Call centre employee? Your job is under threat; here is why

Call centre jobs have been a great entry point for many in the segment and for the smart workers growth has been massive! All this may change, soon. So, much so, that jobs themselves may be lost on a vast scale and they may be replaced by 'virtual agents'. Google is planning to replace humans with Artificial Intelligence(AI) powered virtual agents. According to an IANS report, Google has announced it is working with several partners like Cisco and Genesys to build Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that will replace some of the work in call centres.

'Contact Center AI'- is the name, Google has given to the software. When a customer will try to connect to the call centre this software will install virtual agents that will answer any queries. 

However, for the smart workers, there may still be hope of retaining their jobs. "When the customer asks something that the AI cannot do, it will automatically forward the call to a human," said Fei-Fei Li, Chief Scientist at Google, during the Cloud Next conference late on Tuesday.

“Our true goal is to empower a contact centre’s human agents, as well as the customers that rely on them. To do this, we built a complete solution with our partners that includes Dialogflow Enterprise Edition, as well as additional capabilities that are particularly useful for contact centres,” Li added.

In this AI technology, when a call is placed, the caller is immediately greeted by a Virtual Agent that answers questions and fulfils tasks all on its own.

When a caller's needs surpass the Virtual Agent, it transitions to a human representative.

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The result is a flexible solution that adapts to the needs of each and every call, and provides a seamless experience between live and virtual agents, playing as big or as small a role as the situation demands.

AI is the hottest new trend in the industry and after Google soaked its hands early with Duplex, Microsoft is unlikely to be far behind. Microsoft's chatbot called XiaoIce was first announced in April. Xiaolce is capable of talking like a real person over a phone call, as featured in a video.