As artificial intelligence continues to make its inevitable inroads into the business environment, misconceptions about the risks, costs, and disruptions of the rapidly evolving technology have become prevalent. Here we'll share some of the facts from fiction to help you gain a better understanding of what AI can – and can't – do for your business today.

1. Service Desk
Artificial Intelligence:
Separating Fact From Fiction
By Charlie Guerini
Senior Director of Global Operations

2. As artificial intelligence continues to make its
inevitable inroads into the business
environment, misconceptions about the risks,
costs, and disruptions of the rapidly evolving
technology have become prevalent.
Here we’ll share some of the facts from fiction
to help you gain a better understanding of
what AI can – and can’t – do for your business
today.

3. Check your knowledge of
some common AI myths
and facts with this quiz.
Don’t worry if you get stuck, the answers are
on the slide after each question.

4. By 2020, 85% of all customer
interactions will be handled
without a human agent.
True or False?

5. We see this statement quoted a lot by chatbot providers and
industry experts, but this is not possible in every industry. This very
generic statistic requires some elaboration.
Although a chatbot can handle multiple interactions, unless your
service desk only handles very simple tasks, such as password
resets, reaching the 85% threshold will not be achievable. With
time, and as AI technology achieves super intelligence stages, there
will likely be a greater percentage of issues resolved by a bot
instead of a human.
But humans will always be needed to optimize the software and
provide a continuous non-interrupted conversation. Organizations
that can find the balance will flourish in the next 5 to 10 years.
False

6. AI is constrained by the
limits of human intelligence.
True or False?

7. All learning algorithms are created by humans. As such, the
computer is limited by the sophistication of the human-designed
machine learning techniques.
Unfortunately, for the moment, human knowledge is a very real
bottleneck for AI. This is especially important to remember as you
think about employing AI techniques for your business challenges.
It’s very unlikely you will be able to use AI in a meaningful way
without good data science, engineering, and a deep understanding
of AI techniques and your data.
True

8. Implementing a chatbot or
virtual assistant will deliver
600% ROI.
True or False?

9. For now.
Let’s use self-service as a mirror for the use of chatbots and virtual
personal assistants. Today, chatbots and virtual assistants are an
evolution of self-service more than truly autonomous entities. To
date, self-service, while highly adopted from a technology point of
view, has had limited end user adoption success.
The number of organizations that have realized these benefits and
have achieved the anticipated ROI are few, less than 12%,
according to recent SDI research.
False

10. AI is just a trendy word
for automation.
True or False?

11. Automation is just one part of artificial intelligence. Here’s an
example:
Autonomous, or self-driving, cars use artificial intelligence to operate
automated mechanisms such as turning the wheels or accelerating.
The AI component lies in how the car makes the decision to turn,
and in which direction, or whether to speed up or slow down. It does
this by collecting data, such as current speed, surrounding objects or
markers, and location data, then analyzing it and directing the car.
So the part of the operation that involves “thinking” can be said to be
artificial intelligence. The rote operation of vehicle functions such as
steering and acceleration are automated. Automation is just part of
the output of artificial intelligence – a process of completing a task
with little to no human intervention.
False

12. Data will make chatbots or
virtual assistants smarter.
True or False?

13. With time, most of our interactions online – everything from social
media to online shopping – will generate a ton of personal data that
can be used to customize and target ads and services to consumers.
As technology companies continue to mine the data available for their
users, their algorithms and bots become smarter and smarter. Of the
thousands of terabytes of data that each of us will generate in our
lifetime, it is estimated that only about 33% is actually valuable, and
then only if analyzed, according to IBM.
Organizations collecting customer data can combine big data, machine
learning, and AI to deliver an unrivaled level of personalization
throughout the customer journey. This can help companies predict and
more adeptly respond to an end user’s behavior or inquiries.
True

14. Personalizing your chatbot
in real time is vital to
optimizing AI performance.
True or False?

15. Like a service desk that solves tens of thousands of tickets every
month, you need to understand the behaviors of users, review the
bot answers, and do this all in real time in order to be effective and
not have frustrated customers that had the same unresolved issue
come back to them again.
Experts in dialogue scripting and real-time program updating are
invaluable in bringing a chatbot up to speed, so the next time a
repeat query is input, it can be resolved. Personalization greatly
improves the customer service interaction, promotes consumer
satisfaction, improves conversions, and drives repeat satisfied
customers.
True

16. Implementing a bot in my
service desk will eliminate
human service agents.
True or False?

17. This is simply not realistic at this point. While machines may appear to
be intelligent, that’s the result of complex programming and training.
The result is that humans and technology work together without the
sinister prospect of an AI takeover. Front line agents will take over more
complex issues rather than password resets that can be done by AI.
Still, many providers are boasting that their bot can easily take over the
front line service desk agent’s tasks and deliver tremendous cost-
savings to organizations implementing their programs. While it’s
certainly true that bots can offload easier tasks, such as onboarding
processes or password resets, you will still require skilled human
agents to address more complex end-user requests.
The most mature bots available today may resolve as much as 30% to
60% of your tasks, but will take significant time and development to
reach levels where we can replace agents completely.
False

18. Automation is changing customer service –
there’s no doubt about that.
The rise of machine learning, automation, and
artificial intelligence are poised to take companies to
a new level of service. The trick is knowing which
strategy is right for your company – and knowing
how to integrate it with your current customer
service plan.