[Opinion] Customer Service to Human Beings

Human beings have multiple problems with other human beings.

This is neither a revolutionary statement, nor is it particularly interesting, unless you consider that in the next ten to fifteen years or so, robotic, reactive, automation will be cold-calling your house at six in the morning.

Unlike the human being that you talk to now (who often talks off of a script) this automation will learn from your responses (all the way from a polite hang-up to a use of curse words combined with a hang-up) and will shift in the way that it responds to the next person it calls.

Automation can’t feel. Automation doesn’t get tired. And with the new reactive automation systems coming down the pike in the future, automation will learn about you, your neighbor, and the other customers down the street.

Long-term (like twenty-five to thirty years out) customer service in human-to-human interactions at scale (for instance, those interactions you currently have at the local social services office) will be almost completely automated, from kiosks, to straight robotics, automation will replace humans in many types of face-to-face interactions, leading to upheavals in employment opportunities and even in emotional engagement.

Human beings have multiple problems with other human beings. It remains to be seen if human beings will have multiple problems with non-human actors in early stage interactions around services and processes.