Ever heard of a machine customer? Other than thinking about the Terminator movies, or possibly Westworld, not many people have. James Dodkins, CX evangelist and self-appointed ‘chief content officer’ at Pegasystems, believes that is all about to change.
According to Dodkins, “a machine customer is someone who acts on your behalf to go and do stuff that you can’t really be bothered to do.”
In the not too distant future, customers will instruct AI-enabled devices to complete simple tasks, such as booking a table at a local restaurant, purchasing grocery items, or even buying more data from a telecoms service provider.
Unsurprisingly, most businesses aren’t ready for the seismic arrival of machine customers. But Dodkins is undeterred.
“I believe that it is going to fundamentally change our collective expectations of what good customer experience [and] good customer service is.”
Although this might sound like so much science fiction, machine customers are rapidly becoming reality. A report by Gartner claims that CEOs believe machine customers will account for up to 20% or more of revenue by 2030.
For the full interview with James Dodkins, stream the latest episode of CX Lore available on Spotify!