They don’t need sleep, so they’re always on, and there are no theoretical limits to the number of customers they can converse with via speech or text at a time. There’s no limit to the number of consumers it can interact with, so you don’t lose customers because you can’t get to them in time or they’re frustrated by your lack of availability. So, how can it be put right? The good “There’s evidence that text-driven customer service may be preferable for some customers than speaking with a company rep”Ĭhatbots, of course, enable you to immediately answer queries, give sales or marketing advice, or handle any issues. However, there is a considerable body of opinion claiming they’re not nearly as good as they’re made out to be and, in many instances, they frustrate customers – the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.ĭespite the length of time we’ve had these systems, it’s clear that many companies are still getting it wrong. Proponents will tell you they work exceptionally well, for example by acting as first-line engagement with customers and providing out-of-hours and emergency contact services, which saves big on human hours and associated staff costs.

Recent AI-driven descendants use machine-learning (ML) to enable them to become ‘smarter’ over time and use natural language processing (NLP) to deliver responses that mimic the way people talk. Nearly 60 years later, and today’s chatbots are way more sophisticated than ELIZA. When the first chatbot, ELIZA, was being developed, the Beatles were still touring. As early as the 1950s, mathematician and Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing devised the ‘Turing test’ to determine whether computers could be smart enough to fool people they were human. The concept of chatbots goes back a long way. That’s why, over the years, companies have turned to AI-powered chatbots to engage in one-to-one conversations on their behalf. And yet, those conversations can be invaluable – whether it’s handling sales queries or resolving customer issues and boosting retention rates.

When you have a million customers and nowhere near that many staff, one-to-one conversations take a lot of bandwidth. How do you maximise their advantage currently – and will technology such as ChatGPT make them better conversationalists in the future? AI chatbots are considerably cheaper than human employees, but they’re not universally well received.

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