Just when you thought that customer service couldn’t get any worse comes news that enterprise robots (i.e. customer service avatars or virtual staff) are coming to a customer call centre nowhere near you very soon. The idea (and it’s not a bad one) is that human operatives cost lots of money and are not efficiently employed when they are answering dumb questions from customers. Hence, semi-intelligent avatars that can guide customers through routine tasks, thereby freeing up the carbon-based bi-peds to do the warm and fuzzy relationships stuff. Be afraid. Very afraid.
In particular, you’ll see the avatars switch from automatic mode to puppet-mode whenever you ask them something they can’t figure out and they kick over to a human being who’s looking into a webcam, getting their facial features scanned by a program that translates their facial changes into those of the avatar. The natural customer response will be to ask a question that gets you a human right off the bat, much the way that I go into technical detail on support calls that cause them to get me an engineer sooner rather than later.
I think this is a classic example of a technology we can do but shouldn’t.
Sorry Ross, but are you putting one line headlines into RSS feeds now?? If this is the case, then I probably wont be able to read your content anymore.
Of course.. I meant Richard!
I know. I will sort that when I’m back in teh office….Thanks!
Richard.