How to Deploy Contact Center AI Ethically, Responsibly

Are you using contact center AI to validate already established conclusions, or are you actually using it to analyze and improve the customer experience?
A long time ago, my first real post-college job was at a call center for a major bank. An automatic call distribution (ACD) assigned calls to a group of about 20 agents who handled credit card, auto loan, and mortgage information. Once a month, each agent would sit down with the manager and receive a ranking. Every month, the same rather dim-witted agent (let’s call her Agent #1) would finish first, while the agent who finished second was clearly smarter (let’s call her Agent #2) than everyone else in the room. But Agent #2, the smart one, always finished second. This was a mystery to us who cared, particularly as Agent #1 received bonuses and awards for her continued place at the top.

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Ethical Considerations When Deploying AI Processes

You must consider the issues of bias and outcome validity — otherwise, practical vulnerabilities lurk in the deep.

One publication that makes its way almost daily into my inbox frequently uses the phrase “AI Ethics.” While my objection to this phrase may seem overly nitpicky, the fact is that while having no common sense, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in and of itself also has no ethics. The real issue is what I would label ethical use of AI applications and systems, a title that describes a completely different, real, useful, and even quantifiable tool. Reliance on AI to assist — or even drive — decision-making is becoming increasingly prevalent in decision-making involving analyzing of all but the smallest amounts of data.

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Sophisticated Data Collection Means Sophisticated Data Dilemmas

It’s all upside and personalized interactions until someone stops to ask whether data is being collected with full consent and stored with full security.
To me, one of the great takeaways from Enterprise Connect 2022 was the discussion of increasing levels of sophistication in data collection—some might call it “strip mining”—and repackaging that data for other uses, i.e., revenue generation. From the contact center perspective, the use of increasingly personalized information when speaking with customers makes a great deal of sense—since most of the time, when people dial in, they are not happy about something. (Having worked in a contact center early in my career, I fully recognize that no one ever calls and says, “Hey, my bill looks terrific this month. Thanks a lot!”) 

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VR & Metaverse Ethics: It’s All About the Data

How enterprises gather and use personal information like biometrics will be key to using VR and metaverse technologies ethically.
AI is becoming increasingly present in our daily lives. From the way you interact with an airline’s web service to the way you are treated at your local fast-food behemoth and solicited (some might even say “bribed”) for overly positive feedback, measurements and records are constantly being collected and analyzed for better or worse — or both.

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Improving Competitive Broadband Access to Multiple Tenant Environments

FCC takes a giant step forward on behalf of consumers.
For better or worse (and often both), loopholes are the way that creative lawyers solve client problems and make partners (read: $). Despite significant amounts of time spent drafting very precise language to minimize gaps in interpretation, even the best of legislators’ and rule makers’ intentions can be thwarted by precise surgical strikes to identify such loopholes (some might call them opportunities) and navigate through them.

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