Customer Service - Will AI Take Your Job?

When you're in deep water you need to swim. If you can't swim, you need to learn it ASAP! For customer service agents AI is the water. Our experiences shows you that you've got two options.

• Learn how to swim
• Panick and drown

AI is Not the End

Due to our AI products we naturally have some pretty strong opinions about AI. We also have a lot of experience delivering AI-based customer service chatbots. What we have seen is that there are 3 distinctly different ways of reacting to AI.

1. Ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist
2. Panick and try to FUD it
3. Embrace it and use it as an advantage

I will ignore number 1 and 2 from above, and explain why I believe the 3rd approach is the most valuable you can have.

AI can Automate 30% of Your Job

Studies have shown that using an AI chatbot for your 1st level support can automate 30% of your customer service. We've seen similar figures with our Resolve Systems case study. Our own figures for Magic Cloud is almost 100%. 18 months ago we used to have people asking us about Magic, and how to accomplish some specific task. Today we've got literally zero such support requests.

This doesn't imply people don't have questions - Quite the contrary - We've got 5 times as many questions today as we did 18 months ago. However, our AI chatbot has basically 100% automated all of our customer service related to Magic Cloud. You can try it below.

• Magic Cloud's Documentation and AI Chatbot

Below is a screenshot of our technical support AI chatbot answering a question.

If you're working with customer support, naturally such figures are scary. However, there are upsides hidden within the facts, sometimes difficult to see.

Result Driven Employment

I'm a CEO and I've managed a lot of people over the years. I don't care if you spend 5 minutes or 5 hours doing your job. I'm not paying for your hours, I'm paying for the result. If you've got some super smart method to finish your job and do it 10 times as fast as some other guy, great for you! More spare time for you to spend with your family.

25 years ago a guy I knew had a trick. He was the CFO's right hand man, and completely indispensable. Every time the guy went on vacation, the company's CFO and CEO panicked. However, the guy barely worked. Most of the day he would just sit around and talk to some colleagues, without apparently even contributing at all. Nobody but the CEO and the CFO even understood why that "lazy man" was such an important piece of the puzzle. The guy had "a trick". A trick that allowed him to do his job in 10 minutes. His trick was Excel Macros.

The above guy had taught himself how to use Excel Macros. Then he had created a bunch of spreadsheets with macros, allowing him to automate most of his job. This allowed him to deliver financial reports nobody else could deliver, and he could deliver these reports in minutes. This again resulted in him becoming 100% completely indispensable.

He was the only guy who could deliver financial reports to the CEO and the CFO, he did his job in 10 minutes every day, and he told nobody before he retired and finally had to hand over his spreadsheets to the guy taking over his role.

If you can provide support to 10x as many people as other support agents can, with 10x as high quality, do you really think your manager cares about how many hours you work?

FYI, if your manager cares, it's time to find a new job ... 😉

Embrace AI

One of our clients have 3 billion dollars in annual revenue. When they approached us, they didn't want to replace their existing customer service agents - Instead they wanted to have a password protected AI chatbot available for their existing agents. This resulted in 18% higher quality on support, in addition to being able to train new support agents in days instead of months.

What this shows is that not everybody wants to completely automate their customer service with AI. Some just want to make it more effective. This implies if you've got the ability to make the AI do what you want it to do, you will become like the above guy with the Excel macros.

There are lessons to be learned from the above. Basically, "figure out how to use AI the same way the guy with the Excel macros figured out how to use Excel" - At which point you've got "an edge", using AI to become indispensable instead of having AI replace you. This is kind of a cliche, but it needs to be said, over and over again, until it's hammered into your head.

AI will not replace you! A person using AI will!

Wrapping up

If you came this far you probably realise that I actually never answered the question I started out with, which was "will AI take your job?" This is because the only sane answer I have to give you, is the following ...

It depends ...

And it depends upon one simple fact, which is as follows; "Do you perceive AI as a threat or an opportunity?" Are you the type of guy who can teach yourself "Excel macros" to become indispensable? Or are you amongst those drowning ...?

The answer to that question is an answer only you can give ...