Dialogues Required Between the Change Makers and Change Bearers
To minimize the chaos due to disruptions and to bring more harmony to the workplace ecosystem.
A lot of buzz these days about ChatGPT. The dictum is out that it is going to disrupt the world. I have seen it coming in the startup world, at least. When I discuss my product idea with people, in 25% of cases, they say, “Your product is not needed anymore because ChatGPT is already doing similar functionality.
Out of curiosity and respect (that naturally comes for such technical geeks), I ask my knowledgeable friends to share more details about the scenarios where they have used ChatGPT. When they elaborated on the situations in which they have used ChatGPT so far, their knowledge and advice lacked the authority to make a statement about the similarity between my product and ChatGPT features.
Nevertheless, the point is that ChatGPT is in so much news that people are hallucinating about it. They already see in their minds the products that have yet to be built via ChatGPT. People try to bring in ChatGPT in all their conversations to look more intelligent, technical, and progressive.
Along with ChatGPT, another term used frequently is Generative AI. While both concepts are related to generating content, they have distinct focuses and applications.
Generative AI is a broad field of artificial intelligence encompassing techniques and models capable of generating new content. These can include images, music, text, and more.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, is a specific implementation of Generative AI designed explicitly for conversational purposes.
There is no doubt that Generative AI will change our lives in many ways. And we cannot stop the technology from reaching out to people. I have already written an article on this. It is pretty visible that many companies are trying to build new products using Generative artificial intelligence (GAI).
“Artificial intelligence will have a more profound impact on humanity than fire, electricity, and the internet.” — Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet.
In this article, I want to talk about Generative AI and its impact on the Call center industry.
Generative AI tools can automate responses to common customer queries, provide personalized recommendations, and even help agents with complex issues. It helps automate the creation of interaction summaries to automate after-call work and enable seamless handoffs between bots and agents.
For this article, I contacted people in the call center industry to understand what they think about this disruptive technology. My intent was to check the gaps between the innovators and those impacted by this innovation, i.e., between the change makers and the change bearers.
So, I asked this question in a discussion forum for call center agents.
“There has been a buzz that AI can replace call center agents. What do you think?”
Through this question, I wanted to understand how call center agents adapt to Generative AI.
- Do they know about this new technology?
- Are they worried about it taking their jobs?
- Are they up-skilling themselves to get a new job?
One common reaction I saw in most of the responses was “resistance to change”. Some of them were in denial mode. They were drawing comparisons with the existing IVR systems. They knew that IVR systems were limited in catering to all the customer requests, so they concluded that no future technology would ever succeed.
But some responses were very insightful. They discussed the concrete reasons why and where they think the technology can fail.
While listening to their perspective, I wondered if these innovators had even heard this feedback from the people on the ground zero. Would they ever remove their super smart tech caps and try to listen to common people who will use their innovation and eventually get impacted by it?
Nowadays, many Industrialists and Governments have started discussing concerns about the misuse of GAI. They are debating how GAI should be used responsibly and how it could impact the job market.
In my opinion, innovators should also spend time with those impacted by their innovation. I feel this would create a better equilibrium between the innovators and the commoner.
People would gain a clear picture of the new technology rather than just listening to the cryptic hype and headlines. It will help them better prepare themselves for this disruption, or they might also find a way to reap the benefits of these disruptions. In this way, they can be more accommodating to the changes rather than fighting against them without logic or understanding.
On the other hand, the innovators can gain by listening to the concerns or the edge cases using new technology. The technologists might overlook these edge cases as they mainly test in a hypothetical or a simulated environment. Here they will get to hear from people working in real-time scenarios.
These are some thoughts that I heard from the call center employees:
There are also so many elderly people who do not like bots. They’ll get mad and either 1) Always request to speak with a live person 2) Smash through buttons to speak with someone instead of answering the prompts 3) Argue with the bot as if it’s a real person
It will depend on the type of call centre job….in some industry, there are a lot of obligations to discuss financial issues, mental and physical wellbeing, and these are areas that I don’t think AI will be suitable for, as empathy, patience, and the ability to read between the lines are vital.
companies need just to get prepared for a bunch of negative surveys. specially from the elderly, they’re just not okay with a machine talking to them.
This feedback can be helpful for call center owners or any company with a customer satisfaction department. The owners or employers can check these use cases beforehand and ensure that the new software caters to these scenarios before introducing the software in their company.
Failing to do so might create problems as some customers may face hurdles in using the new software, leading to a drop in CSAT (customer satisfaction) scores.
If the concerns of the call center agents are catered, then a special workflow could have been created. E.g., in this instance, the senior population can still be served by a human being and gradually introduced to a bot. It will also give some time for testing and vetting the software bugs to make the system robust.
Let there be more dialogues or discussions between the change makers and change bearers. It can minimize the chaos around the disruptions and bring more harmony to the workplace ecosystem.
