Bots Are About To Get Better At Customer Support Than Humans

In 2018, AI-enabled bots will provide a better customer experience than human-to-human chat exchange, following the explosion of messaging services that have changed the way companies interact with their customers. Today, more than two billion messages are exchanged between people and companies every month on Facebook Messenger alone. Other major players have been investing heavily in the space, creating platforms to support companies in their pursuits to engage customers where they are and in the way they prefer. In 2018, this will give rise to AI customer-service agents that we are happy to deal with. However, many organizations will fail to create the customer experience they desire because of a fundamental misunderstanding of human-to-machine interaction. In their belief that human agents give the best experience, many will develop messaging applications that stress person-to-person conversations. But companies will learn that using AI-powered bots, supported by human “escape hatches”, which seamlessly pass on the interaction to a human, will provide a vastly better experience than a standalone human-to-human exchange. Read more at Wired.