Amazon Alexa To Take Over Call Center Industry

Right now, anyone who calls company hotline numbers will likely speak to human representatives to answer their questions and provide assistance. If Amazon gets its way, this might change in the future because they are going to replace all of those human call center agents with Alexa. Although there are no concrete details confirming this, it would seem that the retail giant is already refining its smart assistant to this end.

According to a report by The Information, Amazon is already preparing a commercial version of Alexa, which is capable of answering questions in both audio and text format. The new service hinges on a new software the company developed called “Lily,” which the publication writes is expected to be unveiled this month.

Included in the software are applications also developed by Amazon called Lex and Polly, which are meant to power chatbots capable of both voice and chat messaging. As a result, the software is capable of servicing most needs without ever needing the interference of humans.

Naturally, there will always be those who would demand to speak with a human, if only to escape those creepy robot voices. As such, even if Alexa is used by call centers to replace most of their human staff, they would still need to retain actual human workers.

In the event that Amazon is successful in introducing the service to an industry that is expected to be worth $15 billion within five years, it could be a game-changer. With such a lucrative prospect, of course, Amazon would want to target the sector as a possible market for its smart assistant, Engadget reports. The retail giant needs this opportunity, as well.

With recent trends of hacking and vulnerabilities in IoT devices, smart assistants are receiving extra scrutiny from privacy watchdogs. Since Alexa is leading the pack at the moment, it’s getting the brunt of the attention.