AI in Customer Service: A New Perspective
There’s a common perception that customer service powered by artificial intelligence isn’t exactly stellar. However, Chetan Dube, a 59-year-old billionaire and AI expert, believes that AI can actually provide better service.
Dube serves as the CEO of Quant, a company at the forefront of creating sophisticated digital workforces, often referred to as chatbots. Remarkably, he previously built Amelia, another AI venture, which was sold for $80 million, boosting his net worth to around $2.4 billion.
Dube explains, “People often get frustrated with chatbots because they don’t meet expectations and end up wasting time. But that was in the past. Now, digital tools can rival human capabilities,” as he shared with NYNext.
According to McKinsey, AI currently handles about 50% to 70% of customer service interactions, and by 2030, Dube anticipates that Quant will have a significant share of that market.
Quant’s chatbots have taken on roles such as providing postoperative care for cancer patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering, assisting them with follow-up appointments, medication management, and insurance claims.
Quant’s agents also support customer service for major utilities like Pennsylvania Power & Light (PPL) and fast-food brands, including Pizza Pizza and Saudia Airlines. Dube believes that hospitals will be where agent AI truly shines.
These digital agents have an impressive ability to remember a patient’s medical history and can handle repetitive tasks like prescription refills and recovery monitoring without fatigue.
While these advances are appealing to employers, there’s a more complex question about whether customers appreciate this technology. For individuals facing serious health challenges, empathy and understanding are crucial.
Dube asserts that Quant’s technology is inching closer to achieving these qualities, not simply through improved scripts but by reflecting genuine human thought processes.
The agents utilize what Dube terms “active reasoning,” a method that simplifies complicated, emotional queries into manageable parts, much like how humans process information instinctively.
For instance, if a patient reports a new side effect, needs to reschedule an appointment, or has questions about insurance, Quant’s agents dissect each component of the inquiry to form a comprehensive action plan.
In addition to active reasoning, the concept of “temporal imaging” helps deepen each interaction, enhancing the agent’s understanding of individual preferences, needs, and emotions over time, which aims to foster a stronger relationship with users.
As a testament to their effectiveness, a Quant representative stated that the company’s agents resolve 76% of incoming queries, surpassing the industry average but falling short of the 84% success rate typically achieved by human agents. Queries that remain unresolved are referred to human representatives for resolution.
Interestingly, in some areas like utility services at PPL, Quant’s digital agents already exceed human counterparts in customer satisfaction ratings, which Dube views as a sign that we may be reaching what is known as the “Turing horizon”—the point at which machine interactions become indistinguishable from those with humans.
Dube foresees a seismic shift in the job market, projecting that by 2030, approximately 70% of jobs will transform to involve service roles. He is also working on an AI career counselor aimed at helping individuals who may lose jobs to this technology, expected to launch in 2026.
