Will Robots Replace Humans in the Contact Centre?

First line definitely yes. Second and third line depends on how creative and empathic the answer needs to be. If you can know that the client calling is a high value one at risk of walking away, you might want to offer the “human experience” instead of the chatbot.

Peter. Just my opinion. Yes, robots will replace human work in Call Centers. But, the real question is when and how much?. Those will replace some other repetitive job positions too, but they should give human professionals the opportunity to develop other characteristics as empathy (where robots can reach yet). I am involved in AI studies and AI is overpassing human accuracy by far in some domains (but General Artificial intelligence is still a utopia).

I understand that we are now still in the weak AI era, and that the Turing test is still far away to be passed by any talking machine. Besides semantics is a field of work much more underdevlopped than computing. We`ll see. Up to now, I would say NO. I enclose an amusing example of how we will be going back and forth https://retina.elpais.com/retina/2019/01/17/tendencias/1547731465_741426.html

Having had the experience of working with fully automated call centers, one must be prepared with the backlash from customer aggravation with the inability to reach a human.  With that said, it really is dependent on types of services/products you are involved in which should determine the level of robotics utilized in the call centers.

No Robots cannot replace humans 100 % in contact center ,however mundane queries can be addressed by robots

Considering the Chatbot revolution and enforcement of sensitive behaviy demonstration now a days,

While Bot technology can increase efficiency in customer service interaction (driving low-value and repetitive inquiries thru an RPA and increasing the response time of those), the best implementation cases combine the use of AI with human interactions.  Chatbot reduces the effort of human admin dedicated to low motivation chores. And let humans additional time to resolve more complex cases and dedicate to the customers that prefer human interaction to increase satisfaction. In short, I believe there will always be space for a more sophisticated service, and AI will augment human capabilities in this field too.

Definately would need to be a mix at the diffent support levels. Chances are though if you’re phoning a contact centre, then you’ve most likely got some issue. Human nature…. “i need an actual human to acknowlege my issue and take accountability”
Empathy is huge in a successfull CC, strip it away and you hurt your brand

Robots will replace humans to some extent, at the first or maybe even 2nd support level. AI technologies on those levels will be successful when they do their job properly, i.e. save customer time and get to the point of the customers needs. Also, a robot should be in a position to identify when a lot of emotion is involved. In this case a robot will not work, a human needs to show empathy and understanding in order to prevent churn.

I’m a pilot. I know computers can fly my plane more accurately than I can. They can take off, fly and land without any human intervention. Now imagine you are in an ‘plane flying at 30,000 feet, and the engines catch fire. You rush into the cockpit to find there is no pilot, computers are flying the plane. How would you feel? I’d prefer to have a pilot sitting on the seat, hoping that his human capabilities – intuition, leaps of irrationality, attempting actions against the odds, as well as his years of training and assembling millions of micro experiences, would give him a better edge and us a better outcome.

Obviously, no one calls the contact Center to report engines on fire. But at the extreme, humans do call emergency services about a fire, an emergency health problem, a possible murder. I think such experiences are similar. So humans want to be speaking to a machine in that context?

Less extreme, customers engage with contact centers for mundane enquiries through to problem resolution.

Artificial Intelligence operates on logic. It is rational, whilst humans are anything but. When people engage with contact centers, they’re not always looking for a rational, logical answer. They want emotional understanding, they want to know that their feelings are valid and justified. AI chat bots can’t do that, or at least can’t do that convincingly, with feeling and humanity. Robots lack of imaginative capabilities means that they’re not very good with things that requires creative thought. There are outstanding for any dull and repetitive tasks needed – they are better than humans since they are consistent, don’t get emotional, won’t get bored. Creativity, on the other hand, is the gift of humanity and isn’t something that can be programmed. Yet. But customers simply prefer, sometimes, to talk with a human. Robots won’t replace humans into totality because humans won’t want them to. And the smarter businesses will understand that, using real human contact to further differentiate themselves to customers feeling anxious, emotional, nervous, furious, afraid, confused and so on.

Bots are already able to start all customer contacts with the standard conversation about customer information and legitimation. They are prepared to have standard solution strategies for most of the basic customer issues, which will lead to a reduction of human intervention of maybe 90% of all customer contacts. So the questions is not “will they”, but “to what degree” they will replace any human call center interactions. And this is not related to level 1 only, but to be honest will decrease as complexity and “unusualitity” of an issues increases. So what is the reasoning around this question is rather “how much can you reduce human workforce costs in a call center with robots?” I assume it’s about 90% - and increasing.