As AI technology becomes more sophisticated, we will come to rely more heavily on our Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) to help us with a wide range of tasks – the future of self service will be all about allowing them to take greater responsibility over all aspects of our lives, from daily tasks to financial, legal and even romantic matters.
Companies and brands have recognized the business advantages of Virtual Customer Assistants (VCAs) as well, with research indicating that AI self-service technology could save companies approximately 30 billion customer service hours and $8 billion in revenues.
As accuracy levels improve, truly autonomous self service is now becoming a reality. Automation has enabled a new generation of smart virtual assistants that assume traditional human roles, interacting with customers as telecom technicians, bank tellers, consumer electronics experts, loss adjustors, sales reps and many other tasks. In specific use cases, IPAs will soon be able to interact autonomously with VCAs and with each other to streamline our lives, resolve a wide range of issues and even collaborate on getting better deals.
Powered by Computer Vision, IPAs will soon be able to proactively identify issues in a consumer’s home, such as empty pantry shelves, leaking faucets, incorrectly configured smart blinds and improperly positioned smart cameras and contact the relevant VCA to resolve the issue.
Imagine if your virtual assistant could:
- Independently run your household, interacting with companies’ VCAs to order groceries and negotiate with handymen
- Contact a friend’s IPA to set a coffee date or organize a carpool
- Collaborate with multiple neighbors’ IPAs to plan a block party or negotiate with the local authority
The core technologies that will drive these capabilities are already in place. NLP text mining can derive insights from the written word, voice analytics can extract data and emotion from speech and machine learning can perform the cognitive functions typically associated with the human mind. These technologies will all enable the virtual assistant of the future to understand real-world scenarios, solve problems, and interact intelligently with other AI-powered entities.
It’s no wonder that more consumers and companies are now tapping into the power of AI technologies to improve their day-to-day activities and operations. Gartner predicts that by 2025, consumers will spend less time using company channels and more time training their IPAs to deal with organizations on their behalf. After all, the infrastructure already exists; it will soon be simply a matter of letting go of the leash and letting your virtual assistant loose on world. Discover the future of self service – download the eBook now.
