Will artificial intelligence kill the contact centre?

Young people have stopped picking up the phone to complain. Instead, they're increasingly likely to do business over webchat, messenger or Twitter. As artificial intelligence advances, it's likely we'll all be chatting with even more automated and intelligent bots - even if they appear on the surface like a human customer service agent. In February, the chief executive of Citigroup, Mike Corbat, suggested that "tens of thousands" of people who are currently working in their American bank centres are likely to be replaced by machines. A few days later, a report from two economists at University College Cork suggested that two in five Irish jobs might be supplanted by AI, with administration and customer service roles at particular risk, although another economist later suggested that their report was "overstated" and "fear-inducing."