How A"bot" That.

• Author: Horiuchi, Linda
• Position: TARGETING TECHNOLOGY - Survey

CUSTOMERS of communications and media service providers have given their critical judgment on use of artificial intelligence (AT) for customer care and commerce, and said how they want software robots or chatbots to serve them in a polling of more than 7,000 consumers. As part of the study, a survey of CEOs and other senior decisionmakers on AI spending at the world's biggest communications and media companies also revealed how plans for a rise of the robots for frontline customer interactions could be hampered by wrong investment choices and a lack of human talent. These are part of the findings from a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Amdocs in 12 countries across the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Thirty-five percent of consumers interact with virtual agents at least once a week because it is more convenient (44%) and quicker (41%), but 47% say this is only because they had no other option. If offered a choice, 83% would prefer to speak to a human since human agents better understand their needs (78%) and can address multiple questions at once (57%). Bots, say consumers, cannot deal with complex requests (their biggest problem), deliver personalized offers as well as humans (second biggest problem) or understand human emotions (third biggest problem).

Consumers also have strong views on how they want bots to look and behave. Forty-six percent prefer their bot to look like a human, as opposed to 20% who want to see an avatar. Although half of consumers do not care either way, 36% prefer them to be female, rather than male (14%). Sounding polite, caring, and intelligent are by far the highest in terms of preferred bot personality traits, followed by funny--but, as for sounding posh or authoritative, only nine percent of consumers say they would appreciate this.

The research indicates that service providers are not looking into the right areas in terms of their AI investments. Forty-two percent are prioritizing information security and privacy and 39% speed of response. What customers rank as top areas for improvement, such as bots delivering better personalization or more comprehensive information, are lower on service providers' priority lists with 23% and 19%, respectively, prioritizing these.

Forty percent of service providers also are creating avatar images for their bots while consumers prefer human-like images. Moreover, they are investing in features that...