Filipino consumers want female, funny chatbots
Customers of communications and media service providers in the Philippines have given their critical judgment on use of artificial intelligence (AI) for customer care and commerce, and said how they want software robots or chatbots to serve them in a new study of over 500 consumers. As part of the study, a survey of senior decision makers on AI spending at some of Asia’s largest communications and media companies also revealed how plans for a rise of the robots for frontline customer interactions could be hampered by wrong investment choices and a lack of human talent. These are part of the findings from a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Amdocs in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
• Love their speed and convenience but don’t force robots on us until they’re more human and smarter, according to consumers
Ninety percent of Filipino consumers interact with virtual agents monthly, more than a quarter (26 percent) weekly, because its more convenient (43 percent) and quicker (46 percent), but 48 percent say this is only because they had no other option. If offered a choice, 87 percent would prefer to speak to a human since human agents better understand their needs (83 percent) and can address multiple questions at once (63 percent). Bots, say consumers, cannot deal with complex requests (their biggest problem), understand human emotions (second biggest problem) or deliver personalized offers as well as humans (third biggest problem).
Consumers also have strong views on how they want bots to look like and behave. More than half (51 percent) prefer their bot to look like a human, as opposed to 17 percent who want to see an avatar. Although 46 percent don’t care either way, 44 percent prefer them to be female, rather than male (10 percent). Sounding polite, intelligent and caring are by far the highest in terms of preferred bot personality traits, followed by being fully customizable and funny. But, sounding serious, foreign or authoritative rank much lower with only 18, 17 and nine percent of consumers, respectively, saying they would appreciate this. • Service provider investments not focused on what’s bothering consumers Service providers in Asia are not investing in the right areas in terms of their AI investments. Thirty-eight percent are prioritizing AI investment in increasing information security and privacy and 33 percent in speed of response. What customers rank as top areas for improvement such as bots delivering better personalization or more comprehensive information are lower on service providers’ priority lists with eight and four percent, respectively, prioritizing these. Nearly a third (31 percent) of service providers are also creating avatar images for their bots while consumers prefer human-like images. They are also investing in features that Filipino consumers don’t find as desirable, with more than half (56 percent) of service providers building their bots to sound serious, a quarter to sound foreign and nearly a quarter (24 percent) to sound
authoritative. The fact that 42 percent of Filipino consumers experiencing problems with today’s bot service don’t complain about it means the industry is working in the dark. • Inability to grow, not cut, human workforce is the biggest risk to AI strategies
Eighty-seven percent of service provider AI decision makers in Asia say that 85 percent of customer interactions will be with software robots in five years’ time. And almost a half of these decision makers (46 percent) fear they are lagging behind their competitors in the use of AI to improve the customer experience. To catch up, over a half (58 percent) plan to increase their AI budgets by at least six percent in the next 12 months and 87 percent intend to expand their AI workforce within the year.