes sense, as a portion of consumers will continue to feel uncomfortable with AI agents,” said No Jitter publisher Eric Krapf. He thinks it is still too early to determine a trend. But he also states: “We would do well to question our assumptions.” In other words: AI is developing at such a pace that some companies will quickly rethink the mix of humans and AI.

“AI is the death knell for call centers, because it is the thing that can take all the human costs out of support. Many suggest that AI would empower agents, but if AI can do that, why not directly support callers and completely eliminate agent costs?” said the American analyst Tom Nolle. As far as he is concerned, we need to think about what the transformation from human-driven to AI assistant-driven support will require in terms of technology tools, “because that is where we are going,” says Nolle.

The impact of the transformation

As far as I'm concerned, we should also start thinking about what that transformation means for organizations, for their customers and their employees, not to mention the burden on our planet. This brings me to the Customer Service Federation, which is committed, among other things, to keeping high-quality customer contact affordable. 'Affordable' now seems to mainly be about the (increasing) wage costs of agents. That seems to me to be outdated soon, which is why it is good that the KSF is calling in auxiliary forces to get the best possible picture of the transformation and impact of new technology in the customer contact field. (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

Featured, Human Resources, Opinions