Generative AI could soon decimate the call center industry, says CEO

[midian182]

A hot potato: It's no secret that certain types of jobs are more threatened by artificial intelligence than others. Call center workers fall into this category, and while we've already seen a few companies replace phone-based support staff with generative AI, there are warnings that the entire industry could be comprised mostly of chatbots in as soon as a year.

The grim prediction comes from K Krithivasan, head of Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The second-largest company in India by market cap, it has more than 616,000 employees worldwide.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Krithivasan said AI will result in a "minimal" need for call centers. The CEO added that while "we have not seen any job reduction" so far, that will change as multinational clients adopt generative AI. The technology is expected to have a massive impact on the customer help center industry, which, according to a Gartner report in 2022, employs about 17 million people.

"In an ideal phase, if you ask me, there should be very minimal incoming call centres having incoming calls at all," Krithivasan told the FT. "We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer's pain point."

The prospect of a chatbot being able to fulfil all of a customer's requests over the phone with ease might sound like a long way off, but Krithivasan believes they will be able to seamlessly replace humans in "maybe a year or so down the line."

We've already seen companies oust call center staff in favor of AI. In July last year, a CEO laid off 90% of his support team, boasting that the move dropped first response and resolution times while reducing customer support costs by around 85%. He later warned that the technology is "100%" going to kill copy-paste jobs.

Krithivasan did add that the immediate impact of generative AI was overblown and that people were still overestimating the benefits. He also argued that the technology wouldn't lead to mass job losses as the world would need more people "in terms of technology talent," but then most CEOs like to push the narrative about gen AI assisting people rather than replacing them, and how its use will lead to new types of jobs.

There have been several surveys estimating the impact generative AI will have on jobs. One said it is expected to replace two million jobs in the US by 2030, while the IMF believes 40% of jobs worldwide will be affected in some way by the technology. Possibly the most worrying survey revealed that almost half of all managers aim to replace workers with AI and could use it to lower wages.

Masthead: Wikkimedia commons

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Generative AI could soon decimate the call center industry, says CEO

 

[Jack77]

So instead of 5 lines of people who got too little training before you get someone knowledgeable, you need to see if there is an option to get through AI bots to get help.

And creative destruction may sound nice in board rooms, but not everybody is suited for everything. Or willing to completely start over every X years, while trying to sustain their families. But board members are rarely confronted with such personal challenges.

 

[Nelson28]

AI in call centers? Interesting! While AI can handle basic stuff, complex issues or frustrated customers likely still need humans. Maybe the future is AI with human support, not complete replacement.

A hot potato: It's no secret that certain types of jobs are more threatened by artificial intelligence than others. Call center workers fall into this category, and while we've already seen a few companies replace phone-based support staff with generative AI, there are warnings that the entire industry could be comprised mostly of chatbots in as soon as a year.

The grim prediction comes from K Krithivasan, head of Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The second-largest company in India by market cap, it has more than 616,000 employees worldwide.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Krithivasan said AI will result in a "minimal" need for call centers. The CEO added that while "we have not seen any job reduction" so far, that will change as multinational clients adopt generative AI. The technology is expected to have a massive impact on the customer help center industry, which, according to a Gartner report in 2022, employs about 17 million people.

"In an ideal phase, if you ask me, there should be very minimal incoming call centres having incoming calls at all," Krithivasan told the FT. "We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer's pain point."

The prospect of a chatbot being able to fulfil all of a customer's requests over the phone with ease might sound like a long way off, but Krithivasan believes they will be able to seamlessly replace humans in "maybe a year or so down the line."

We've already seen companies oust call center staff in favor of AI. In July last year, a CEO laid off 90% of his support team, boasting that the move dropped first response and resolution times while reducing customer support costs by around 85%. He later warned that the technology is "100%" going to kill copy-paste jobs.

Krithivasan did add that the immediate impact of generative AI was overblown and that people were still overestimating the benefits. He also argued that the technology wouldn't lead to mass job losses as the world would need more people "in terms of technology talent," but then most CEOs like to push the narrative about gen AI assisting people rather than replacing them, and how its use will lead to new types of jobs.

There have been several surveys estimating the impact generative AI will have on jobs. One said it is expected to replace two million jobs in the US by 2030, while the IMF believes 40% of jobs worldwide will be affected in some way by the technology. Possibly the most worrying survey revealed that almost half of all managers aim to replace workers with AI and could use it to lower wages.

Masthead: Wikkimedia commons

Permalink to story:

Generative AI could soon decimate the call center industry, says CEO

AI in call centers? Interesting! While AI can handle basic stuff, complex issues or frustrated customers likely still need humans. Maybe the future is AI with human support, not complete replacement.

 

[yRaz]

I wouldn't mind if AI could replace incompetent call center employees. I'm tired of talking to "Alice" from India all the time. I hope they don't give the AI an Indian accent.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Being able to talk to an AI that knows almost everything is considerably better than talking to someone who can only read off a script.

 

[Dimitriid]

I'd like him to define 'Soon'

See the thing is, people do not really appreciate how cheap it is already to run a call center since these businesses are the bottom of the barrel for a reason: they're creative in finding the cheapest possible labor they can so in the rare cases is not done by a much weaker economy so they spend a couple cents on the dollar on salaries, they also use basically every trick possible: even in a weak 'overseas' economy this places are terrible in terms of the actual place to work, the equipment given to employees, the extreme rotation of employees they have (If you train new employees is not uncommon for 80 to 90% of them to quit inside the first 3 months those are considered standard numbers) and so on.

So even if having no employees is technically cheaper I guarantee that it's going to be a good while before being able to sustain a call center with just AI is as cheap as your average call center in terms of costs especially since we're already at the cheapest AI is going to get.

 

[yRaz]

I'd like him to define 'Soon'

See the thing is, people do not really appreciate how cheap it is already to run a call center since these businesses are the bottom of the barrel for a reason: they're creative in finding the cheapest possible labor they can so in the rare cases is not done by a much weaker economy so they spend a couple cents on the dollar on salaries, they also use basically every trick possible: even in a weak 'overseas' economy this places are terrible in terms of the actual place to work, the equipment given to employees, the extreme rotation of employees they have (If you train new employees is not uncommon for 80 to 90% of them to quit inside the first 3 months those are considered standard numbers) and so on.

So even if having no employees is technically cheaper I guarantee that it's going to be a good while before being able to sustain a call center with just AI is as cheap as your average call center in terms of costs especially since we're already at the cheapest AI is going to get.

The point of a call center isn't to help you. It's yo annoy you to the point where they don't have to help you. It's cheaper to annoy a customer to the point of accepting the loss and replacing the product at their own expense than it is to help them fix it or give them warranty service.

 

[BbN48]

Who's going to pay for the (permanent) unemployment benefits for all these soon to be millions of redundant humans? Will the corporations stop dodging taxes and help society feed them? I doubt it.

 

[trparky]

Who's going to pay for the (permanent) unemployment benefits for all these soon to be millions of redundant humans? Will the corporations stop dodging taxes and help society feed them? I doubt it.

Silly goose, this has been the plan all along. Decimate the middle class leaving the rich and then... everyone else. The Have's and the Have-Not's.

 

[The Talking Tech]

Meaning it's going to be a nightmare to try to call a company for customer support.

 

[Uncle Al]

While this could simplify call centers there will be a need for capturing those questions not already addressed in the centers database and both solving the issue as well as imputing it into the database. One of the bigger problems with these centers is farming them out to countries where they barely speak the language and have little understanding of the nuances of the English language. So there is a future for this kind of application but it's going to take a lot of training and upkeep, thus not totally eliminating the human element.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

When I canceled my Xifinity service the automated answering system was a pain in theass to deal with.

"Hold a moment while I pull up that info." ........ ......... ........
"I see that this is your account <some personal info here>. Is this correct?"
"I can help you with; checking your bill, making a payment, " blah, blah, f'ing, blah.

I had to repeat "speak with representative" half a dozen times to the automated system before it finally gave up and put me in the queue to speak with a live person.

The only downside, which I knew was coming based on past experiences calling any of these giant corporations, was having to hold my tongue and politely decline the dozen "offers" they wanted to give me to keep me as a customer. I know the person on the other side of the phone is only doing their job and following the script for the SOP they're reading off, but still, it's so annoying having to sadly listen to them drone on with such dribble. Not to mention having to deal with the awful automated voice system before hand.

I don't think all call centers will be replaced with search engine machines, but a lot most certainly could be or at least mitigated enough where a skeleton crew is always on hand for the odd issues the search engines can't answer correctly.

 

[wiyosaya]

I wouldn't mind if AI could replace incompetent call center employees. I'm tired of talking to "Alice" from India all the time. I hope they don't give the AI an Indian accent.

Of the AI bots I've spoken to, I have never found one that I liked. AI bots, IMO, always tell me to do everything that I have already looked up and done on the particular company's web site; thus, making them absolutely useless to me. In such cases, I push to talk to a representative, and 99.9999999% of the time, the representative takes care of my issue, even the Indian accented ones that I can hardly understand, in less than half of the time that it took me to get through the AI bot and it telling me to do what I have already done.

If the industry goes this way, the industry should expect that complaints will increase exponentially, IMO. Customer service is already bad enough, this will, and can, only make customer service worse.

 

[RudyBob]

Call centers serve a very useful purpose. They provide people that you can yell at and insult with impunity. It is a great way to get rid of stress that has built up. There are other ways to relieve stress but how many times a day can you do that?

 

[wiyosaya]

Being able to talk to an AI that knows almost everything is considerably better than talking to someone who can only read off a script.

As I see it, the problem with expecting the AI bot to know everything is that it does not and will not know everything. The AI bots I have spoken to act as if they are reading a script that simply says "Did you know that you can look this up on our web site?" AI bots are useless dumb ****s!

In the current incarnation of AI, all any such bot will know is how to solve the issues that have been previously solved and are in the issue database for it to regurgitate all over you like vomit. Like @Uncle Al said, it will have problems with issues that have not been solved.

 

[RandomWAN]

You guys get to talk to actual humans? I feel like they already have "AI" at call centers when I'm trying ot wade through the IVR to talk to someone actually useful.

 

[bviktor]

I'm sorry but no value will be lost, really.

 

[yRaz]

There are other ways to relieve stress but how many times a day can you do that?

Several

 

[pcnthuziast]

An upgrade in a sense.
NPC's<AI

 

[Jigs Gaton]

I think most are missing the point. Sign up for Chat-GPT 4 or equivalent and just research your own problems. I've been using it since released to solve my bugaboo problems with all my apps... of which there is always something. I feel no need to consult a phone tree to nowhere or wait for email solutions for days, only to realize tech support has no clue what u need, even after sending screen captures and full details. That takes a level "2" expert... only they have the ability to read. So I say F all of that; call centers are dead to me.

 

[Che Cazzo]

It's bad enough getting a humanoid to cancel your service.

Imagine trying to convince a talking box that's programmed to drive you insane if you want to cancel!
I bet it wouldn't even have an option for canceling to begin with, and the "Retention Dept" will most likely be populated with AI drones as well.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

As I see it, the problem with expecting the AI bot to know everything is that it does not and will not know everything. The AI bots I have spoken to act as if they are reading a script that simply says "Did you know that you can look this up on our web site?" AI bots are useless dumb ****s!

In the current incarnation of AI, all any such bot will know is how to solve the issues that have been previously solved and are in the issue database for it to regurgitate all over you like vomit. Like @Uncle Al said, it will have problems with issues that have not been solved.

I think a lot of the current incarnations are limited local models, not GPT4 with a custom prompt.

 

[LarryGFlorence]

Of the AI bots I've spoken to, I have never found one that I liked. AI bots, IMO, always tell me to do everything that I have already looked up and done on the particular company's web site; thus, making them absolutely useless to me. In such cases, I push to talk to a representative, and 99.9999999% of the time, the representative takes care of my issue, even the Indian accented ones that I can hardly understand, in less than half of the time that it took me to get through the AI bot and it telling me to do what I have already done.

If the industry goes this way, the industry should expect that complaints will increase exponentially, IMO. Customer service is already bad enough, this will, and can, only make customer service worse.

And who will customers complain to? AI Bots, of course!

 

[Mark Fuller]

Having been a call center agent for Dell and DirecTV I know there are many times a person has to go outside of the box to solve a technical problem that is not covered in the preprogrammed ideal decision tree. I can't see how they would ever address all of the issues to solve any problem, especially since they will take the cheapest route to do that as well. Hell, I can't even call the phone company or ISP without have to wait to be transferred to a live agent because my issue is not covered in the phone menu.

 

[Underdog]

Meaning it's going to be a nightmare to try to call a company for customer support.

I've got news for you pal. It already is.