BMW Ad Perfectly Illustrates the Inertia of Innovation

Sometimes, when we at SmartAction explain our artificial intelligent IVR system to people, we get a reaction similar to that of Gumbel and Couric in the video. And that’s okay – artificial intelligence, like any new technology, can be complicated and hard to understand.

It’s clear that this new car operates using some pretty cool new technology, and for an industry that has historically innovated at a pretty slow rate, that’s a big deal. Hybrid cars have gained steam quickly, and Google, as you may have heard, has been testing self-driving cars for a few years now. As the auto industry takes major steps forward, we say, “Welcome to the party” – innovative technology has been the cornerstone of the SmartAction way for years.

Despite the shrinking interest in person-to-person interaction, customer service is still a business function that relies heavily on it, especially for complicated topics. Artificial intelligence is a breath of fresh air, offering services and capabilities that continue to grow. Recently, our developers were able to provide a valuable update to our IVA software: global positioning system (GPS) and geo-locating capabilities. As such, IVA can automatically obtain the caller’s location and use it accordingly – useful if your car breaks down in the middle of a snowstorm! This is just one example in a long line of innovations that our artificial intelligence has been able to offer the customer service segment.

We tell our clients all the time, “Machines will handle 100% of customer voice self-service needs someday in the future.” We want to make sure that whenever that happens, our machine leaves its callers completely satisfied.