Machine Learning: The Real Buzzword Of 2020 Posted on : Mar 24 - 2020

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic. Skim tech journals or sites, and you'll undoubtedly see articles focused on how AI is the big technology for 2020. CIOs are discussing how to bring AI into their organizations, and CX leaders are listing AI as a must-have.

But here's the funny thing: AI doesn't really exist — not yet anyway. I know many will be surprised to hear this, but before you decide that I'm wrong, consider Merriam-Webster.com's definition: "The capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior."

If you believe this is the right definition of AI, then I ask you: Are there machines imitating intelligent human behavior today? The answer right now is no. If there is a machine that seems smart on its own, the truth is that AI isn't the driver — machine learning (ML) is. ML is alive and thriving, yet AI gets all the credit.

It's time to get familiar with ML.

ML powers programs and machines to take data, analyze it in real time, and then learn and adapt based on that information. This is happening today. Think of the recommendations you get for products on Amazon or the shows Netflix suggests you watch. This is all due to ML. It learns your preferences based on your browsing/purchasing/viewing behaviors and then makes intelligent recommendations. The ability to synthesize massive amounts of data in nanoseconds makes machines smart. There's actually nothing artificial about it — it's real and at play in our lives already.

Without a doubt, ML is a game-changer for many industries, including contact centers. Similar to the way that automation revolutionized manufacturing, ML can be the missing link to revolutionizing the customer service industry. When leveraged correctly, ML offers enormous productivity gains in customer-facing interactions, empowering contact centers to use bots to perform basic, repetitive tasks. By offloading straightforward work to bots, human agents are free to do work that requires empathy and thought that only they can deliver. This can create an exponentially scalable customer experience workforce — in other words, it could solve the industry's oldest and most expensive problem. View More