If you have an online business then you probably have some form of customer support. Often this appears as a “Contact Us” tab on the menu of your website. From your experience as a customer, can you honestly say that you have ever been happy with a standard web form? When you are trying to resolve an issue you usually want to talk to someone from the company that is courteous and really knows the product.
Traditional human tech support associates can be very unreliable and expensive. There’s the lease on the building, salaries and training costs. All of this might add up to several hundred thousand dollars and humans can be very unreliable. What if there was a computer generated AI that could listen to customer questions and answer intelligently?
Sydney based MyCyberTwin is a company that attempts to fill the online customer service niche. Their CGI customer service representative will answer almost any question quickly and intuitively. The good news is that any company can afford this technology. Prices range from $25/month to $15,000/month + a $300,000 startup fee for the super customized version. You can ask her questions just as you would ask a human. When you ask her “Do you have Twitter?” she will respond with the companies Twitter ID.
Unfortunately, as a technology professor at Grove City College says, computers are idiots. They only do as their programming tells them. They can’t improvise very well when faced with an unexpected question. When this Virtual Human was asked “If I ordered a pair of shoes now, when do you think I can get them shipped to me?” she replied, “Things often look more complete when they are in a pair, less lonely perhaps. Would you agree?”. Artificial Intelligence still has a long way to go before good old fashioned humans are obsolete.
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Interesting article. It seems that a lot of companies think automated tech support and artificial intelligence in websites are the “future” and will make them cutting edge. These “cutting edge” technologies are not nearly refined enough and have caused people not to work with companies, leave websites, and even drop the internet altogether (my grandmother!). The so-called “old fashion” approach of human interaction and real personal service is still superior to the new wave of AI and automation.