Customer service could start living up to its name

"YOUR CALL IS important to us," a recorded voice tells resigned customers as they wait endlessly to speak to a human agent. AI is starting to help companies improve the quality and consistency of their service in order to persuade customers that they do in fact care about them. Ocado, a British online grocer, receives around 10,000 e-mails from customers every day and uses AI to detect the prevailing sentiment in them. It now replies to the most urgent ones first, and is planning to route complaints to agents with expertise in the relevant field. "Like other applications of AI, it's about trying to make humans more efficient, not take them out of the process entirely," says Paul Clarke, Ocado's chief technology officer.