AI increased customer service agent productivity by 14%, study finds

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Dive Transient:

• Buyer help brokers who got entry to a generative synthetic intelligence assistant elevated their productiveness by 14% on common, in accordance with a bunch of researchers at Stanford College’s Digital Financial Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how.
• The researchers, whose findings have been revealed in a Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis working paper, studied the deployment of an AI-based chat assistant constructed on a big language mannequin developed by OpenAI. The research encompassed greater than 5,000 brokers working for a Fortune 500 agency, and the chat assistant monitored customer support chats whereas offering brokers with real-time response options.
• Total, the assistant decreased the time it took brokers to deal with particular person chats, elevated the variety of chats brokers have been in a position to deal with per hour and barely elevated the variety of efficiently resolved chats. Nevertheless, the researchers mentioned AI use “disproportionately” elevated efficiency for much less expert and fewer skilled brokers, with “minimal affect” on skilled and extremely expert staff.

Dive Perception:

It took lower than six months for generative AI instruments like ChatGPT and Midjourney to achieve widespread public entry and use. Now, employers could also be seeing the very first documented use circumstances for such instruments within the office.

The NBER research’s authors famous that features like customer support have been standard use circumstances for AI previously. The research cited a 2021 McKinsey survey that discovered 27% of respondents whose organizations had adopted AI used it for service operations optimization, and 22% mentioned the identical of contact heart automation.

Although the NBER research discovered that the chat assistant helped newer buyer help brokers carry out at ranges corresponding to extra senior brokers, the researchers mentioned they discovered few optimistic results of the tech on higher-skilled and extra skilled brokers.

“We posit that high-skill staff could have much less to achieve from AI help exactly as a result of AI suggestions seize the doubtless tacit information embodied in their very own behaviors,” the researchers wrote. “Slightly, low-skill staff are extra possible to enhance by incorporating these behaviors by adhering to AI options.”

As mainstream expertise companies transfer to include generative AI into merchandise that staff already use, it could be essential for employers to have an understanding of the extent to which staff could already be utilizing AI. A latest Fishbowl survey discovered that, of staff utilizing AI instruments for work-related duties, 68% mentioned they didn’t inform their bosses earlier than doing so.

And when deciding how and when to implement rising AI tech, employee wants ought to drive the dialog, consulting agency Bain & Co. mentioned in a March report.