Apr. 18, 2018 "Artificial intelligence is the next revolution in customer service": Today I found this article by Merge Gupta-Sunderji in the Globe and Mail:
As a leader, you (should) care about customer service. After all, if you don’t keep your customers happy, not only will they stop paying for your products and services, but in today’s highly-connected world, they’ll tell everyone else about what went wrong.
When you couple that with the reality that consumers generally have higher expectations than even just a decade ago, your most competitive advantage may just be your follow-up and after-sales service to your clients. But exceptional service can be a rapidly moving target.
Customer service has undergone at least two significant revolutions in the past 40 years. In 1981, Roy Weber transformed the realm of customer service with his invention of the 1-800 toll-free number. Suddenly, people everywhere across the country could pick up the phone and reach someone who could answer their questions and help them trouble-shoot problems.
This was a colossal client-focused step forward compared with the old world in which the only reasonable way to reach the manufacturer or service provider was via the post.
This was a colossal client-focused step forward compared with the old world in which the only reasonable way to reach the manufacturer or service provider was via the post.
The next major upheaval came with the widespread use of e-mail. Ray Tomlinson is credited with implementing the first e-mail program back in 1972, but it wasn’t until the early 1990’s that its use became truly pervasive. Anyone who had a question about your product or service could now ask any time of the day or night – no need to wait for business hours.
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Despite the significance of these innovations, the underlying premise in customer service has always been to fix an issue identified by the buyer. But it is 2018, so it is time to finally change that paradigm.
The next revolution in customer service: to fix the problem before your customer tells you. The technology to power this transformation exists. It is called artificial intelligence, or AI, and many companies have already harnessed its potential. Envision these three progressive possibilities.
Level 1: Recognize that there is a problem before your customer has to ask.
Just fix it, and let them know when it is done! A perfect example is the airline industry. AI can identify when you’re going to miss your flight connection, so it automatically rebooks you to the next possible option. A notification informing you of this change is waiting for you when your first flight lands.
Just fix it, and let them know when it is done! A perfect example is the airline industry. AI can identify when you’re going to miss your flight connection, so it automatically rebooks you to the next possible option. A notification informing you of this change is waiting for you when your first flight lands.
Level 2: Realize that a problem may occur and take steps to prevent it from happening in the first place.
For example, big-box retailers have inventory data at their fingertips. AI can predict sales patterns and volumes and allow them to reorder before items run out of stock. No more “sold out” situations causing lost revenue or frustrated customers. Some companies have already optimized this ability and they are reaping the benefits of this competitive advantage.
For example, big-box retailers have inventory data at their fingertips. AI can predict sales patterns and volumes and allow them to reorder before items run out of stock. No more “sold out” situations causing lost revenue or frustrated customers. Some companies have already optimized this ability and they are reaping the benefits of this competitive advantage.
Level 3: Your product or service is designed so well that there is no need for a customer to seek resolution.
The instructions are so clear that there is no confusion; the product or service delivery is so perfect that there is no need to complain; the satisfaction is so beyond expectation that there is zero disappointment.
This may sound like the unattainable holy grail of exceptional customer service, but with AI, it may not be as farfetched as you might think. Increasingly, AI can evaluate customer behaviour and, therefore, their pain-points. The organizations that are able to crack this conundrum first will be the ones that will pull ahead of the competitive pack.
The instructions are so clear that there is no confusion; the product or service delivery is so perfect that there is no need to complain; the satisfaction is so beyond expectation that there is zero disappointment.
This may sound like the unattainable holy grail of exceptional customer service, but with AI, it may not be as farfetched as you might think. Increasingly, AI can evaluate customer behaviour and, therefore, their pain-points. The organizations that are able to crack this conundrum first will be the ones that will pull ahead of the competitive pack.
Levels 1 and 2 of this next customer-service revolution are already happening. The most successful companies have already harnessed the power of AI to deliver these, and they are creating the new norm in customer expectations. And Level 3 is not far off on the horizon.
Yet, there are still companies on the opposite end of the spectrum. You know them – the ones that are making their customers wait hours on the phone for an issue to be resolved, or days for a response to an e-mail query.
So which end of the continuum are you on? If you aren’t thinking and acting on the potential of artificial intelligence, you are putting your organization at a competitive disadvantage.
Yet, there are still companies on the opposite end of the spectrum. You know them – the ones that are making their customers wait hours on the phone for an issue to be resolved, or days for a response to an e-mail query.
So which end of the continuum are you on? If you aren’t thinking and acting on the potential of artificial intelligence, you are putting your organization at a competitive disadvantage.
"Farmers are using artificial intelligence to better monitor their cows": Today I found this article by Ryan Nakashima in the Globe and Mail:
SAN FRANCISCO — Is the world ready for cows armed with artificial intelligence?
No time to ruminate on that because the moment has arrived, thanks to a Dutch company that has married two technologies — motion sensors and AI — with the aim of bringing the barnyard into the 21st century.
The company, Connecterra, has brought its IDA system , or “The Intelligent Dairy Farmer’s Assistant,” to the United States after having piloted it in Europe for several years.
IDA uses a motion-sensing device attached to a cow’s neck to transmit its movements to a program driven by AI. The sensor data, when aligned repeatedly with real-world behavior, eventually allows IDA to tell from data alone when a cow is chewing cud, lying down, walking, drinking or eating.
Those indicators can predict whether a particular cow is ill, has become less productive, or is ready to breed — alerting the farmer to changes in behavior that might otherwise be easily missed.
“It would just be impossible for us to keep up with every animal on an individual basis,” says Richard Watson, one of the first four U.S. farmers to use IDA since it launched commercially in December.
Watson, who owns the Seven Oaks Dairy in Waynesboro, Georgia, says having a computer identify which cows in his 2,000-head herd need attention could help improve farm productivity as much as 10 percent, which would mean hundreds of thousands of dollars to his family.
“If we can prove out that these advantages exist from using this technology ... I think adoption of IDA across a broad range of farming systems, particularly large farming systems, would be a no-brainer,” Watson says.
Dairy farming is just one industry benefiting from AI, which is being applied in fields as diverse as journalism, manufacturing and self-driving cars. In agriculture, AI is being developed to estimate crop health using drone footage and parse out weed killer between rows of cotton.
Yasir Khokhar, the former Microsoft employee who is the founder and CEO of Connecterra, said the inspiration for the idea came after living on a dairy farm south of Amsterdam.
“It turns out the technology farmers use is really outdated in many respects,” he says. “What does exist is very cumbersome to use, yet agriculture is one of those areas that desperately needs technology.”
Underlying IDA is Google’s open-source TensorFlow programming framework, which has helped spread AI to many disciplines. It’s a language built on top of the commonly used Python code that helps connect data from text, images, audio or sensors to neural networks — the algorithms that help computers learn. The language has been downloaded millions of times and has about 1,400 people contributing code, only 400 of whom work at Google, according to product manager Sandeep Gupta.
He says TensorFlow can be used by people with only high-school level math and some programming skills.
“We’re continuing this journey making it easier and easier to use,” Gupta says.
TensorFlow has been used to do everything from helping NASA scientists find planets using the Kepler telescope, to assisting a tribe in the Amazon detect the sounds of illegal deforestation, according to Google spokesman Justin Burr.
Google hopes users adapt the open-source code to discover new applications that the company could someday use in its own business.
Even without AI, sensors are helping farmers keep tabs on their herds.
Mary Mackinson Faber, a fifth-generation farmer at the Mackinson Dairy Farm near Pontiac, Illinois, says a device attached to a cow’s tail developed by Irish company Moocall sends her a text when a cow is ready to give birth, so she can be there to make sure nothing goes wrong. Moocall doesn’t use AI — it simply sends a text when a certain threshold of spinal contractions in the tail are exceeded.
While she calls it a “great tool,” she says it takes human intuition to do what’s right for their animals.
“There are certain tasks that it can help with, and it can assist us, but I don’t think it will ever replace the human.”
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AP videographers Marina Hutchinson in Waynesboro, Georgia, Teresa Crawford in Pontiac, Illinois, and Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
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