Swedes are increasingly more positive towards AI

– but there is potential for improvement for the contact center.

In November 2019, the report «The Swedish people and AI»* was presented for the second year running. It is compiled by research agency Insight Intelligence in collaboration with Atea, Husqvarna, Ramboll and Telia. The report examines Swedish people’s thoughts on and attitudes towards AI in a variety of contexts. Since last year, perceived knowledge about AI has increased and the attitude has generally become more positive. But the numbers vary greatly between various industries and applications.

One of the questions that was asked was whether respondents were generally positive or negative to the development of AI in a number of different areas. In all but one, advertising, people were more positive than negative (and overall more positive than last year).

The area «Customer service (eg chatbots)» that lies close to our hearts placed roughly in the middle of the field with 43% positive and 34% negative responses.

Telia ACE and AI

Our belief, and an important component of the development of ACE, is that AI has great potential to improve customer service across all channels. The report signals that we are on the right track but must be better at reaching out with our knowledge. We need to be transparent about how the technology is used and what benefits it provides for end users to see the benefits and gain full confidence.

Quite a few of the products in the ACE family currently use techniques commonly included in the AI ​​concept, and we are determined to increase that number. Many challenges within the customer meeting are about learning from data to classify and predict, which is exactly what AI is all about. By using self-learning and smart pattern recognition, for example, already today we can significantly increase the accuracy of voice-controlled systems or analyze mood in voice data such as we do in Interaction Analytics.

Other areas where we see opportunities to use more AI are in workforce management and smart contact routing.

If you are interested in responsible and long-term sustainable AI, please visit the website for the ”AI sustainability center” where Telia is a ”corporate partner”.

You can download the entire report «The Swedish People and AI» (only available in Swedish) below and we expect to have reason to return to it with more comments and analyzes.

* The survey is based on responses from 1000 Swedes between the ages of 16 and 70, randomly selected from Sifo’s national representative web panel.

In a hurry? This post in five seconds!

• Telia likes AI and uses it more and more in ACE where it has great potential to boost the customer experience
• Swedish people in general also like AI but not quite as much according to recent study
• Telia is therefore actively working with using AI in a responsible and sustainable manner to build trust