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Chatbot to Replace Your Call Center Staff

You can stop complaining about real people and start complaining about a robot.

Today many companies have off-shored their call centers to places like India and Pakistan. I have friends who complain about trying to talk with someone on the phone with a foreign accent and not being able to understand them. 

Well, just wait! It won't be that long before we have robots that replace people with chatbot capabilities. This means that robots apply natural language understanding in a deeper way. They will listen to callers and provide information, guidance and advice to people based on what the customer, or in the case of government, citizens are asking about.  

Perhaps you have been caught in interactive voice response (IVR) hell before, where you go from one prompt to another and never talk to a person. I've learned to say "representative" early in that IVR train. I can predict a chatbot hell in my future!

Want more information, see The Complete Beginner's Guide to Chatbots.

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.