AI Research: The financial importance of digital assistants is growing rapidly – Are companies ready to serve the customers of the future?

Customer design experience agency Shirute’s recent study “Digital Assistants Experience – Research on the level of service offered to machine customers in Finland” reveals that Finnish companies are not yet ready to utilise the financial potential offered by digital assistants fully.

The study investigated the ability of Finnish companies to serve machine customers. Its goal was to evaluate how customer service agents and salespeople encounter generative artificial intelligence that communicates in natural language in current transaction channels such as in chat and email.

“According to research by Gartner, by 2025, the market is expected to have up to 15 billion machine customers, estimated to influence $30 trillion worth of purchases over the next decade. Already within a couple of years, half of the people in industrialized countries have either experimented or use a machine customer in their daily life to help them, i.e. a digital assistant based on artificial intelligence. This will be seen as a significant change in how companies increase turnover in the future”, describes Sirte Pihlaja, CEO of customer experience design agency Shirute and head of team of the Customer Experience Professionals Association local network CXPA Finland. She acted as the expert in agent-based artificial intelligence (Agentive AI) and customer experience specialist in the research team.

The research results show that many large Finnish companies have not yet recognised the potential of digital assistants or cannot properly serve them, even though a customer ready to buy and make large deals at the other end of the transaction is present. Several challenges were observed in dealing with digital assistants.

The electronics retailer Euronics, the only service provider able to serve the digital assistant in both evaluated channels, scored the best points in this study for its service to machine customers. The second place was shared by the retail chain Prisma (S Group), the luxury hotels Hotel Kämp and Hotel St George, and the insurance company LocalTapiola.

Insurance companies, electronics retailers, and telecom operators proved that they can better serve digital assistants than other industries. On the other hand, cruise lines and healthcare services (private dental care) offered the weakest service for digital assistants. As a rule, hotels only served via email, and insurance companies and banks only via the chat channel. Some only had a traditional chatbot that the machine customer couldn’t talk to.

Digital assistants cannot yet contact customer service independently

Getting to the service was so difficult for the digital assistant that none of the transaction situations would have been realised without a human to support it. Also, open technical interfaces (APIs), which would enable digital assistants to contact businesses, i.e. machine customers to take initiative and self-direct their transactions, are not yet generally available. For this reason, in this research setting, the digital assistant was an artificial intelligence agent using generative natural language, which had the opportunity for interactive conversation using the companies’ chat and email channels.

Many challenges related to the accessibility of services were found in these business dealings, which prevent or slow down the possibility of the digital assistant to perform tasks independently. The most common obstacles were related to the shortcomings of digital service channels. For example, traditional chatbots used by many companies do not understand the questions asked by digital assistants, and email channels do not always respond. Many business processes were also interrupted while the machine customer was doing business. In addition, hidden chats, menu jungles, mandatory forms, long waiting times, slow service, and incomplete answers made doing business difficult for the machine customer – as it would be for a human customer, too.

Sirte Pihlaja emphasises that it is high time to act and remove these obstacles: “During our research, it became very clear that companies still have a long way to go before they can fully serve machine customers. The development of artificial intelligence is constantly accelerating, and digital assistants already serve as assistants in many everyday lives. By investing in serving machine customers now, companies can achieve the benefits of being pioneers and ensure their competitiveness in the future. Doing business with machines that act as customers requires planning new service processes that consider the needs of machine customers and opening technical interfaces.”

“In order to serve machine customers, companies should set up their own design team, which goes through service processes and looks for accessibility challenges like the obstacles found in this research. In addition, companies should start planning with their best experts what new business potential machine customers bring and what kind of completely new services could be offered to them. It’s good to keep your vision on the future: machine customers can become your company’s best customers very soon!”

A company that doesn’t know how to serve machine customers doesn’t exist

Digital assistants are now within everyone’s reach, as large companies that develop artificial intelligence offer services that allow anyone to create an AI digital assistant by talking in natural language without coding a single line.

The authors of the study recommend that companies develop machine customer service with open API interfaces that enable smooth integration and interaction between company systems and digital assistants. In addition, companies should invest in the development of their digital customer service, such as improving chatbots that understand natural language and context and react effectively to machine customers’ questions, speed up the chat service by investing in support intelligence solutions, and consider how to reach machine customers and how to market their own services to them. Considering the information security perspective in development is also of primary importance.

“The speed at which machine customers process information received in a conversation from a customer service agent can be challenging for humans. A document or a link sent to it in chat or by email is read instantly, and it will present relevant follow-up questions immediately. If the machine customer competes with several companies in parallel, then possibly only the fastest responders will participate in the competition. Answering product and service inquiries can be speeded up when people use artificial intelligence to support their work, such as a human customer using a digital assistant,” says CX Ambassador Ristomatti Partanen, who worked as a CX expert in the study.

The research also asked customer service staff and salespeople who served digital assistants how they experienced working with an artificial intelligence-based customer. The customer service representatives said they were surprised to meet the assistant, but the attitude was mostly positive. Many customer service agents commented that they did not always even notice the difference from a real person and that the conversation with the machine customer was smooth. These experiences have shown that digital assistants can work effectively with their contacts if they are identified and treated appropriately.

Based on the research results, it is urgent to develop strategies and measures that improve the service of machine customers. This includes, among other things, personnel training in understanding artificial intelligence, updating technology and current service processes to suit the service of digital assistants, and developing new services and channels aimed at machine customers.

Companies must immediately take measures to improve the service experience of machine customers. This will increase customer satisfaction and offer interesting new business opportunities. Although integrating artificial intelligence into customer service is still in development, its future potential is enormous.

The authors of the study remind everyone of the importance of co-operation in the development of technology and customer service. The experts emphasise that the time to act is now so that companies can be ready for future challenges and take advantage of the opportunities offered by machine customers.

– – –

In the “Digital Assistants Experience – Research on the Level of Service Offered to Machine Customers in Finland” study, the service companies offer to machine customers in different transaction channels (chat and email) was investigated as an expert assessment. The researchers used a digital assistant created by prompting using OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus Custom GPT and Microsoft’s Copilot Pro GPT Builder. The survey evaluated different service providers, e.g. on the basis of the service provider’s response time, service willingness, time spent completing the task, transaction efficiency and customer service attitude. Operators were scored separately for both channels regarding the extent to which the companies generally offered a suitable service for machine customers.

The study was carried out in April 2024. Altogether, 42 companies were selected in the target group, representing seven different industries: electronics retail, hotels, shipping companies, telecom operators, banks, healthcare (private dental care), and insurance companies. Ten of these companies were left out of the study because they did not offer our digital assistant a suitable chat or email transaction option.

The final report of the study (PDF) can be downloaded for media use at https://www.machinecustomers.fi/.

– – –

Shirute (shirute.fi) is Finland’s first customer experience design agency focused on customer experience management. Customer Experience Path® is a registered trademark owned by Shirute. We are a founding member of the international CXPA (Customer Experience Professionals Association).