Future of employment with automation and chatbots

With the advancement of technology, today’s workplace has been rapidly transforming itself into a platform where there is regular interaction between humans with machines. With the introduction of chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI), technology has now become an essential element in our routine chores and job tasks. Huge advances in technology at a tremendous pace have been observed in cases when it comes to recognition of speech and detection of visual indications, information and emotions and these are likely to impact the way we perform our jobs in the years to come.

Chatbots

Chatbots are computer programs that are used for the purpose of interacting with humans with the help of audio and text messages. This technology has been adopted by many organizations to carry out activities like embracing automation and adopting strategies for hiring an individual and assessing his behavioral traits. Chatbots, in particular, exhibit how technology is ever more able to capture the human quintessence by inducing and acting in response to human actions and emotions, all of which comes from AI and machine learning. Cognitive detection of emotion is also supported by many enterprise-grade chatbot platforms.

Need for intelligent automation

When it comes to the productivity of a business, it depends majorly on how fast a given set of the task has been accomplished without compromising on quality. In such a scenario, a dramatic upgrade to the automation system can make such routine jobs more intelligent. The intelligent automation system would watch the workflow of the employee, the way a human reacts to various calls, reveal areas where too much manual endeavor is carried out, and make better decisions on where automation could both improve the finished product, and simplify the workflow, everything without human intervention. The mundane aspects of the job of the employee would be taken over by the intelligent automation system. This leads to happier customers on one hand and a more engaged and productive business organization on the other hand.

Use of chatbots in the workplace

1. Automating internal tasks

Manual and routine jobs of employees including repetitive administrative and office tasks can be automated and streamlined by AI-powered chatbots. Customized bots can be created as per the organization’s need. Employees can focus mainly on productive work instead of wasting time on mundane tasks. The following basic transactions can be carried out:

• Checking of inventories and spare parts
• Approving purchase orders
• Approving employee-leave requests
• Fetching relevant information while performing complex transactions
• Transacting simply by speaking, with the help of voice-bots, taking productivity improvements to the next level.

2. Customer service

In terms of long-lasting customer relationships, chatbots are the most preferred and admired application of enterprise chatbot platforms as these are gradually reducing the dependency on a human. Even if the front-line staff is adequately trained, an inadequate first response will make a potential customer unhappy and develop a bad perception of the organization. With the hasty progressions in ML or machine learning and NLP or natural language processing, chatbots are able to comprehend customers’ queries easily and provide an appropriate and satisfactory response by accumulating the data that has been fed. Moreover, it is available 24/7 and can be integrated into messaging or social media services throughout the world.

3. Intelligent digital assistants at work

On a daily basis, constant juggling between various applications for fetching different types of data to get a job done is a boring and tiresome process for employees and their productivity decreases due to their putting in extra time and effort to such tasks. Chatbots powered by AI helps deliver a consistent and standardized response across any available user channels like Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, Facebook Messenger, etc. Real-time response to our queries becomes easier with chatbots. With chatbots, data can be obtained by employees at his fingertips without the need for opening new applications or windows. Moreover, data can be derived both in rich media formats and in a text.

Chatbots perform the role of digital virtual assistants in an enterprise’s messaging platform. Personalized updates, individualized reminders, recommendations, and updates are sent by means of push medium and such facilities help automation of internal team communication.

With the help of bots, the user can speak or write down some keywords which the AI engine identifies, and Robotic Process Automation can execute the transactions.

4. Human to machine interaction

As we are striving hard to make machines interact in as human-like ways as possible, the technology of human-to-machine interaction is becoming more and more advanced. Emotions in human voices and in their written words are now detected by machines and these machines bear the capacity to alter their responses and feedback accordingly. Eventually, the need to control complex menus or to learn to operate a program or anything gets faded away. The machine will be able to provide answers and help in completing a task independently.

5. Smart process automation

Simply put, jobs will get affected through smart process automation including arbitrage of labor connected to replacing people with bots. Today, machines are carrying out most of the basic work required across many industries. They are becoming smarter and more capable in areas of robotic process automation, translation of natural language document, and fielding requests of customer services.

While there is no doubt that capabilities of machines will keep on improving and expanding, possibly resulting in the unemployment of more human workers, aptitude and knowledge of humans will still be required in the future.

6. Advanced analytics

Advanced analytics and machine-learning based on AI are using data to locate or identify patterns and then applying machine learning to determine approaches and generate value. It assists companies in planning business operations and understanding customers better. Business leaders are able to increase their insight into their organizations as they function, which ultimately results in an increase in revenue, reduction of costs and improvement in customer satisfaction on the whole.

With the infusion of digital technologies in our day-to-day experiences, companies are becoming more and more customer-centric nowadays. Hence, it is very important to accurately know customers’ preferences, characteristics of the human demography and other aspects associated with boosting both engagement and revenue. This can be achieved by companies through the smart application of machine learning, advanced analytics, and immediate personalization of interaction and content. Advanced AI techniques can even be used to forecast the actions of customers and, accordingly offer various products or services through the right digital channel with the help of those predictions.

Challenges of automation in the employment scenario

No doubt, the advancement of technology benefits organizations. But even the most advanced machine may be prone to defects. Software updates may be required or specialists have to be hired to manufacture and replace the parts that are defective in the machine.

Relying completely on bots for financial transactions, the involvement of credit card numbers, marketing emails or sensitive human resources information can prove detrimental for just a misplaced line of code. Moreover, somebody is also needed to manage the bot swarm arising out of data stored in innumerable formats involving dozens of common programming languages.

So before our entire trust is vested on bots, the fear of these challenges needs to be overcome.

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