This commentary appeared in the print edition of the Jan. 6, 2020, Journal of Commerce Annual Review and Outlook.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to generate significant value for the logistics industry in 2020. Communications between supply chain players involve a variety of channels and touchpoints across multiple regions. AI-driven digital transformation will elevate and expedite these interactions, leading to dramatic customer service and process improvements for service providers and their customers alike.
Successful supply chains rely on increasingly complex networks connected by various methods of communication and collaboration. AI’s deep learning models enable analysis across vast data sets, such as interactions captured from emails, calls, online chat, and social media. Leveraging AI to address inquiries captured across different channels allows service providers to operate more efficiently, provide faster response times, and improve documentation and service quality for shippers.
Three ways AI will help elevate the customer experience include:
Email intent classification to speed up response time: Using natural language text understanding and virtual agents to quickly identify the business context of a question can help service providers reduce response time with automated email routing and suggested responses to improve communications.
Voice analytics to improve service: Speech-to-text applications that digitize conversations for further analysis will help service providers focus on necessary process and training improvements, to meet customers’ needs faster.
Digitizing documents for accuracy and visibility: Optical character recognition can be used to improve the speed and quality of documents in multiple formats. AI can help digitize the documents and detect potential costly errors. Once digitized, document processing on blockchain will deliver trusted and improved visibility among supply chain parties.
Carriers and forwarders implementing AI to improve their customer service in ocean shipping will need to dedicate time and resources to embrace transformation. Organizations need to look beyond near-term business objectives and build up the capabilities, agility, and ambition to embrace the transformational potential that digitization can offer.