The mantra among nearly all companies selling AI for CX is that the rapidly growing technology isn’t replacing people; it’s complementing them.
Technology providers have learned from the voice/data convergence and cloud transformation days that business leaders generally don’t respond favorabily to buying products based on a pitch that results in laying off their colleagues. Even when business leaders don’t care about layoffs, they face the obstacle of adoption. How enthusiastically or successfully will employees adopt technologies that ultimately will replace them?
As a result, we see many vendors adopting slogans like “AI plus human, not AI minus humans” as the cornerstone to vendor sales and marketing strategy. But it’s not entirely accurate, as much as I wish it were.
In reality, AI is replacing employees. It’s also complementing and assisting employees. To ignore the former is simply misleading. In addition, AI may also create new job roles or cause an increase in the number of agents by expanding their capabilities. Any successful technology historically has done the same, whether mobile phones replacing cameras, autos displacing the blacksmith/farrier trade, or the Internet challenging travel agencies.
Real-World Data on Jobs
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