The world’s angriest computer: Researchers to create ‘nightmare’ machine to work out what triggers customer’s tantrums
- System analysing two years of customer calls to an Australian bank
- Will then be able to simulate hundreds of millions of angry customer calls
- Hoped system will then be able to tell firms how to improve
Researchers are set to create an angry computer in a bid to improve customer service.
The program will be based on two years of customer calls to an Australian bank.
It is hoped the system, which will be live by then end of the year, will then be able to simulate hundreds of millions of angry customer interactions in a bid to improve them.
The system is called Radiant, after a supercomputer created by sci-fi author, Isaac Asimov, in the 1950s,
The project is being backed by a $500,000 investment from customer engagement consultancy and software vendor, Touchpoint Group.
The company has also spent the last two years building the massive data set on customer interactions required.
‘The end goal is to build an engine that can recommend solutions to companies — and we’re talking about the people at the frontline here — how they can improve particular issues that customers are facing,’ Touchpoint Group chief executive Frank van der Velden told The Australian.
He said the program would constantly run ‘what if’ scenarios to see if a particular scenario was likely to enrage or benefit the customer.
‘This will be possible by enabling our AI engine to learn right across a whole range of interactions of what has and has not worked in past examples.’
The system is being built with input from one of Australia’s big four banks, which is supplying reams of real-life customer interactions that have been collated over the past two years. Telecommunications companies and insurance firms are also contributing data.
Data scientists in Australia and New Zealand will spend the next six months uploading the dataset into the platform and tweaking its learning algorithms with an expectation that it will be live by the end of the year.
The end goal of Radiant is to automate identification of these root causes and related issues, and to prioritise and recommend actions across different areas of a business, the team say.
