High-skilled customer service agents may not have seen a significant boost to their productivity when using an AI chatbot, according to a recent case study. The research was conducted by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, led by professor Erik Brynjolfsson. During the study, the team found that over 5,000 customer service representatives at an unnamed Fortune 500 company saw “close to 0%” improvement when utilizing the AI program.
The AI assistant was designed to give customer representatives “real-time suggestions” for handling customer interactions, but the most significant productivity increases were felt by lower-skilled agents. The professor believes this is due to the AI capturing the knowledge of high-skill agents and making it available to the less experienced.
The AI tool was trained to understand the outcomes and duration of customer service calls, as well as how top performers fare in those aspects. This creates a program that is specifically tailored to mimic the effective customer conversation styles used by the highly skilled workers.
Overall, the researchers found that AI working alongside humans can have a positive impact on the productivity and retention of individual workers. The professor notes that while there can still be issues like inaccuracy, having a human in the loop is beneficial. For the future, they believe that this type of generative AI could be useful for creativity and idea generation.
The unnamed Fortune 500 company is likely a leader in their industry and is a great example of how AI technology can be utilized in customer service to improve productivity. Erik Brynjolfsson is a professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI with a passion for leading research studies that further our understanding of the potential of AI technology. He is an advocate for human-machine collaboration and looks to the future for potential opportunities that could arise from the use of AI.
