Introduction

I like to look at the current state of “AI” and “AI Assistants” and imagine what the future holds. One of my recent thoughts is the direction in which we’re currently headed with these statistical machinations. As more companies fancy themselves as AI enabled, we see more and more chatbots getting placed as a defence net in front of call center and chat agents. We’ve all been there, trying to get our broadband reduced or cancelled only to have a chatbot shrug and give you the same meaningless options over and over and over and over. We’ve seen some online videos showcasing how people would pit one bot against the other to see how well they’d do, often as a joke or an experiment, but that could just be the future.
I digress though, let’s look at the history of things so we may better understand what the future may hold.

The history of things

The snail mail era

Way back when, if you had a problem with a company with whom you have transacted, you’d write them a letter, addressing the problem and requesting a particular course of action. It would look similar to the below:

To whom it may concern,

As a long standing customer of yours, I would draw attention to the fact that your service delivery has been lacking of late and I no longer wish to do business with you.  Please cancel all accounts.

Kind regards,
J.T. Smith.

This would take a while to reach the company but they would, usually and inevitable write back:

Dear Mr. J.T. Smith,

We understand that we have let you down with the quality of our service delivery and it is with dismay that we have cancelled your accounts with immediate effect.

We are currently working on improving our service at all levels and do hope that in future you would reconsider using our service again.  In the meanwhile, please do enjoy the complimentary assortment of preserves we have sent you, we hope this serves in starting to repair our business relaionship.

Kind regards,
Service Delivery Inc.

I may be embellishing the tone a bit but you get the idea. This would happen over the course of weeks or months, depending on the postal service and often they wouldn’t even send the preserves! Eventually, with the advent of the telegraph, things would be sped up a bit but the preserves fell away completely (it’s less practical trying to telegraph a physical substance).

The telephone era

The telephone was invented and it ushered in a new era of communication. People could finally communicate with companies in real-time! This made cancelling or engaging new services as easy as pie:

Agent: "Hi, this is Tom over at Service Delivery Inc. Thank you for calling today, how are you today?"
Customer: "Hi Tom, this is John T. Smith calling. I could be better, if I'm honest, but thanks for asking."
Agent: "I'm sorry to hear that, hopefully I can help improve your day.  What can I help you with?"
Customer: "Well, you see Tom, I haven't been very happy with your service of late and would like to cancel my account with immediate effect."
Agent: "Ah, I do apologise that we've not been living up to your expectations. I see you've been a long-standing customer with us, are you sure there's nothing I can offer to keep your business? I am authorised to offer you a 20% discount."
Customer: "Well, that's very kind of you, but I think it best to cancel the account for now."
Agent: "Very well, your account has been cancelled with immediate effect."
Customer: "Thank you, I rea-"
Agent: "Have a nice day."
*Call disconnected*

I’m not even kidding about that last part, very often the person you dealt with’s performance is measure by their ability to retain you as a customer. Once they’ve lost you, they have zero reason to be friendly to you any more. This was an interesting time, there was often a human connection involved and it made it feel more personable when you dealt with companies. Of course, as time evolved the call customer service agents were given scripts and their jobs were often outsourced to another country.

The user interface era

For a very short time, there was this golden age of clicking buttons. The call center still existed (probably does to this day) but companies found they saved money by letting you simply click a button to cancel your account. You’d log into their portal, find the right button (sometimes they’d hide it somewhere obscure) and click it. Sometimes they’d have a month’s cancellation period, during which time (if you were a big enough fish) they’d call you to try and retain your business. Any businesses that still offer this today, I commend you for it!

The chat era

This one was frustrating but not terribly so. It is very much in line with dealing customer service agents but in an async manner. You’d open an online chat window where you’d get to chat to one of their customer service agents. They’d likely be balancing several chats at once and thanks to the async nature of chats they had more room to simply follow a script:

Agent: "Thank you for contacting Service Delivery Inc.  Please may I have your name?"
Customer: "Hi, my name is John Smith.  I'd like to have my account cancelled as I feel that you guys are no longer providing an adequate service."
Agent: "Hi Mr. Smith, how can I help you today?"
Customer: "Uh, as I mentioned above, I'd like to have my account cancelled as I feel that you guys are no longer providing an adequate service."
Agent: "I see. May I ask why you are wanting to cancel your account?"
Customer: "I feel that you guys no longer providing an adequate service."
Agent: "I am sorry to hear that.  Please don't close this chat window, I am transferring you to our cancellations department."
Customer: "Thanks"
-- YOU ARE BEING TRANSFERRED.  PLEASE DO NOT CLOSE THIS WINDOW --

At this point you’d sometimes wait several minutes, a tactic I maintain was to try and get you to give up, close the window, and try again another day. If you were lucky, eventually a, supposedly new, agent would start chatting to you:

Agent: "Thank you for contacting Service Delivery Inc.  You have reached cancellations, may I have your name please?"
Customer: "Hi, yes, my name is John Smith."
Agent: "Hi Mr. Smith, how can I help you today?"
Customer: "I'd like to have my account cancelled."
Agent: "I see. May I ask why you are wanting to cancel your account?"
Customer: "I feel that you guys no longer providing an adequate service."
Agent: "I am sorry to hear that. We might be able to offer you a discount, would you mind waiting while I transfer you to our retention department?"
Customer: "Please, don't do that, just cancel my account."
...

This was the sort of frustration you’d have to deal with, but you had to remember, even though there was a human aspect there, they were just an interface for the script and if they ventured off script they’d get penalised for it.

The chatbot era

Arguably one of the worst eras. Building on the chat era, companies would start using bots to answer customers’ most frequent requests without those customers needing to chat to a human being at all. This would lead to massive lay-offs in customer service agencies which meant that if you would inevitable get past the chatbot, you’d wait a good while for an agent to become available. It should be noted, these were not AI chatbots, they were simple bots, trained to look for keywords in your message and reply with help articles:

Bot: "Thank you for contacting Service Delivery Inc. May I have your name please?"
Customer: "Hi, my name is John Smith, I'd like to cancel my account."
Bot: "Sorry, that name is too long, please enter only your name."
Customer: "John Smith"
Bot: "Hi, John Smith.  How can I help you?"
Customer: "I'd like to cancel my account."
Bot: "You can manage your account from the accounts page on our portal. Was this information useful?"
Customer: "No, I can't cancel from there."
Bot: "I'm sorry to hear that.  Here are related topics, please click on one that is most relevant to your query:"
"Manage account"
"Upgrade account"
"Subscribe new account"
"More"
Customer: "More"
Bot: "Change account password"
"Change account email"
"Cancel account"
Customer: "Cancel account"
Bot: "To cancel your account please use our contact us page.  This cannot be done from the account management page. Was this information useful?"
Customer: "No, I did that and that's how I got here!"

This is the sort of frustrating loop you could get caught in. To some companies’ credit, they put a “Speak to human” button in. With others, you just had to hope that your interaction with the bot would eventually lead to a human:

Customer: "Please, can I just speak to a human?"
Bot: "To reach out to us, please use our contact us page. Was this information useful?"
Customer: "No"
Bot: "I'm sorry to hear that. Here are related topics, please click on one that is more relevant to your query:"
...

At this point, you’d click on “More” until the bot ran out of options and if you’re very lucky, they’d transfer your chat to a human being:

Bot: "I'm sorry, I can't find any more relevant topics to assist you. Would you like to chat to an agent?"
Customer: "YES."
Bot: "Transferring you now.  Please do not close this window."
...

At this point you can refer back to the chat era. These bots are still widely used today as a screening tool to try and answer frequently asked queries instead of wasting the time of actual service agents. In short, the company would rather waste your time than their resources.

The current state of things

The AI chatbot era

Thanks to massive leaps in large language models, or AI as we call it, companies are upgrading their chatbots. These new chatbots are given a script read from but they’re at least able to better understand what you’re asking for:

Bot: "Thank you for contacting Service Delivery Inc. May I have your name please?"
Customer: "Hi, my name is John Smith, I'd like to cancel my account."
Bot: "Hi John.  I hope you're well. I understand you want to cancel your account, is this correct?"
Customer: "Yes"
Bot: "Very well, I need to transfer this chat to an agent to process the request. Would you mind telling me why you would like to cancel so I may best transfer you?"
Customer: "Sure. I simply feel like the price I'm paying is too high for an inadequate service."
Bot: "Thank you, John. Transferring you now, please don't close this window."
...

From this point on, the bot can transfer you to retention first or straight to cancellations, depending on your answers. It’s not a bad system and some companies will absolutely dress the bot up as an actual person, we probably wouldn’t be the wiser in some cases.

What is to come?

The AI interface era

This era is where companies lose their service agents almost entirely. AI bots are already able to utilise APIs which would essentially be what the service agent was doing:

Bot: "Thank you for contacting Service Delivery Inc. May I have your name please?"
Customer: "Hi, my name is John Smith, I'd like to cancel my account."
Bot: "Hi John.  I hope you're well. I understand you want to cancel your account, is this correct?"
Customer: "Yes"
Bot: "Very well. May I ask what you want to cancel?"
Customer: "It's too expensive for what I get."
Bot: "I see."
* Bot accesses the promotions API. *
"I can offer you a 20% discounted rate if you agree to sign up for another 12 months?"
Customer: "No thanks, I'd rather not be tied up for another 12 months."
Bot: "Very well."
* Bot accesses the customer API to determine the value of the customer. *
"I have checked our systems, and thanks to your long standing business with us, I am authorised to offer you 10% off on your monthly payments going forward, with no obligations."
Customer: "That's kind of you but I'd rather just cancel for now, thanks."
Bot: "Very well."
* Bot accesses the account API and cancels the user's account. *
...

The clear difference in tone comes from the fact that even though the bot is motivated through context and training to keep your business, it doesn’t have that desperation of a person whose monthly performance review depended on keeping your business. It’s a clean and efficient system, though in my opinion it still doesn’t come close to the Interface Era. Which brings me to my next hypothesised era.

The AI to AI interface era

In this era, the customer is also AI enabled, they have a chat bot of their own, let’s call it MeBot, to do the haggling for them. After all, if the companies are using them, why not us? Just imagine:

Customer: "Hey, MeBot, could you please reach out to Service Delivery Inc. and cancel my account with them?"
MeBot: "Sure.  Are you set on the cancellation or is there anything that would keep you around?"
Customer: "If they offer a 20% discount on my monthlies without me having to sign a new contract, I'll be happy."
MeBot: "I will keep this in mind. Reaching out to Service Delivery Inc. now..."

At this point, MeBot opens up the Contact Us page for Service Delivery Inc. and initiates a chat (I’ll be referring to the company bot as CorpoBot, for clarity):

CorpoBot: "Thank you for contacting Service Delivery Inc. May I have your name please?"
MeBot: "Hi, my name is John Smith, I'd like to cancel my account."
CorpoBot: "Hi John.  I hope you're well. I understand you want to cancel your account, is this correct?"
MeBot: "Yes"
CorpoBot: "Very well. May I ask what you want to cancel?"
MeBot: "It is currently too expensive."
CorpoBot: "I see."
* CorpoBot accesses the promotions API. *
"I can offer you a 20% discounted rate if you agree to sign up for another 12 months?"
MeBot: "No thanks, I do not want to sign another contract."
CorpoBot: "Very well."
* CorpoBot accesses the customer API to determine the value of the customer. *
"I have checked our systems, and thanks to your long standing business with us, I am authorised to offer you 10% off on your monthly payments going forward, with no obligations."
MeBot: "If you can offer me 20% off on the monthly payments, I will be happy to keep the account open."
CorpoBot: "Unfortunately I cannot offer this without a new 12-month contract."
MeBot: "No, I do not want to sign another contract.  Please cancel the account."
CorpoBot: "Very well."
* CorpoBot accesses the account API and cancels the user's account. *
...

All the while you carry on with your daily things while your chat bot takes care of things for you. Given this and given what history has shown us, I can’t help but wonder what the next era would be?

The AI to interface era

Not to be confused with the AI Interface era, the AI to interface era, though idyllic, occurs when the company learns that customers know what they want and realise they can save money by decommissioning their own AI chatbots in favour of simple APIs that MeBot could interface with:

Customer: "MeBot, could you cancel my account with Service Delivery Inc.?"
MeBot: "Sure thing, John!  Do you have any parameters around the cancellation?  Could they offer a discount to keep your business?"
Customer: "If they can offer me 20% without needing a new contract, I'll stick around."
MeBot: "Thank you.  Checking..."
* At this point in time, MeBot accesses the company's API directly with the parameters that John supplied.  The API can do it's value mathematics in the background and simply return the result. *
MeBot: "They are unable to offer a discount of that nature and as such have cancelled your account."
Customer: "Thanks, MeBot!"
...

Seems pretty easy, right? We could program MeBot to act in whatever way we wanted it to and we could do it without having any sort of programming skills. We simply talk to it and have it do the tuning/coding.

Conclusion

AI (LLMs specifically) are in a broad adoption phase right now. Companies are jumping onboard to save themselves money. As consumers, we should be doing the same thing. Don’t let companies dictate the terms on which we use these powerful tools. If a company hides it’s customer service behind an AI chatbot, there is no reason we shouldn’t use an AI chatbot to break through that barrier and get us results.