Retail pharmacy giant CVS plans to leverage artificial intelligence to enhance its customer service experience, according to CVS Health Chief Technology Officer Tilak Mandadi.
Mandadi shared with The Wall Street Journal that CVS’s health division is developing an app designed to eliminate the need for customers to call a pharmacist or a live agent at a call center—a practice that is less popular among Gen Z.
This app will utilize AI to provide text-based responses in a “natural language.”
“For calls, we want to move away from the traditional, incredibly annoying menu-based options—such as press 1 for this, press 2 for this, etc.,” Mandadi explained. “Instead, you will just say what you are calling about, and AI will respond if it can answer the question.”
If the AI cannot address the customer’s question, they will be seamlessly transferred to a live customer representative.
Why the shift to AI
CVS is not alone in this shift toward AI-assisted customer service. Many business process outsourcing firms and call centers are already testing AI in various support roles.
The technology shows promise in helping emergency dispatchers with real-time translation and prioritizing calls during high-volume periods, which is crucial in understaffed scenarios.
Softbank Corp. is experimenting with AI that can soften the tone of a caller’s voice to reduce stress for customer service representatives. Similarly, AI chatbots are predicted to replace the need for live representatives, particularly for the phone-call-averse generation.
Affirm, a buy-now, pay-later provider, reported that less than 40% of its customers needed to speak with a person after using its AI chatbot, according to CEO Max Levchin. A study by Gartner, a tech research firm, predicts that AI could replace 20 to 30% of customer service agents by 2026.
The timeline for CVS’s rollout of its new AI-powered app remains unclear.
