It is no secret that certain jobs are more threatened by artificial intelligence than others. It is not the same for a translator, which is disappearing due to AI, as it is for a watch repairman, whose profession is guaranteed for a few more decades.
Workers in call centers fall into this category of trades on the brink of extinction, and while we have seen some companies replace call center staff with generative AI, there are warnings that the entire sector could be primarily composed of chatbots in just one year.
The gloomy prediction comes from K Krithivasan, director of Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). This company, the second largest in India by market capitalization, has over 616,000 employees worldwide.
“90% of customer service workers will disappear”
In statements to the Financial Times, Krithivasan stated that AI will make the need for call centers “minimal”. The CEO added that, although “we have not seen any job reductions” so far, that will change as multinational clients adopt generative AI.
Technology is expected to have a massive impact on the customer service sector, according to a 2022 Gartner report, which employs around 17 million people.
The prospect of a chatbot being able to easily fulfill all customer requests over the phone may sound like something very distant, but Krithivasan believes they will be able to replace humans seamlessly in “maybe a year or so down the line.”
We have already seen companies getting rid of call center staff in favor of AI. Last July, a CEO fired 90% of his customer service team, boasting that the measure had reduced first response and resolution times, while reducing customer service costs by around 85%. He later warned that technology will “completely” eliminate copy and paste jobs.
Several surveys have been conducted to calculate the impact that generative AI will have on jobs. According to one of them, it is expected to replace two million jobs in the United States by 2030, while the IMF believes that 40% of jobs worldwide will be affected in some way by this technology.
