Agenti Googlovega klicnega centra z umetno inteligenco si vsi vzamejo prosto jutro

Your correspondent once met the manager of a contact center dedicated to processing parking and speeding fines. This chap’s “customers” were understandably nearly always unhappy, and the folks who answered the phones therefore copped more than their fair share of surliness and abuse.

Devetdeset odstotkov jih je torej v enem letu pustilo službo.

Other call center operators don’t have to deal with 90 percent attrition, but 50 percent staff annual turnover is not uncommon.

Službe za pomoč strankam se po svojih najboljših močeh trudijo avtomatizirati rutinska opravila, tako da se lahko njihovi najboljši ljudje uporabijo za naloge, ki od ljudi zahtevajo reševanje težav. Takšno delo je bolj izpolnjujoče, zato ti delavci ostanejo dlje časa in se sčasoma naučijo nuditi vrhunske storitve. Teoretično torej avtomatizirani sistemi izboljšajo storitve in zmanjšajo ogromne stroške zaposlovanja in usposabljanja, s katerimi se soočajo kontaktni centri.

We offer this quick primer on the customer service caper in the context of a Monday outage at Google’s Dialogflow CX service, which the search and ads giant opisuje as an AI-infused offering that creates automated agents that are “similar to a human call center agent. You train them both to handle expected conversation scenarios, and your training does not need to be overly explicit.”

The tech behind Google’s Assistant powers the service, which offers both chatbots and voicebots. Google says whichever you choose they “Deliver more natural customer experiences” and “support multi-turn conversations with supplemental questions.”

When they’re running.

Which they weren’t between 10:19 and 12:40, Pacific time (1719 to 1940 UTC), on Monday September 19.

During that time, Google’s povzetek incidenta labelled the incident “Agents unable to receive phone calls” and said its impact meant “Phone calls may not be reachable to Dialogflow agents, and customers may also expect longer wait times on the calls.”

Ponujena ni bila nobena razlaga za izpad, za katerega je Google izjavil, da je vplival tako na Dialogflow kot na njegove storitve strojnega učenja v oblaku.

Izpadi Googla pogosto niso posledica napačno konfigurirane programske opreme, ki je v proizvodnji. Ne glede na vzrok so izpadi v oblakih najvišje ravni neprijetni, saj se glavni hiperrazširjevalniki zaradi ogromnega obsega svojih operacij oglašujejo kot ponujajo vrhunsko odpornost celo najvišjim igralcem SaaS.

V tem primeru je izpad še posebej moteč, saj so bili kontaktni centri spodbujeni, da sprejmejo avtomatizacijo za reševanje svojih drugih težav.

Register has asked Google to provide more info about the cause and impact of the outage and will update this story, or pen another, if we receive a substantive response. And we’ll try to divine if that response comes from a human or an AI, too. ®