Gartner Research Reveals What Technologies are Truly Having an Impact
on Service Organizations Worldwide

STAMFORD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/AI?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#AIlt;/agt;–Thirty-seven percent of service leaders are either piloting or using
artificial intelligence (AI) bots and virtual customer assistants
(VCAs), and 67 percent of those leaders believe they are high-value
tools in the contact center, according to a recent
survey by Gartner, Inc. In recent years, no other channel technology
has piqued customer service and support leaders’ interest more than AI
bots and VCAs, according to Gartner’s
Technology Roadmap Survey.

In the survey of 452 service leaders across all industries and business
types, respondents showed that confidence is leading more companies to
adopt the technologies — with 68 percent of service leaders reporting
they believe AI
bots and VCAs will be of significant importance for them and their
organizations in the next two years.

“While bots and VCAs are still emergent technologies, many service
leaders have been impressed with their potential. As a result, we are
seeing more adoption of these technologies into service technology
portfolios,” said Lauren Villeneuve, advisor at Gartner. “Service
organizations that are integrating these technologies — both
customer-facing and rep-facing systems — into their operations are using
innovation and progressive strategies to ensure the success of the
technology. AI bots and VCAs are relatively new in the customer service
space, so it’s critical that companies evaluate these technologies to
ensure they are the right fit for their organization and customers.”

Gartner
research shows that deploying bots can deliver various benefits to
the contact center, including:

• Greater capability and scale: AI bots are best equipped to
  resolve the simple issues customers are interested in self-serving in
  the first place. This allows service reps to focus on the more complex
  tasks and issues customers need direct help resolving.
• Faster chat speed: AI bots can drastically reduce customer wait
  time. For example, one company reported their chatbots responding to
  customer inquiries within five seconds of customer contact, while
  their typical service reps take an average of 51 seconds.
• Better gatekeeping: AI bots can learn to recognize other bots
  trying to gain access to systems, thus freeing service reps to focus
  only on actual customers.

Additional details on Gartner’s Technology Roadmap Survey and the
Service Technology Bullseye are available to Gartner for Customer
Service & Support Leaders clients in the report Current
and Emerging Technologies in Service.

About Gartner for Customer Service & Support Leaders

The customer service and support function is vital to the satisfaction
and loyalty of a company’s customer base. Gartner
for Customer Service & Support Leaders provides indispensable
insights, advice and tools needed to achieve mission-critical
priorities, improve the customer experience and contain costs. Gartner’s
research, advice and best practices equip customer service and support
leaders to reduce customer effort, optimize service channel strategy,
and hire, develop and retain high-potential frontline talent.

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT), is the world’s leading research and advisory
company and a member of the S&P 500. We equip business leaders with
indispensable insights, advice and tools to achieve their
mission-critical priorities today and build the successful organizations
of tomorrow.

Our unmatched combination of expert-led, practitioner-sourced and
data-driven research steers clients toward the right decisions on the
issues that matter most. We are a trusted advisor and objective resource
for more than 15,000 organizations in more than 100 countries — across
all major functions, in every industry and enterprise size. To learn
more about how we help decision makers fuel the future of business,
visit gartner.com.

Contacts

Kelly Blum
571-303-5745
[email protected]