Friend Or Foe: AI And Customer Service

Back in 2011, Gartner made a bold prediction that "by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human." The convergence of cloud, social, mobile, and information technologies are driving customer support into a "posthuman" age of self-service and automation. We're now well past the halfway mark in that forecast's journey toward fruition, but it can't be described as smooth sailing. While automation efforts may be intended to streamline customer service, making things faster and easier, the result is often the opposite. An Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Survey indicates customers are increasingly frustrated with the level of service they receive from companies.