What Sam Altman gets wrong about customer service
At least Sam Altman didn’t use the word “augment.”
Instead of attempting to soothe anxious contact center employees that artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as those his firm OpenAI produces will merely make them work more efficiently, he chose honesty.
Speaking in a recent episode of the Tucker Carlson show, Altman said,
“I’m confident that a lot of current customer support that happens over a phone or a computer, those people will lose their jobs, and that will be done better by an AI.”
After more than 18 months of other AI vendors placating the contact center industry, Altman’s prediction feels like a band-aid being ripped off.
What really stings, however, is the fact that this kind of speculation does little to help anyone, including those who want to fire all their service reps.
The ‘shock absorbers’ of customer service
I really can’t put it better than Justin Robbins, principal and analyst with Metric Sherpa, who offered his perspective based on studying thousands of service and support interactions.
“The root of friction, frustration, and failure rarely sits with the people on the phones or behind the screens. It sits with leaders who designed broken processes, deployed clunky technology, or tolerated mediocrity in their strategies,” Robbins wrote in a LinkedIn post.
“To claim that customer service jobs are ‘first to go’ is to blame the wrong group. Service workers are not the liability. They are the shock absorbers for poor decisions made higher up the chain. They deliver empathy when systems fail, and they rebuild trust when strategy falls short.”
Robbins is not alone. Earlier this month, market research firm Gartner Inc. predicted no Fortune 500 firm will have fully eliminated customer service staff by 2028. Let’s break that down a bit further, though:
- Many firms will probably try replacing some staff with AI, at least to avoid replacing human agents (who are notoriously difficult to hire), but will be reluctant to make the mistakes Klarna did.
- There are many smaller entities outside of the Fortune 500 that might attempt an all (or mostly) AI-powered customer service function, particularly in the early days as they attempt to scale.
- Three years from now, the world could look a lot different.
Altman would probably nod at much of what Gartner’s report said. He wisely didn’t give a specific timeline for his “confident” prediction.
By 2030 and beyond, it could become a lot clearer where agentic AI works well from a fully autonomous perspective and where it should be avoided.
The assumption CX job losses rest upon
AI jobs prophesies are also based on the assumption that companies will inevitably invest in AI solutions.
As more studies come out showing AI failure rates, however, and brands continue to grapple with ongoing economic challenges, the timelines for automating customer service could be significantly extended.
It’s also worth pointing out that Gartner’s report said human’s are irreplaceable in handling nuanced situations and deepening relationships.
Sam Altman might be the world’s leading AI expert, but those are two areas where he might want to consider being a little more human himself.
