One-quarter of customer service operations to use chatbots by 2020, says Gartner

One quarter of customer service and support operations will integrate chatbot technology – otherwise known as virtual customer assistant (VCA), across engagement channels by 2020, up from less than 2% last year, says analyst firm Gartner. According to research by Gartner, organizations report a reduction of up to 70 percent in call, chat or email inquiries after implementing a VCA. They also report increased customer satisfaction and a 33% saving per voice engagement. And organizations realize this, with more than half of those investing in VCAs doing so for customer service to tap into the advantages of automated self-service and the ability to escalate to a human agent in complex situations. "As more customers engage on digital channels, VCAs are being implemented for handling customer requests on websites, mobile apps, consumer messaging apps and social networks. This is underpinned by improvements in natural-language processing, machine learning and intent-matching capabilities," said Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner at the Gartner Customer Experience Summit in Tokyo earlier this week.