Increasing customer service efficiency through artificial intelligence chatbot

PurposeThis study investigated the contribution of artificial intelligence (AI) to the efficiency of customer service. This study contributes to services technological innovation in process management, a field not yet settled in the literature.Design/methodology/approachAI is a multidisciplinary field of research that has stood out for the technological dynamism provided to organizational products and processes. The study was carried out at an Analytical Intelligence Unit (AIU) of a Brazilian commercial bank that applies AI integrated with IBM's Watson system. The study used data content analysis, structured and supported by Atlas.ti software.FindingsThe notorious AI cognitive maturity evolution allowed 181 million interactions and 7.6 million attendances in 2020, improving services efficiency, with gains in agility, availability, accessibility, resoluteness, predictability and transshipment capacity. The chatbot service reduced the queues of call centers and relationship centers, allowing the human attendant to perform more complex attendances.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitations of this study relate to the research cutout and its borders, such as the choice of participants and their areas of activity, and the choice of the unit of analysis.Practical implicationsThe results indicated that attendance through the virtual assistant increased by more than a 1,000% from 2019 to 2020, demonstrating the bank was technologically ready to face the Covid-19 pandemic effects.Originality/valueIn line with the evolutionary theory of innovation, the authors concluded that technological scaling in AI allows exponential gains in customer service efficiency and business process management. They also conclude that the strategy for creating AIUs is successful, once it allows centralizing, structuring and coordinating AI projects in R&D cooperation, cognitive computing and analytics.