by Peter A. Arthur-Smith

“Companies are poised to unleash these AI Voice Agents. We humans need to decide how we will adjust to a world flooded with near-human voices.” Quote from article by Evan Ratliff, New York Times, October, 2024, entitled: ‘Soon We’ll be Talking To Ourselves.’

Are we going to be bamboozled into AI and its supposed holy grail, or are we going to resist patronizing companies that offer “pseudo-human” experiences rather than a real person? The companies creating and promoting these AI systems are desperate to bolster their revenue streams by inserting it into their waning known product/service lines – come hell or high-water! Their desperation supersedes smart thinking.

Organizations that admire efficiency are likely to be more prone to the allure of AI with its possibility of replacing people with machines wherever they can. However, the article writer Ratliff warned; “Human callers who reached my AI clone by phone quickly grew frustrated with it, in part because it always sounded interested but was never quite buying.” In other words, it doesn’t possess the empathy or ingenuity to really clinch the deal.

Those organizations that really value customer relations are likely to find clever arrangements to combine staff and technology rather than fall headlong for AI voice agents. The smart ones will develop principles and practices that delineate between relation building and relationship maintenance. Relation building will include discerning between potential and existing customers and resolve their crucial buying issues, while relationship maintenance will include channeling existing customers to staff members best suited to handle their particular issue – in person. In other words, customer oriented ventures will show respect toward valuable customer relations by directly assisting with particular customer needs rather than sidelining them to an automaton.

This is where leadership more than management will show its true colors. Effective leaders place people at the center of their considerations, whereas managers are always prone to machines that will replace people. Although potential or existing customers can be challenging with their various foibles, their ongoing loyalty for service is invariably worth it. A loyal, profitable revenue stream is more likely to be sustained through human interaction as opposed to a machine.

Besides, a customer call can always provide the opportunity to build on conversations about new or existing products and services. Such a reality is especially true when potential or existing customer goodwill is fostered through attentive, human customer service. It’s my contention that that loyalty will be eroded over time when customer service is replaced by machines. It was interesting to note the number of companies that reverted to hybrid arrangements after giving voice machines a run for their money; especially those entities that cared about their customer relations.

Every time a machine – albeit through AI human cloning – handles the situation an opportunity could be lost to expand a client relationship through perfunctory, systemized interaction. Hence short-sighted, efficiency-minded organizations will be drawn to this clear downside, blinded by their focus on sheer profit.

Overall, it would be too easy to extol the virtues of AI if you’re purely fixated on efficiency. So many AI purveyors have been forced toward the efficiency drum themselves, as they’ve run out of ideas for replacing their current range of products or services. They started losing that battle many years ago when they went public and invited Wall Street and efficiency associates into their lives; where short term results became more important than innovation or making substantive fresh breakthroughs. They lost sight of effective-thinking.

This latter factor is the holy grail of innovation, breakthroughs, elegant solutions and customer service. Steve Jobs understood what counted more with customers, which is why he perpetually stormed the marketplace with Apple computers, iPhones and more. In other words, don’t let short-sighted, efficiency-thinkers negatively impact the future of your venture. Choose wisely between genuine human talent and AI rather than be hidebound by the self-interested, efficiency-thinking cohort.