TCS CEO's major warning on AI: It could kill call centres in a year
Chatbots would soon be able to analyse customer’s transaction history which means that they will be able to do most of the work of call centre agents, he said.
Head of Indian IT company Tata Consultancy Services said that artificial intelligence will result in “minimal” need for call centres in about a year. TCS chief executive K Krithivasan told the Financial Times that while “we have not seen any job reduction” so far, adoption of AI among is set to completely change the kind of customer help centres that have created mass employment in countries such as India.
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He said, “We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer’s pain point. In an ideal phase, if you ask me, there should be very minimal incoming call centres having incoming calls at all,” he said. “We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer’s pain point.”
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Chatbots would soon be able to analyse a customer’s transaction history which means that they will be able to do most of the work of call centre agents, he said, adding, “That’s where we are going. I don’t think we are there today – maybe a year or so down the line.”
This comes as TCS, which has more than 600,000 employees and annual revenues of nearly $46 billion, reported that its pipeline of AI projects doubled quarter over quarter to be worth $US900 million by the end of March.
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K Krithivasan said that he expected that flow to “increase significantly” and almost keep on doubling over a few more quarters. He said, “We are in the phase where we are in a hype that we are overestimating the benefits. The impact would be seen more long term than expecting to get the benefits in the next two to three quarters.”
Talking about TCS’ hiring process and whether it could be impacted by AI, he said, “If we can go to maybe 50 per cent of the colleges, we provide more employment, and more importantly, we will be able to address the technology demand the overall global industry is going to have.”
