• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Register
  • Log In
  • Course Registration
  • Search
  • 858.674.4864

Service Strategies

Service and Support Consulting, Training and Certification

Menu
  • Consulting
    • Strategic Planning
    • Service Assessments
    • Change Management Consulting
    • eServices Consulting
    • Service Process Design
    • Service Operations Health Check
    • Knowledge Management Consulting
  • Training
    • Public Course Schedule
    • Management Development
      • Advanced Service Leadership
      • Team Leadership
      • Support Supervisor
      • Support Manager
      • Field Service Manager
      • Field Service Supervisor
    • Individual Development
      • Service Representative
      • Support Professional
      • Support Specialist
      • Field Service Engineer
      • Online Learning Center
    • Career Certification
      • Certified Support Managers
      • Certified Support Supervisors
      • Certified Field Service Supervisors
      • Certified Field Service Managers
      • Certification Exam Center
    • Account Management
      • Strategic Account Management
      • Services Pro Advanced Workshop
      • Resident Engineer Workshop
    • Educational Workshops
      • Communication Essentials for Support
      • Engaging Challenging Customers
      • Problem Solving
      • Strategic Planning
      • Knowledge-Centered Support
  • Service Standards
    • Support Standard
    • eService Standard
    • Field Service Standard
    • Professional Service Standard
    • SCP Features and Benefits
    • SCP Sponsor Companies
    • SCP Certified Organizations
  • Problems We Solve
  • Customers
    • Customer Success
    • Customer Testimonials
  • About Us
    • Executive Team
    • Our Partners
    • Upcoming Events
    • Company News
  • Blog
  • Contact
Home > Blog > AI is Coming to Services, But It’s Not Here Yet

AI is Coming to Services, But It’s Not Here Yet

August 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

There is a lot of hype out there these days about how the robots are coming for our jobs. Artificial Intelligence (AI), the brains of these robots, is advancing at a rapid pace. For the Services Sector, the technology has significant potential to drive improvements in service efficiency, cost and product quality. But for now, the robots and their AI brains are not mature enough or widely enough deployed to compete with the hands-on expertise provided by a trained service professional.

Recently, the team here at Service Strategies conducted a benchmark study by asking executives about their service business practices and their outlook for the future. We included AI in the study and asked them how the technology could affect their business, what their current level of use of AI is and what areas they see AI as having the most future impact on. Th results are interesting in that while service executives agree there is huge potential, very few are leveraging any kind of AI in their businesses today.

Potential Impact of AI

When asking about how AI could potentially affect their business, the vast majority agreed that it could have a beneficial effect, with 30% saying it would change their business. The potential to have AI remotely resolve customer issues in an automated fashion, with a high degree of accuracy and little to no human interaction would vastly improve the efficiency and cost of providing services.

Fig. 1 – Potential Impact of AI on Your Business

While the benefits seem clear, when talking to some executives, they worry about losing the relationship with their customers. Service professionals develop rapport and strong relationships with their customers that help build loyalty and drive retention. Many become trusted advisors and viewed as an extension of the customer’s team. Some executives fear that they’ll lose touch with these customers and make them more vulnerable to their competitors. Maintaining the relationship with customers is a real concern. It seems clear that as AI becomes pervasive, service personnel will need to shift their focus towards relationship building and offer another layer of value beyond break-fix technical skills. Redefining the role of the service professional and helping them to develop their soft skills will be critical as the use of automation advances.

Where Can AI Have the Biggest Impact?

Most executives who participated in the benchmark study agreed that issue triage and resolution were the areas where AI could have the greatest impact. Automating customer communications, skills matching to ensure technical issues get routed to the correct resource and scheduling optimization followed.

Fig 2 – Where AI can Have Biggest Impact

One of the issues that will affect how AI is leveraged for service will be the deployment of IoT. Modern IoT can enable enhanced remote monitoring and allow AI systems to conduct troubleshooting diagnosis and predictive analysis on system usage & performance data. IoT provides the data stream for the AI systems to analyze. While companies are working hard to deploy IoT capabilities into their systems, they will need to accelerate this effort and either retrofit or replace legacy systems to gain the full benefit of these complementary technologies.

Current Adoption of AI

When asked about their plans for implementing AI, a surprisingly high number of executives (53%) said they don’t currently have any AI capabilities and have no plans to implement them. Another 33% said they don’t have any AI in place but are planning to implement it in the future. Only 10% said they have some form of AI in place and that it is currently adding value to the service experience. So, while hype abounds, it’s still early in the cycle, with very few having actually adopted this new technology into their service environment.

Fig 3 – Current Use of AI

While those 53% of executives state they have no plans for adopting AI, the automation vendors are working hard to add it into their systems. As a result, these capabilities will creep into service organizations via case management, knowledge base, remote monitoring and other service enablement systems.

As the AI infiltration progresses, the question will be how quickly, and effectively service organizations adopt these new capabilities to enhance the customer experience. As we said earlier, AI is coming and is in fact around the corner, but it’s not here yet. Service executives need to start thinking now about how their services will be delivered in the near future, and how they can leverage their teams to add value and ensure strong customer relationships in an increasingly automated world.

Categories: Articles, Blog, News and Announcements

Greg Coleman's avatar

About Greg Coleman

Greg Coleman is a principal partner and CEO of Service Strategies Corp. Residing in San Diego, CA, Mr. Coleman has more than 25 years of experience in the high-technology services and customer experience fields. Mr. Coleman has worked with leading technology services organizations to develop and deploy global standards for service excellence and has assessed the performance of hundreds of organizations worldwide. You can email him at gcoleman@servicestrategies.com.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Comment Cancel

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

sidebar

Blog Sidebar

Recent Articles

  • Verint Earns Certification Under the Prestigious Service Capability & Performance (SCP) Standards
  • Certified Support Manager Logo
  • Service Industry Outlook – Research Report
  • Blog
  • Community
    • Articles
    • Presentations
    • Recorded Webinars
    • Research Reports
    • SCP Example Practices
Customer Experience Update

Footer

Contact

16769 Bernardo Center Drive, Suite 1-244 | San Diego, CA 92128

858.674.4864 - Corporate | 800.552.3058 - Toll Free

info@servicestrategies.com

Social Media

FacebookTwitterGoogle +YoutubeLinkedin
Consulting Services
  • Strategic Planning
  • Service Assessments
  • eServices Consulting
  • Service Process Design
  • Knowledge Management Consulting
Training Services
  • Public Course Schedule
  • Individual Development
    • Customer Service Representative
    • Support Professional
    • Support Specialist
    • Field Service Engineer
  • Management Development
    • Support Supervisor
    • Support Manager (Virtual 8 sessions over 2 weeks)
    • Field Service Manager
    • Field Service Supervisor
    • Team Leadership
  • Account Management
    • Strategic Account Management
    • Services Pro 3.0 Advanced Workshop
    • Resident Engineer Workshop
  • Career Certification
    • Certified Support Managers
    • Certified Support Supervisors
    • Certified Field Service Managers
    • Career Certification Exam Center
  • Educational Workshops
    • Problem Solving Workshop
    • Strategic Planning
    • Knowledge-Centered Support
  • Online Learning Center
Service Standards
  • Support Standard
  • eService Standard
  • Field Service Standard
  • Professional Service Standard
  • SCP Features and Benefits
  • SCP Sponsor Companies
  • SCP Certified Organizations

Copyright 2023 Service Strategies, All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy | Sitemap