The Call Center Crisis And the Threat Of An Artificial Intelligence Takeover

Most people will know two types of struggles: the first kind is when you try calling a customer care number hoping to be connected to a representative, and instead end up playing digital tic tac toe with an answering machine. The pre-set options in customer care answering machines rarely address the query in question, and it takes forever to connect with an actual human being.

In contrast to the first kind of struggle, the second one is the annoying bombardment of BPO driven marketing calls at all hours of the day. The calls offering data plans and credit cards are precisely the most inconvenient time of the day can be a nuisance.

Customer care representatives are never there when you need them and only there when you don’t need them. It truly seems like a thankless job for the employee and the customers. So why is it that a service that is specifically designed to care for people is actually stress inducing?

Handle with care

Even a person with a calm disposition can lose their cool at a call center representative when they are interrupted by a sales call in the middle of a meeting or while driving. For the representative, it’s just a job they must do; for the customer, it’s an invasion of privacy. Neither party is in the right or wrong, and yet there is the ruthless spewing of hate, the “ do not disturb me” warnings etc. I am not sure if therapy is one of the perks offered by call center managements to their employees, but it should be mandated.

The real peril is the sale of data that happens on a daily basis, and that puts phone numbers in the target list of call centers. Data collected from movie theatre chains, e retailers, salons and even network providers themselves compromise data security. While the companies cash out on top, at the grass root level customers lash out at representatives. It’s a powerless battle set up for failure.

Outsourced

In the past decade, the outsourcing of customer care services from the west to Indian BPO’s has become very transparent.  The harassment and abuse suffered by BPO employees with foreign customers are even worse than their domestic customers, as the harassment then becomes racially charged.

Hit TV shows like The Big Bang Theory and Simpsons have often distastefully used outsourcing as a tool to write lazy comedy, even though the outsourcing is a product of their own economic collapse.

Domestic employment

One of the major ways in which Indian youth profits from BPO’s is that call center companies often provide mass employment. For a country struggling with overpopulation, this is a good fit for a decent pay with limited qualifications- even if it means compromising personal mental health. An estimated 2.8 million people find employment in the outsourcing sector and their tasks can range from telemarketing to data conversions for larger firms.

The future and atomization

Even with blocking numbers and trying to protect phone numbers, it is difficult to curve BPO call centers from reaching customers. This sector is aimed to restructure and scale with time. With the development of artificial intelligence technologies, the way in which call centers operate will change, but as a business model, the call centers are here to stay.

Artificial intelligence has already been integrated with the customer care experience. Pop up chat boxes on websites and automated emailers are just the beginning. It is estimated that by the year 2020 AI technologies will replace 85% of the human agents in the call center sector. The implications of this could be manifold and not necessarily positive. Especially for countries like India, English isn’t the only language used for communication. That combined with accent registration and region-specific issues are unseen issues to be considered. This has already been experienced with services like Siri and Alexa that have not performed in India and in other countries in the same way they have in the west.

There is a high value in maintaining human agents in the SEA region, considering the employment opportunity they provide and the ability to problem solve in a situation-specific manner.

Reception and treatment

For customers, it seems like a lose-lose battle because they don’t always have the option to seek customer care in person. From banking to mobile data usage there is no way to surpass the call center in order to carry out basic activities. However the approach to get in touch with call center representatives is convoluted and often it seems that the representatives are not given any decision-making powers.

BPO managements have to find ways to restructure their operations so that the customer care experience can be streamlined and become more effective. By giving customers the option to contact operatives when needed instead of having operatives chase customers is a smarter way to focus on growth.

AI can overtake the business of human agents if there isn’t a rapid change in the operational structure of call centers.

If the current system of data sales and unnecessary target call harassment continues, many BPO’s in the nation risk losing the one quality still keeping them relevant: the human agents.