KUALA LUMPUR (July 29): Chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organisations by 2027, according to Gartner Inc. 

In a statement on Wednesday (July 27), Gartner customer service and support practice senior director analyst Uma Challa said chatbots and virtual customer assistants (VCAs) had evolved over the past decade to become a critical technology component of a service organisation’s strategy.

“When designed correctly, chatbots can improve customer experience and drive positive customer emotion at a lower cost than live interactions,” said Challa.

Challa said a Gartner customer service and support (CSS) survey of 50 respondents conducted online in January and February revealed that 54% of respondents were using some forms of a chatbot, VCA or other conversational artificial intelligence platform for customer-facing applications.

“CSS leaders have a positive future outlook for chatbots, but struggle to identify actionable metrics, minimising their ability to drive chatbot evolution and expansion, and limiting their return on investment.

“Benchmarking chatbot performance metrics at one organisation against that of its peers is not effective, and can be misleading, because the chatbot type, design and complexity vary widely by organisation,” he said.