Watson the Customer Service Rep
June 28, 2013
IBM’s Watson is becoming quite the renaissance machine. Since winning Jeopardy, the famous AI has done a stint on Wall Street, worked in the healthcare field, inspired students at the University of Southern California, and taken a stab at recipe creation. Now, Forbes informs us, “IBM’s Watson Now a Customer Service Agent, Coming to Smartphones Soon.” The article tells us:
“According to IBM, close to two-thirds of the 135 billion unresolved calls each year could have been resolved with better access to information, the search for which consumes six to eight minutes per call, on average. At each of the companies testing out Watson, the computer will be fed loads of product information from closely held databases such as catalogs, training manuals, product disclosures, terms and conditions, emails, customer forums, and call center logs, as well as publicly available feeds and reviews from places like Amazon, Yelp, Trip Advisor and technical support communities. In IBM’s tests using its own call centers and proprietary data, Watson delivered a 40% reduction in search time for information.”
Several businesses have already signed on as beta users. Australia’s ANZ Bank will be using the service to help with its private wealth management, while Nielsen (of TV ratings fame) plans to embed it into its media planning solutions. Some implementations will be employee-only, while others will be re-branded, obscuring the IBM technology at their core. No word yet on where consumers (besides wealthy Australians) can go to try out Watson’s customer service.
If nothing else, Watson is sure to be the best in the field at one thing—refusing to let customer irritation get under its skin.
Cynthia Murrell, June 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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