AI客服,是“救星”还是“抢饭碗”?真的有人更喜欢AI客服吗?| 经济学人双语学习笔记
作者：微信文章Sonos（音响公司） 软件更新出 bug，客户打电话骂街，结果 AI 客服机器人反而解决了问题。现在好多公司都在用生成式 AI 搞客服，融了不少钱，但大家也怕以后更难找到真人客服。而且 AI 有时答错了还特自信！不过好处是以后客服可能不用总听人骂，能多做点改进产品的活儿。
文章围绕AI客服这个话题，从以下5个方面层层展开，“事件 - 现状 - 技术 - 争议 - 影响” ，非常清晰，一起来看看吧~
标题部分
Can artificial intelligence rescue customer service?
The adoption of AI is surging in call centres
人工智能能拯救客户服务吗？
呼叫中心里人工智能的应用正在激增。
surge（激增，猛涨）→ 描述数量快速增长，例："Orders surged after the product went viral."
正文部分
Listen to this story. 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. 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.
听听这个故事。当客服代表可不容易 —— 尤其是当客户对产品怒不可遏，想在电话里冲你大吼大叫的时候。今年 5 月，家庭音响系统制造商 Sonos 就遭遇了这样的愤怒：它发布的应用更新漏洞百出，导致股价暴跌。
yell at sb. down the phone（在电话里对某人大喊）→ 口语中描述情绪激动的沟通场景
glitches（小故障，漏洞）→ 日常谈论科技产品时常用，例："There are some glitches in the new game—my character keeps freezing."
One of the agents dealing with the ensuing customer tirades was a rookie. But not a human one. 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). 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. 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.
处理后续客户怒斥的 “客服代表” 中有一个新手，但并非人类。在这场灾难发生前，Sonos 聘请了 Sierra（一家由OpenAI 董事长布雷特・泰勒联合创立的初创公司），为其提供一个由生成式人工智能（AI）驱动的客服机器人。这本可能酿成灾难；比产品故障更糟糕的，是被一个让你团团转的机器人困在 “自动化牢笼” 里。然而，这个机器人超出了预期。在消化了 Sonos 的技术资料后，它为 Sonos 应用的一个问题想出了自己的解决方案。
ensuing随后的，接下来的
tirade（长时间的）愤怒指责、抨击
debacle 惨败、崩溃、混乱的局面
rookie（新手）→ 口语中替代 "beginner"，更生动，例："She’s a rookie at cooking—don’t let her near the oven alone."
malfunctioning 发生故障的、运转不正常的
beat expectation 超出预期；优于预期
runaround 在口语中非常常用，主要指 “（让人）团团转的推诿、搪塞，或绕圈子的敷衍行为”，尤其形容某人被来回打发却得不到实质性解决
workaround（变通方法，解决方案）→ 解决问题时的实用表达，例："There’s a workaround for the printer issue—just unplug it and wait 10 seconds."
Customer service is one of the few industries where the use of generative AI is already taking root. 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. 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.
客服是少数几个已开始扎根应用生成式 AI 的行业之一。研究公司 Gartner 今年早些时候对客服高管的一项调查显示，近一半受访者表示，AI 客服助手将在未来 12-18 个月对其组织产生重大影响。初创公司和老牌科技公司纷纷向该行业推出大量新产品，承诺将改变客服行业 —— 以及数百万份工作。
take root（扎根，开始普及）→描述趋势逐渐形成，例："Yoga is taking root in my neighborhood—there are three new studios now."
volley（一连串，大批）→ 形容大量事物集中出现，例："She got a volley of questions after presenting her idea."
Customer service is a big industry. Most companies have some sort of customer support, whether in-house or outsourced to call centres.
客服是一个庞大的行业。大多数公司都有某种形式的客户支持，要么是内部团队，要么外包给呼叫中心。
in-house（内部的）→ 描述公司内部资源，例："Our company has an in-house design team."
In recent years, however, the industry has become notorious for driving customers mad with its use of technology. Its poor reputation is deserved. 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”. 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.
然而，近年来该行业因技术应用让客户抓狂而声名狼藉。其糟糕声誉当之无愧。公司用人工解决客户问题成本高昂，因此它们把流程弄得尽可能繁琐：强迫客户按一堆令人困惑的数字组合，或与一个机械重复通用回答的机器人聊天 —— 这种策略被称为 “拖延战术”。一旦涉及人工客服，外包公司从财务利益出发，会让流程尽可能劳动密集，既增加成本又让所有人沮丧。
notorious for（因…… 臭名昭著）
cumbersome（繁琐的）→ 形容流程复杂，例："Filling out this form is so cumbersome—there are 20 pages!"
regurgitate generic responses” 可理解为机械重复千篇一律的回复，regurgitate照搬，generic 通用的
deflection核心意思是 “转移、偏转”，在不同语境中可引申为 “推诿、回避问题” 或 “物理上的偏转”。
drive sb. mad（把某人逼疯）→ 表达 frustration，例："The noise from the construction is driving me mad."
Now entrepreneurs and investors are betting that generative AI can make things less awful. It is not just startups entering the field. Tech titans like Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft are bringing generative AI to their customer-service offerings. Software firms like Salesforce are, too. Some companies are also using large language models like those produced by OpenAI to create their own customer-service bots.
如今，创业者和投资者都在押注生成式 AI 能改善现状。进入该领域的不止初创公司。Alphabet、亚马逊和微软等科技巨头也在将生成式 AI 引入客服业务。Salesforce 等软件公司也是如此。一些公司还在使用 OpenAI 等机构开发的大型语言模型来创建自己的客服机器人。
make things less awful（让情况不那么糟糕）→ 口语中委婉表达改善，例："A cup of coffee can make mornings less awful."
titans（巨头，行业领袖）
offerings（产品，服务）→ 替代 "products"，更正式但口语中可用，例："What are the new offerings at the coffee shop?"
Unlike their rote-learning predecessors, generative-AI bots do not regurgitate canned answers to narrow questions. Instead, they create their own responses informed by the firms’ training materials and previous customer-service interactions.
与机械学习的前辈不同，生成式 AI 机器人不会对狭隘的问题机械重复预设答案。相反，它们会根据公司的培训材料和以往的客服互动生成自己的回答。
canned answers（预设答案，套路回答）→ 描述机械回应，例："I hate when call centres give canned answers—they never help."
informed by（基于，受…… 影响）→ 表达依据，例："Her decision was informed by her past experiences."
Providers are divided on the role these bots should play. Some advocate an approach where humans continue managing customer conversations but with an AI buddy in the background giving tips. But plenty of others think that generative-AI bots are now clever enough to handle most conversations themselves. A number of generative AI startups in the industry have adopted “outcome-based pricing”, charging for their technology when a customer query is resolved, rather than per agent or minute of interaction, as is standard.
供应商在这些机器人应扮演的角色上存在分歧。一些人主张采用这样的模式：人类继续管理客户对话，但后台有一个 AI 伙伴提供建议。但也有很多人认为，生成式 AI 机器人现在已经足够聪明，能够自己处理大多数对话。该行业的许多生成式 AI 初创公司已采用 “基于结果的定价”——仅在客户问题解决时收取技术费用，而不是按标准的每位客服或每分钟互动收费。
buddy（伙伴，助手）→ 口语中亲切的称呼，例："My phone is my buddy when I’m traveling."
be divided on（在…… 上有分歧）→ 谈论观点差异，例："We’re divided on where to go for vacation."
That raises two questions. One is how customers feel about all this. Advocates for the technology say that customers will no longer have to wait endlessly for a person to pick up the phone, and point out that bots will be fluent in many languages and have easier-to-understand accents than foreign call-centre agents. Customers, though, are yet to be convinced: 64% of those surveyed by Gartner said they would prefer companies not to use AI for customer service, mostly because they worry it will make it even more difficult to reach a person. People still value human-to-human contact, insists Rob Goeller, co-founder of Clearsource, a customer-service firm based in Utah with employees in America, Costa Rica, India and the Philippines.
这引发了两个问题。一是客户对此有何感受。该技术的拥护者表示，客户将不再需要无休止地等待人工接听电话，并指出机器人将精通多种语言，且口音比外国呼叫中心客服更易理解。不过，客户尚未信服：Gartner 的调查显示，64% 的受访者表示希望公司不要将 AI 用于客服，主要是因为他们担心这会让联系上人工更加困难。犹他州客服公司Clearsource（员工分布在美国、哥斯达黎加、印度和菲律宾）的联合创始人罗布・戈勒坚持认为，人们仍然重视人际接触。
fluent in（精通，流利）→ 描述语言能力，例："She’s fluent in Spanish and French."
yet to be convinced（尚未信服）→ 表达怀疑态度，例："I’m yet to be convinced that this plan will work."
prefer not to（宁愿不……）→ 表达偏好，例："I prefer not to eat meat on weekdays."
What is more, generative-AI bots have a tendency to project utter confidence in their responses even when they are wrong, which could wreak havoc. Earlier this year Air Canada was forced to compensate a customer who was incorrectly promised a discount by the airline’s AI chatbot.
此外，生成式 AI 机器人往往会在回答中表现出绝对自信，即使它们是错的，这可能会造成严重破坏。今年早些时候，加拿大航空被迫赔偿一位客户，因为该航空公司的 AI 聊天机器人错误地承诺给其折扣。
project confidence（表现出自信）
wreak havoc（造成破坏，捣乱）→ 强调负面影响，例："The storm wreaked havoc on the town—trees were down and power was out."
"have a tendency to + 动词原形"（有…… 的倾向）
A second question is what all this means for the jobs of call-centre agents. Last year Gartner predicted that generative AI would lead to a 20-30% reduction in customer-service jobs by 2026. For now, Mr Goeller says Clearsource is focused on using generative AI to help train its human agents and assist them with summarising calls. But he adds, “I would be putting my head in the sand if I said wouldn’t replace people.”
第二个问题是，这对呼叫中心客服的工作意味着什么。去年 Gartner 预测，到 2026 年，生成式 AI 将导致客服岗位减少 20-30%。目前，戈勒表示 Clearsource 专注于使用生成式 AI 来帮助培训人工客服，并协助他们总结通话内容。但他补充说：“如果我说生成式 AI 不会取代人类，那就是在自欺欺人。”
put one’s head in the sand（逃避现实，自欺欺人）→ 比喻性短语，例："You can’t put your head in the sand—you have to face the problem."
"what... means for..."（…… 对…… 意味着什么）→ 询问影响，例："What does this new policy mean for students?"
Previous waves of customer-service technology, including email and those pesky voice menus, stoked concerns about job losses, only for them to fail to materialise. AI could yet prove different. And if it does, its effects may be salutary. Human agents could be freed up to spend more time on creative and rewarding tasks, like using feedback to make products better—and less time listening to irate customers.
此前几波客服技术（包括电子邮件和那些烦人的语音菜单）曾引发人们对失业的担忧，但这些担忧最终都未成真。AI 可能会有所不同。如果真是这样，其影响可能是有益的。人工客服可以腾出更多时间从事创造性和有意义的工作，比如利用反馈改进产品 —— 而不用花那么多时间听愤怒的客户抱怨。
pesky（烦人的）
materialise （是成为现实）
salutary“有益的；有利的；有益健康的” ，侧重指虽可能让人不舒服，但最终能带来积极影响、起到有益作用 。
irate（愤怒的）→ 替代"angry"
stoke concerns（引发担忧）→ 描述情绪反应，例："The news stoked concerns about the economy."
free up（腾出时间 / 空间）→ 谈论时间管理，例："I freed up my schedule to travel."
口语小结
短语 “give sb. the runaround”
超高频口语表达，描述 “被推诿、踢皮球” 的日常场景（比如客服、办事碰壁），学了就能用，立刻让口语 “接地气”。例句：“I tried to get my phone fixed, but the store gave me the runaround for weeks!”（我想修手机，结果店里推诿了我好几周！）
词汇 “deflection”（推诿含义）
精准吐槽 “回避问题、故意转移焦点” 的行为，比普通 “avoid” 更具体、更有画面感，适合吵架 / 吐槽场景。例句：“Stop deflection! Just answer my question—did you break my cup?”（别回避了！直接回答 —— 是不是你打碎我杯子的？）
表达 “regurgitates generic responses”
犀利批判 “机械重复回复” 的经典组合，吐槽客服 / 低效沟通时超好用，用对了瞬间让口语显得 “很会骂”（不是），很生动。例句：“The chatbot is useless—it just regurgitates generic responses! I need a real person!”（这聊天机器人没用 —— 只会机械重复回复！我要真人！）
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