Startups in particular benefit from AI

Good news for new employees. The assistance of generative AIs, such as ChatGPT, has been shown to give them superpowers.

Research into the use of AI

Since ChatGPT was rolled out by OpenAI in November 2022, generative AIs continue to dominate the headlines and many an Apparata article. That’s not for nothing. Because the consequences of artificial intelligence are immense. Certainly artificial intelligence at the level of GPT-4 or higher.

Large companies have had these tools for a long time. That is why the results of a study in collaboration with Stanford University in California are known. This survey was conducted among more than 5,000 customer service representatives of a large software company. Most of them telecommuted from the Philippines.

AI trained on successful chat sessions

The researchers split the employees into two groups. A control group and an AI group. The first group received support from an AI that was integrated into their work. The control group received no AI support and worked as usual.

The team trained the AI ​​on more than 5,000 successful chat sessions between a customer and a service representative. The AI ​​then monitored what the service agents said during real conversations. Based on that, the AI ​​then gave suggestions for the best answer. For every answer suggested by the AI, the employees could adopt, adapt or ignore it.

Beginners in particular benefit

The results are remarkably positive. Not only did the employees manage to handle 13.8% more customer calls per hour than the control group. The AI ​​also stimulated the employees to provide compassionate, patient answers. As a result, customers also responded in a more friendly way, and employees’ job satisfaction increased.

The AI ​​turned out to have especially positive consequences for novice customer employees. It is remarkable that AI had a much less effect with more experienced customer employees. That can be for two reasons. A first possible reason is that they have already acquired the necessary skills to speak to customers patiently and empathetically. A second possible reason is that they are a lot more stubborn than greenhorns. And therefore will care less about the AI.

Difference between beginners and experienced forces almost evened out

As a result, employees who have been with us for only two months perform as well as employees who have been with them for six months. A spectacular result, because in this way new employees can be trained a lot faster. This is of course less pleasant for experienced and successful employees. The AI ​​copies their skills without getting paid for it. Their successful conversations have been used to train the AI. You may wonder if this is fair.

In the meantime, this turned out to be good news for the managers, because they could manage larger groups of employees with less effort and also generate higher turnover. Of course, as a company you cannot just use 1-2-3 artificial intelligence, and that requires the necessary tweaking of business processes.

Experienced forces are still needed

So we may not have to be so afraid that artificial intelligence will take over all the work. This is because the rapid changes create a lot of new work at a high level. Especially for the experienced forces. Because they understand best how the company works and how they can coordinate business processes.

Enthusiasts, or readers who have trouble falling asleep, can read the full study here.