Businesses have been relying heavily on new tools such as ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools to take on tasks that would normally take up a lot of time for companies. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research studied 5,179 customer service representatives from a Fortune 500 company that made use of such AI tools.
The results suggested that customer-service workers had a significant boost in their productivity when utilizing chatbots, to the extent that they were able to handle 14% more customer issues in an hour. This comes as no surprise as the development of AI has been growing rapidly around the world, sparking debates on how these new technologies are affecting the workforce.
Researchers Erik Brynjolfsson, Lindsey R. Raymond, and Danielle Li hypothesize that these AI-based tools are most beneficial to employees that are new to the company, as AI reflects the skills of its employees and can help reduce the learning curve. Moreover, this AI can also lead to better customer relations, as the sentiment of their chats become less hostile, making it easier for agents to perform their job.
The cost of replacing a customer service representative can cost up to $20,000, and with supervisors needing to spend an average of 20 hours a week coaching low-performing agents, AI can help at reducing these costs. A survey from Beautiful.ai that took into account of 3,000 American managers in leadership positions showed that 66% would be willing to replace their employees with AI tools as long as their work is comparative.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT is proving to be beneficial, researchers and FTC (Federal Trade Commission) are warning businesses of any outrageous claims about AI tools and to be wary of using them for hiring functions because of potential legal risks. Moreover, economists from the financial firm Goldman Sachs predict that AI automation could eventually take over up to 300 million jobs. Though, current trends suggest that new occupations are created to complement the automation, resulting in a productivity boost.
