Google AI: How Will it Affect Offshore Jobs?

There’s been a lot of buzz about the latest advance in Google AI. Company CEO Sundar Pichai recently demonstrated the ability of Google Assistant to make a complete phone call to set a haircut appointment for its user. The call sounded completely natural, complete with filler sounds like “mm-hm!”

It was a fascinating presentation, though some doubts have surfaced as to its authenticity. Still, we couldn’t help but think about what such a development means for our line of work.

Hint: Neither Doom Nor Gloom

Actually, we’re pretty excited about these developments. Rather than putting our call centers and BPO offices out of work, AI in general has the potential to change the way we do many of our tasks. Ben Pring at cio.com.au explains the situation pretty clearly:

“A primary argument against automation and AI is the impact these technologies will have on the workforce. There is a fear that by embracing automation, businesses will be cutting jobs. What instead needs to be recognized is that tasks and jobs are different, and are not synonymous with each other. Industries will be disrupted without a doubt, but this because tasks will be automated — not jobs. Separating the two is of crucial importance. Jobs are made up of many tasks. That means people will not lose their jobs or livelihood, but rather their jobs will become easier, what with the automation of repetitive tasks enabling them to spend their time at work more efficiently. Furthermore, machines completing tedious tasks will free up time for humans to complete more challenging, creative, and human-centric tasks.”

This has great implications for everyone.

Even More Humans on the Phones

What we foresee happening is that rather than having Google AI take over our call centers, we’ll be able to expand our operations that require human judgement and empathy, not to mention creativity.

Many of the calls we currently handle are formulaic, but they still require a human ear for tone. An AI can’t tell if a potential donor to a charity drive is feeling hesitant and might be more comfortable with a lower donation amount.

Some roles, like our Sales Development Representatives, spend a significant portion of their time on record-keeping. If AI can streamline that part of the process, the SDRs would be able to make more contacts with their leads across more channels. Systems like the Google AI will also augment their ability to respond to objections as it listens in on the conversation and pulls up relevant data.

What this means is that AI will free up time for our agents to engage in these higher-level tasks, and time for us to train them how to do it.

More practically, implementing these systems also requires a large increase in both software and hardware experts.

It’s absolutely true that some roles will disappear. We won’t miss them any more than we miss manufacturing buggy whips and cleaning up after horses on city streets, though. Technological advances require a willingness to learn new skills. These particular advances will make it easier than ever to teach the skills necessary to use them.

That’s a future to be excited about!

AI won’t change the fact that outsourcing non-core business processes saves companies money and gives them room to grow. It just makes it work even faster and better. To see how we can scale your business, contact Boomsourcing today!