
Call Centers Can Provide the Answer When Chatbots Overwhelm
June 13, 2018
Chatbots, which automate responses to social media inquiries, promise to provide some interesting customer service solutions, but they also pose threats if they run amuck. (See “What Are Chatbots and Will They Affect the Call Center?”)
These computerized bots have the potential to automatically generate numerous transactions, even if the end user isn’t interested or no longer cares. Just consider the companies that repeatedly call you, direct mail you, and email you when you don’t want them to, even after you ask them to stop. Imagine the same thing happening with bots.
The situation with invasive phone calls and email messages got so bad that the US government got involved and enacted regulations to curb abuse. (They were mostly effective in cutting the misuse of the telephone, but they were not so helpful in reducing unwanted email.)
Now consider spam email, not the merely annoying variety, but the version that tries to exploit you into revealing personal information or downloading a virus. With near zero cost, email is easy for those with a nefarious intent to exploit others, sending out millions of messages at the click of a mouse. The same could happen with chatbots. Imagine getting as many text messages as you do emails.
This could provide a communications bottleneck, for both businesses and the harried individual. We would then need to filter content in order to access the legitimate communication. This will spawn automation tools that will perform comparably to todays’ spam filters. And similarly we can expect these tools to give false negatives and false positives, which will require human intervention to sort out. This task is ideally suited for call centers.
This is not a rant about the evils of chatbots but a realistic warning of how something intended to aid in communication could actually be misused to over communicate or commandeered to intentionally miscommunicate.
Chatbots show much promise and could revolutionize customer service; let’s hope so. Yet they also have the potential to overwhelm channels with unwanted messages. Is your contact center ready?
Janet Livingston is the president of Call Center Sales Pro, a premier sales and marketing service provider for the call center and telephone answering service industry. Contact Janet at contactus@callcenter-salespro.com or 800-901-7706.
Peter DeHaan is a freelance writer from Southwest Michigan.
Subscribe
Recent Posts
Use an Answering Service to Cover Sick Days

Unlike a vacation, which employees schedule in advance, no one plans a sick day—or at least most people don’t. In most cases a sick day is not a p...
What Is a Call Center?

If your business operates outside the call center industry, you may have trouble answering this question of “What is a call center?” But it’s an...
Implement an Agent Development Program

Call center agents, your public-facing staff, are key to your call center’s effectiveness and fuel the success of the overall organization. Successf...
Agent Success Starts With Great Training

In the call center arena, your frontline people are key to success. This starts on day one of their employment in their initial training. Here are som...
How Not to Sell Your Telephone Answering Service

There are some commonsense steps to take when selling your telephone answering service, just as there are when selling anything. Common key elements i...
Why You Should Consolidate Siloed Call Centers

It’s likely your hospital system has at least one call center, a centralized place that handles calls. This may be for a department, a building, the...
Use an Answering Service to Schedule Appointments

Some businesses and professionals live or die by the number of appointments they have each day. For them, an appointment is a billable moment. A full ...
Use an Answering Service to Cover Staff Meetings

It’s a dilemma. You want all of your staff to attend your staff meetings, but that leaves no one left to answer the phone when it rings. After all, ...