It's been more than two years since IBM's Watson kicked some human butt on Jeopardy, and now the artificial intelligence system is on the verge of making it onto smartphones. IBM today announced "Watson Engagement Advisor," software that lets businesses replace their current automated customer service systems with one that is based on Watson and is thus presumably much smarter.
Given the sorry state of automated customer service, it would be hard for Watson to make matters worse, and perhaps Watson will take away some of the pain of trying to talk to robots posing as customer service agents.
In the time since Watson wowed Alex Trebek, IBM's "research and development staff has made Watson 75 percent smaller, 25 percent faster, and have been working hard to improve Watson’s ability to answer consumer-oriented questions," IBM's GM of Watson Solutions Manoj Saxena wrote in a blog post today.
Consumers interacting with Watson would be able to either type inquiries or speak them, with voice-recognition technology provided by third-party vendors such as Nuance, a New York Times story said. ANZ Bank in Australia and New Zealand told the Times that it's testing Watson Engagement Advisor and is confident that it will work well in real life.
Saxena continued:
Consumers will be able to experience this new level of personalized service through the brands they already have relationships with—their banks and investment advisors, their phone service providers, insurance companies, favorite stores and other trusted organizations. For instance, a bank might offer Watson directly to customers on websites and mobile devices to help give them insights regarding retirement and various types of savings instruments like 401k accounts. An individual may begin a dialogue with Watson on their smartphone, but continue later from where they left off on their PC or tablet. Alternatively, a telecommunications firm could equip their call center agents with Watson to assist customers in troubleshooting a problem with a product, service, or billing issue.
A Forbes article states that Watson Engagement Advisor will be rolled out by several businesses within a few months. The "Ask Watson" feature will interact with customers via e-mail, smartphone apps, SMS, and online chats.
"Last year there were over 261 billion calls made on call centers, and one out of two calls went unresolved," Saxena said in a video IBM released yesterday. "We have a situation where customers are telling us more about themselves than they ever did. At the same time they are more frustrated that companies don't understand them."
Here's a look at that video:
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