Dawn of the Era of Machine-powered Customer Care

In the ever-advancing world we live in today, there will continue to be threats to job security as machines evolve to become just as efficient if not more than humans in certain sectors. People like to find solace in the belief that no matter how advanced AI gets, it’ll never be human enough to take their jobs. Yeah, sure, this is true in some cases, but not all. There are some jobs that AI and machines can absolutely replace and possibly outperform humans in. It’s therefore wise for people to figure out these dying careers so you can avoid them with all your might and strength.

The way career paths work though is that there’s usually no one linear path to get into any particular career exceptional professional ones. So instead of talking about which degrees to avoid to not get stuck in these careers, let’s talk about the careers themselves so that even if you’re pursuing a degree that would normally lead to these jobs, you can work on finding a way to pivot out as soon as you can.

Customer Service Representatives

By far, I think this is the probably the least promising field to be considering at this time. I know of several companies that are paying people to train bots and AI to interact with other people with the end goal of utilizing them as customer care agents.
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Last month, I decided to use Fidelity Bank’s WhatsApp Customer Care Chatbot, Kukua, to fix a problem I’d been experiencing for a while now. I called actual customer care representatives at the office several times and they all either said they couldn’t help me with my issue, or directed me to go to their office. At the time, going to their office wasn’t feasible for me especially considering how time-consuming the queue at their office would be. So I never went. But I had a pressing need to resolve the problem a few days later and knowing my previous experiences, decided to chat with Kukua instead. It took I think about 15 minutes to get the matter resolved and I was so disappointed that humans who are supposed to be more efficient at this type of thing failed so pitifully at it.
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Of course, this AI is entirely chat-based, as I personally haven’t seen any AI-powered voice customer care representative yet. But seeing what Robots like Tesla’s Optimus can do so far, I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing bots in customer care agent seats in actual offices. They won’t tire, they won’t bitch about how hard their job is, and they won’t come to work late on time because they took their dog to the vet.

I don’t really know which degrees people do to get customer care roles, but my research suggests that Business and Communication graduates are usually those more commonly working the job, though I know friends who have other degrees who have worked as customer service reps in the past. Of course, you and I know neither Business nor Communication is a useless degree. In fact, those degrees offer a lot of flexibility because they’re applicable in almost every field. So get your Business or Communication degree in peace, and just stay away from Customer Care jobs in order to avoid long stories.

Images were generated with ChatGPT

Posted Using InLeo Alpha