Can artificial intelligence rescue customer service?

The adoption of AI is surging in call centres.

It's not easy being a customer service agent – particularly when those customers are so angry with a product that they want to yell at you down the phone. That's the sort of rage that Sonos, a maker of home-audio systems, encountered in May when it released an app update so full of glitches, it caused its share price to plunge.

One of the agents dealing with the ensuing customer tirades was a rookie. But not a human one. Prior to the debacle, Sonos had hired Sierra, a start-up co-founded by Mr Bret Taylor, the chairman of OpenAI, to provide it with a customer service bot powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI). It could have been a disaster; the only thing worse than a malfunctioning product is being trapped in an automation prison by a robot giving you the runaround. Yet, the bot beat expectations. After digesting Sonos' technical materials, it even came up with its own workaround for one of the problems with the Sonos app.

Customer service is one of the few industries where the use of generative AI is already taking root. In a survey of customer service executives published earlier in 2024 by Gartner, a research firm, almost half said that AI customer assistants would have a significant impact on their organisation in the next 12 to 18 months. Start-ups and established tech firms alike have launched a volley of new products at the industry that promise to transform customer service – and millions of jobs.

Customer service is a big industry. Most companies have some sort of customer support, whether in-house or outsourced to call centres. In America alone, there are almost three million customer service workers, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. At a median salary of around US$40,000 (S$52,600) a year, that works out at roughly US$120 billion in wage costs. Many more work in call centres in places like India and the Philippines, where these jobs are seen as ladders to the middle class.