In spite of the exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there exist several limitations in that that can only be met by traditional means such as phone calls. Business research conducted by Google showed that more than three-fifths of respondents use the medium of phone calls to finalize their purchase. Reasons for this are plenty, but most commonly were due to quick response time and their desire to speak to a real person. The rise of the “conversation economy” can best be summarized by a statistic provided by BIA/Kelsey that states that phone calls to businesses will rise by one hundred and sixty-nine million in just a few years by 2020. For high-value purchases such as for automobiles, travel or insurance, people wanted to speak to real human experts and not machines. Alexa, Siri ad Google Assistant can now even do Voice recognized payments so eventually their role could rise. Smartphones are also increasingly being used to operate social media channels. Photography has also become a common use point.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/07/your-customers-still-want-to-talk-to-a-human-being?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Uploaded Date:31 July 2017