IEEE Future Directions
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Quite often when we think of robots stealing our jobs we imagine some Asimov-like anthropomorphic robot handling some blue collar work. Actually, there is another category of robots, normally called “bots” that is already replacing white collars… and in the thousands!
Conversica is a US company that specialises in bots powered by AI that can play the role of a sale – consultant rep answering calls, responding emails and SMS.
The bots have a name, a telephone number and an email address and it is getting more and more difficult to tell they are not real persons.
The client (or should we say the employer) gets to pick their name and can change it during the course of their emplyment (something that is not easy to do with a real person). The way the bot talks and interacts, you may say its personality, as well as -hard to believe but true!- its name has an impact on the customer.
By looking at over 250 million transactions managed by its bots active in over 1,000 companies, it turns out that Marie and Ashley are better in closing deals with customers, having them interested in what they sell. And it is a matter of name, since from a behavioural point of view they act using the same (AI) brain.
An Ashley or a Marie costs the emplyer less than 3,000$ a month, that is what Conversica charges for its bots. They work 24h 365days, never get sick, ask for a leave of absence, they are always focussed, never forget to call back a customer, are willing to adapt their interactionto a specific customer and learn how to deal with that customer better and better.
They are so good that often the customer walk to the point of sale and ask to talk with Marie, at first creating some embarassement. Now that these kinds of requests have become frequent the physical employees have a ready made set of answers, like: “she is not in right now, can I help you?”.
Conversica claims that their bots are making the sale process much more efficient and do not necessarily lead to a head cut, rather they make possible to shift real persons to handle the last part of the deal or do more creative stuff. The reality, I feel, is that Conversica bots show that AI has reach a point where it can mimic a real person in a specific “soft” activity. These bots are so convincingly “humans” they receive emails from customers asking them for a dinner, and even get love messages, to which they respond with appropriate courtesy…
Conversica is not alone. Other companies are offering AI based bots to handle the search of potential customers and to manage a varied set of interactions. So far most of offers keeps the human in the loop but more and more of the process is being managed by bots. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see this “more and more” ending up in “all”!
Industry 4.0 is going to take full advantage of these bots in several parts of the value chain. As interactions spread through the value chain, including producer and end customer/user relations it is most than likely that bots will be used, particularly considering the producers are not equipped with the skills (and people) to deal with the end customers, having relied on the distribution chain (and retail) to manage the end customer.
