The phrase ‘people buy from people’ might be considered by some as an old sales cliché, but it’s one that arguably still rings true in an industry that’s as sociable as fenestration.
Anyone that’s been to a People in Glazing event, or the G Awards, or the Glazing Summit will appreciate the amount of business that’s done on the strength of professional personal relationships.
The FIT Show, for example, is a fantastic opportunity to see all the latest products, but it’s also a place to meet, face to face, the people behind those products and confer with friends and colleagues.
But with the rise of artificial intelligence, we are fast approaching a future where people could be buying from a computer programme instead of another person.
This might sound like science fiction, but energy provider Octopus has already started to integrate AI into its systems – and the results are startling.
In February this year, Octopus let an AI programme respond to customer emails. To begin with, it was supervised by experienced staff, but the AI generated emails were found to deliver 80% customer satisfaction compared to 65% for people trained to do the same job.
At the start of May (around 16 weeks later), 34% of Octopus emails were answered by AI, and that’s the equivalent workload of 250 people.
Consider for a moment, the combined salary of those 250 people and – even if the AI programme was to progress no further – the potential savings for Octopus.
It would be incredibly naïve to look at how quickly and successfully AI has demonstrated its prowess in this instance, and not apply it to other industries.
In the previous industrial revolution, it was the factory workers that lost out to automation but AI has now shown it can do pretty much any office job quicker, more efficiently and – crucially – cheaper than ‘traditional’ white collar workers.
Sales, customer service, R&D, accounts, marketing – even HR – are all things that could be handled by artificial intelligence.
According to Octopus Energy’s chief executive, Greg Jackson, AI has the potential to go from answering emails to making decisions for itself and carrying out actions ‘within weeks’. It won’t just know how much you owe on your energy balance, but will be able to suggest a change in payments – and have the ability to act on that suggestion.
So, should we all start panicking that we’re going to be replaced by a Terminator style robot?
According to Greg Jackson, AI is ‘unlikely to lead to job losses as we are growing so rapidly’, so as long as Octopus continues to do well, staff should rest easy. But he makes no promises and there plenty of organisations that are not doing so well.
For now, it seems unimaginable that AI could ever replace even a fraction of the talented, skilled and hardworking people in our industry.
But that initial experiment at Octopus has demonstrated that it can make itself extremely useful in a very short amount of time…
Should we be worried about AI?
The phrase ‘people buy from people’ might be considered by some as an old sales cliché, but it’s one that arguably still rings true in an industry that’s as sociable as fenestration.
Anyone that’s been to a People in Glazing event, or the G Awards, or the Glazing Summit will appreciate the amount of business that’s done on the strength of professional personal relationships.
The FIT Show, for example, is a fantastic opportunity to see all the latest products, but it’s also a place to meet, face to face, the people behind those products and confer with friends and colleagues.
But with the rise of artificial intelligence, we are fast approaching a future where people could be buying from a computer programme instead of another person.
This might sound like science fiction, but energy provider Octopus has already started to integrate AI into its systems – and the results are startling.
In February this year, Octopus let an AI programme respond to customer emails. To begin with, it was supervised by experienced staff, but the AI generated emails were found to deliver 80% customer satisfaction compared to 65% for people trained to do the same job.
At the start of May (around 16 weeks later), 34% of Octopus emails were answered by AI, and that’s the equivalent workload of 250 people.
Consider for a moment, the combined salary of those 250 people and – even if the AI programme was to progress no further – the potential savings for Octopus.
It would be incredibly naïve to look at how quickly and successfully AI has demonstrated its prowess in this instance, and not apply it to other industries.
In the previous industrial revolution, it was the factory workers that lost out to automation but AI has now shown it can do pretty much any office job quicker, more efficiently and – crucially – cheaper than ‘traditional’ white collar workers.
Sales, customer service, R&D, accounts, marketing – even HR – are all things that could be handled by artificial intelligence.
According to Octopus Energy’s chief executive, Greg Jackson, AI has the potential to go from answering emails to making decisions for itself and carrying out actions ‘within weeks’. It won’t just know how much you owe on your energy balance, but will be able to suggest a change in payments – and have the ability to act on that suggestion.
So, should we all start panicking that we’re going to be replaced by a Terminator style robot?
According to Greg Jackson, AI is ‘unlikely to lead to job losses as we are growing so rapidly’, so as long as Octopus continues to do well, staff should rest easy. But he makes no promises and there plenty of organisations that are not doing so well.
For now, it seems unimaginable that AI could ever replace even a fraction of the talented, skilled and hardworking people in our industry.
But that initial experiment at Octopus has demonstrated that it can make itself extremely useful in a very short amount of time…
Glass Times
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