Hi, I'm Ian Jacobs,
a principal analyst here at Forrester.
And I'm actually here to talk about the holiday rush
that retailers go through every year.
Every year, retailers have to hire up
a large number of customer service personnel
to handle both the pre-rush of selling stuff,
and then the post-boom of returning stuff.
At the same time, retailers are investing in chat bots.
In a recent Forrester survey,
50% of retailers said that they were investing in chat bots.
And 93% of those were investing in it for customer service.
So what I actually want to talk about
is the impact of that on your hiring.
If in fact you are investing in chat bots,
you're changing the nature of work
that you are asking those
seasonal contact center agents to do.
The work changes because the simple things
that they used to do is now gone.
What is left are more complex issues,
or issues with customers who are so upset, or so frustrated,
that you probably don't want automation facing them.
So as you're thinking about your seasonal hiring,
you now will need to take into account
this new kind of work that you're asking people to do,
and say, "hmm, maybe I actually need to start changing
my hiring profile, maybe I need to actually
be recruiting not just anyone off the street,
but people who actually have a passion
for the products or services that I sell."
People who can emotionally connect with your customers.
It is a big change.
You're no longer going to be able to just hire people
and pay them $11 an hour and assume that they know nothing,
but you're going to train them very quickly.
That model won't work anymore.
And that's all caused by your investments in chat bots.
So understand the impact of your technology investment
downstream on the kind of seasonal customer support
you are going to be able to give to customers.
So if you want anymore information about
the kinds of changes to hiring that you need to do,
check out a recent report that I published
with my colleague, Kate Leggett, it's called
The Future of Work, You Must Change
How You Hire Customer Service Agents.
And there'll be a link below, thanks so much.