《经济学人》双语：AI能否取代客服工作？（Part 1）

原文标题：
Called out
Can artificial intelligence rescue customer service?
The adoption of AI is surging in call centres
呼唤
人工智能能否拯救客户服务业？
人工智能在呼叫中心的应用激增

[Paragraph 1]

IT’S NOT easy being a customer-service agent—particularly when those customers are so angry with a product that they want to yell at you down the phone.

做客服可不是件轻松的事——尤其是顾客对产品极为不满，恨不得隔着电话对你大喊大叫的时候。

That’s the sort of rage that Sonos, a maker of home-audio systems, encountered in May when it released an app update so full of glitches it caused its share price to plunge.

今年5月，家庭音响系统制造商Sonos就遇到了这样的愤怒，当时他们发布的一款应用更新版本漏洞百出，导致股价暴跌。

[Paragraph 2]

One of the agents dealing with the ensuing customer tirades was a rookie. But not a human one.

在应对随后客户一连串责难的过程中，有一位客服是初出茅庐的新手，不过这个新手不是人类。

Prior to the debacle, Sonos had hired Sierra, a startup co-founded by Bret Taylor, the chairman of OpenAI, to provide it with a customer-service bot powered by generative artificial intelligence(AI).

早在这场故障发生之前，Sonos就聘用了初创公司Sierra一款基于生成式AI技术的客服机器人。Sierra的联合创始人之一是OpenAI董事长布雷特·泰勒。

It could have been a disaster; the only thing worse than a malfunctioning product is being trapped in an automation prison by a robot giving you the runaround.

这本可能是一场噩梦；因为没有什么比产品出现故障更糟糕的了，而比这更糟糕的是被一个机器人把你困在自动化牢笼里绕圈子。

Yet the bot beat expectations. After digesting Sonos’s technical materials, it came up with its own workaround for one of the problems with the Sonos app.

然而，这个机器人却超出了预期。经过Sonos技术资料的训练后，机器人针对Sonos应用程序的一个问题提出了自己的解决方案。

[Paragraph 3]

Customer service is one of the few industries where the use of generative AI is already taking root.

客户服务是生成式AI技术应用已初见成效的少数行业之一。

In a survey of customer-service executives published earlier this year by Gartner, a research firm, almost half said that AI customer assistants would have a significant impact on their organisations in the next 12-18 months.

今年年初，研究机构Gartner对客户服务高管进行了一项调查，近半数的受访者认为，在未来12-18个月内，AI客服助手将对他们的公司产生重大影响。

Startups and established tech firms alike have launched a volley of new products at the industry that promise to transform customer service—and millions of jobs.

初创企业和老牌科技企业纷纷推出了一系列新产品，这些产品有望彻底改变客户服务业和数百万个工作岗位。

[Paragraph 4]

Customer service is a big industry. Most companies have some sort of customer support, whether in-house or outsourced to call centres.

客户服务行业规模庞大。无论是公司内部客服部还是外包给呼叫中心，大多数公司都设有某种形式的客户支持服务。

In America alone there are almost 3m customer-service workers, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

据美国劳工统计局数据显示，仅在美国就有近300万名客服人员。

At a median salary of around $40,000 a year, that works out at roughly $120bn in wage costs.

他们年薪中位数约为4万美元，即整个行业的工资成本高达约1200亿美元。

Many more work in call centres in places like India and the Philippines, where these jobs are seen as ladders to the middle class.

而在印度和菲律宾等地的呼叫中心，客服人员就更多了，这些工作被视为迈入中产家庭的阶梯。

[Paragraph 5]

In recent years, however, the industry has become notorious for driving customers mad with its use of technology.

然而，近年来，客服行业因滥用技术而声名狼藉，顾客抓狂不已。

Its poor reputation is deserved, reckons Andy Lee, co-founder of Alorica, an American contact-centre business with 100,000 employees.

美国联络中心企业Alorica拥有10万名员工，公司的联合创始人安迪·李认为，这一行业的恶名并不冤枉。

It is expensive for firms to use humans to solve their customers’ problems, so they make the process as cumbersome as possible by forcing them to press a bewildering combination of numbers or chat with a bot that regurgitates generic responses—a strategy known as “deflection”.

企业用人力来为客户解决问题的成本高昂，因此，它们会迫使客户按下一系列让人困惑的数字组合，或者与只会重复千篇一律回答的机器人聊天，将流程尽可能复杂化——这被称为“注意力转移”策略。

Once human agents are involved, it is in the financial interests of outsourcing firms to make the process as labour intensive as possible, raising costs and frustrating everybody.

一旦人工客服介入，成本就非常贵，因此出于经济利益的考虑，外包公司会尽量让这个流程耗费顾客的精力，从而提高求助成本，让所有人感到不满。

 
[Paragraph 6]

Now entrepreneurs and investors are betting that generative AI can make things less awful.

如今，企业家和投资者正押注生成式AI能让情况变得不那么糟糕。

Funding for startups developing customer-service tools that use generative AI reached $171m globally in the third quarter, up from $45m in the same period last year, according to PitchBook, a data gatherer (see chart).

根据数据收集公司PitchBook的数据，第三季度，全球开发使用生成式AI客服工具的初创公司融资额达到1.71亿美元，远高于去年同期的4500万美元（见图表）。

This month Crescendo, co-founded by Alorica’s Mr Lee, raised money at a valuation of $500m.

本月，由Alorica的李先生联合创立的Crescendo公司以5亿美元的估值成功融资。

Sierra, which raised funds at a valuation of about $1bn in January, is now said to be seeking more at a valuation of $4bn, raising eyebrows even among some AI-crazed venture capitalists.

据称，今年1月以约10亿美元估值完成融资的Sierra公司，目前正在寻求以40亿美元的估值进行更多融资，这一举动甚至让一些对人工智能充满热情的风险投资家也感到惊讶。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇519/1021左右）
原文出自：2024年10月19日《TE》Business版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【重点句子】（3个）
Customer service is one of the few industries where the use of generative AI is already taking root.
客户服务是生成式AI技术应用已初见成效的少数行业之一。

In America alone there are almost 3m customer-service workers, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
据美国劳工统计局数据显示，仅在美国就有近300万名客服人员。

In recent years, however, the industry has become notorious for driving customers mad with its use of technology.
然而，近年来，客服行业因滥用技术而声名狼藉，顾客抓狂不已。