Introduction
Introduction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gotten the attention of businesses all over the world. This interest is due to the potential a company can save on overhead cost. The current AI Technology in 2020 includes but not limited to chatbots that are computer programs which trigger human speech or actual robots that can do the day-to-day tasks. The technology is still being developed and constantly improved but the current models are capable of replacing jobs such as call agents, concierge, client relations associate, customer service representative, etc. Robots have already taken over jobs in manufacturing plants and warehousing facilities. It’s inevitable that as technology advances it will start to affect every industry. According to Wald (2017, August 3), automation could save businesses $4 million annually. Four million dollars, an amount like that would persuade even fortune 500 business to make this switch and this technology is usable in almost any industry that makes the loss of millions of jobs a reality. Amazon is one of the biggest tech companies in the world and they have their hands in almost every industry in one way or another. Amazon continues to lead the way in innovative business practices and continue to take huge chunks of market share in those industries. For that reason, the researchers will determine if removal of a human representative in Amazon’s customer service department will lead to loss of customers’ purchases and customers.
Problem Statement
The researchers argue that although these technologies are a great way to assist with mundane tasks and could save Amazon millions of dollars if used with Humans. However, the removal of the human component altogether will cause more damage to Amazon’s image than it will help. Money is important for businesses to think about, but the money isn’t as important as your customers. The customer is king especially for Amazon because removing customers from the equation will eventually put Amazon out of business. According to Brown (2018, July 3), when you make external changes to your business, customers will usually react in one of two ways. First of all, they might be receptive to the changes, most often when the changes don’t require a huge shift in attitude or behavior and won’t take them out of their comfort zone. On the other hand, customers might be resistant to the change. This generally happens when they have to adjust how they interact with your business, whether it’s online, via an app, or in person. In this case, your changes will be more likely to have lingering negative effects. Amazon may not see the negative effects it may have on its customers when making this change to a fully automated customer service department.
Background and Need
For most companies, saving millions of dollars could be the difference in keeping the doors open or closing down for good. It almost impossible for companies to get ahead in any industry because of the amount of competition. So being able to have extra resources can give a company a competitive edge. Some companies competitive edge is the service that customers receive from the customer service representative. In essence, underestimating the need for human connection within customer service can have detrimental effects on the entire company as a whole.
Barriers and Issues to the Conducting of the Research
The barriers and issues that can occur while conducting this research is being able to go through the vast amount of information available on Amazon. Knowing what information to use and when to use it is a challenge because of the 8-week time frame. It’s almost impossible to conduct and create a compelling argument through a thesis in as little as 8 weeks. Also, a huge issue could be the accuracy of the information that’s obtained. Although the information is coming from credible sources, there is no way to know if the information is current because none of the researchers have insider connections. So, the majority of the information presented could be outdated or no longer relevant. These are all factors that the researchers will have to overcome to deliver a persuasive stance on this topic.
Barriers and Issues Related to the Research
The barriers and issues that the researchers are likely to experience during their research is gathering data that is available on Amazon. It will be difficult to determine what information is important and which one is irrelevant. Another issue is that the researchers are on different work schedules making it difficult to find a time to discuss changes or findings. However, the biggest barrier of this research is being able to understand the thesis and research it as a unison as possible. With many hands and thoughts into this research it will be difficult to ensure that the information delivered is not contradicting each other. The researchers will have to critically think and overcome.
Difficulty of Study
The main difficulty in this study is the fact that it is team-based which means that the team has to have a high team-work culture for the study to be effective. Group effort and efficient communication will be required to make the study a success. Another difficulty that is likely to be experienced in this study is that some sensitive and confidential information about Amazon might not be available to the public domain and this will limit the scope of the study.
Proposed Solutions
The researchers are proposing that human interaction in customer service is a crucial component to have a successful business. AI or other technologies should be used to enhance the customer service representative not replace them. The researchers also believe that it will be more effective for both consumers and Amazon to have the traditional customer service because it will help keep the company’s credibility. This will result in higher customer retention that will boost sales and keep the company revenue on a constant growth.
Hypothesis
Amazon will lower their purchase rates and lose customers if they fully automate their customer service department
Research Questions
· What type of technology is already being used? And how effective are they?
· How will customers react to this new system?
· What is the potential loss or gain if Amazon fully automates their customer service department?
Limitations
The researchers are only limited to the information that they can gather online or through surveys. No insider information will be available to them, which means that all of the information that will be gathered may not be as accurate as it is expected to be. In addition to this, the researchers are only limited to 8 weeks of class, therefore, the accuracy of results may be compromised due to the short time given to this study. Programming language or any kind of artificial intelligence technicality will also not be discussed in this study because the researchers cannot be able to secure and study the technical specification of this program and how it works. The researchers will only focus on the general information they can gather to the automation of customer service of the company.
Delimitations
The researchers cannot conduct a survey that can get the feedback of every single customer that Amazon may have, therefore, the researchers will only limit their number of target respondents and use a survey methodology that may help the researcher analyze the data gathered. Moreover, the researchers can only also analyze the automated system being used by the company through actual use of their system, and test how effective the automated system Amazon really is to address customer service. The researchers will then propose a recommendation to improve the services if possible.
Definition of Terms
The key terms used in this study have been defined below:
Artificial Intelligence: This is the development of intelligent computer systems that can think and work like humans. They perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, such as decision-making, visual perception, translation between languages and speech recognition.
Customer service: This is the act of meeting the needs of the customer through high-quality service before, during and after doing business with them.
Chatbots: Chatbots are conversational agents used by software applications that mimic human speech in either spoken or written form. Their main purpose is to stimulate a conversation and interact with a real person.
Expert Systems: Expert systems are software that makes decisions and offer advice using expert knowledge databases. Expert systems are widely used in medical diagnosis.
Amazon: Amazon is a multi-technology company that deals with e-commerce, artificial intelligence, digital streaming, and cloud computing. It falls in the category of the Big Four tech companies worldwide.
Google: Google is a multi-technology company that deals with internet-related products and services such as online advertising technologies, software & hardware, search engine, and cloud computing.
Summary
In conclusion, Amazon should consider creating a healthy balance between automated customer service and the human aspect of customer service because there are some human attributes that Artificial Intelligence cannot replace. Artificial Intelligence has its advantages and disadvantages that Amazon should consider. The pros include a reduction in human error, availability at all times 24/7 with no human-related obligations and responsibilities, faster decision-making, helping in repetitive jobs that are boring to humans and other forms of digital assistants. The cons of AI include high costs of creation, implementation and maintenance, unemployment, lack of emotions and inability to think outside the box. In as much as Artificial Intelligence is more efficient and gets things done faster, the human aspect is very important to retain in business because it is what makes customers feel like there is an actual person that cares, and they are not just dealing with emotionless automated systems.
CHAPTER 2
Review of the Literature
Introduction
AI has been around for a while now, but the amount of AI technologies has grown in the past years and continues to grow. These advancements in AI are mostly due to the huge consumption of the internet and how cheap these technologies are today. The more information that is widely available, the more AI systems can continually grow and advance to new heights. Walker (2019) believes that artificial intelligence is currently being deployed in customer service to both augment and replace human agents with the primary goals of improving the customer service experience and reducing human customer service costs. The technology is not yet developed to where it can do all of the tasks, it can handle most simple requests without human input. As AI advances, so will the task it is able to do and soon humans will not be needed.
The researchers hope to identify technologies that are currently available, if and how customers prefer to communicate, and lastly, what Amazon competitors are doing and how effective their tactics are. To be able to answer all these questions the researchers must dive into several areas of research, but due to time restraints, this research will not include a complete list. This area presented in this research is the areas the researchers deemed the most important to get their points across. Those areas of research are as follows:
1. Technology
a. Artificial Intelligence
b. Expert Systems
c. Chatbots
2. Amazon Customers
a. Amazon’s Customers
b. Amazon’s Customers satisfaction
c. Amazon’s Customers preferences
3. Competitors
a. Google
b. Apple
c. Microsoft
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