Gartner: Virtual assistants to feature in 25% of customer services by 2020

According to a new report from Gartner, 25% of customer service operations are expected to feature virtual customer assistant (VCA) and/or chatbot technologies by 2020.

This represents significant growth within the market, up from less than 2% that were used in 2017.

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“As more customers engage on digital channels, VCAs are being implemented for handling customer requests on websites, mobile apps, consumer messaging apps and social networks,” said Gene Alvarez, Managing Vice President of Gartner, speaking at the Gartner Customer Experience Summit held in Tokyo.

“This is underpinned by improvements in natural-language processing, machine learning and intent-matching capabilities.”

The research also revealed that firms that implement a VCA in turn receive up to a 70% reduction in contact enquiries, whilst also seeing an improvement in customer satisfaction.

“A great VCA offers more than just information,” said Mr. Alvarez. “It should enrich the customer experience, help the customer throughout the interaction and process transactions on behalf of the customer.”

With such positive results and the increased accessibility of technology, 84% of organisations surveyed revealed that they expect to increase investment in customer service technology, including VCAs, throughout the coming year.