esters may use Siri and Alexa to attack customer service channels

“Hey Siri! Lead a protest!”

According to Gartner’s study, protesters could soon use virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri to disrupt organizations by flooding support channels. According to Gartner’s study, this could be due to the increased use of virtual assistants for legitimate customer service requests.

Statista estimates that there will be 8.4 Billion virtual assistants by the end of 2019, up from 3.25 Billion in 2019. Customers are using these devices to communicate with companies. According to The Gartner 2023 Leadership Vision report for Customer Service and Support, 37% customers will use a virtual assistant to communicate with customer service by 2025.

These interactions can be for legitimate reasons such as ordering pizza or waiting on hold. It is becoming increasingly important for customers to have seamless interactions with brands, even though they are not directly involved.

Why we care. This is an interesting and alarming example of technology’s unintended effects. A big market advantage is making something easier to use and more efficient. Customer service is a key area of focus. Great customer service is the best way to build loyalty, as every marketer knows. If you do it wrong, your brand will be a weak point.

It is possible that technological ease of use could be another weakness. What can you do? Automate more, increase your capacity, and be prepared to deploy more resources. It is impossible to predict when these attacks might occur, but it is prudent to be ready.

It is hard to imagine the future. To help predict future threats, the Pentagon has a team of science fiction writers. Private industry might also be interested in these types of attacks if they do occur.

Explore deeper: Three steps to prepare Siri, Alexa, and other machine customers

The number of legitimate interactions with virtual assistants is going to rise. Last year, Amazon Alexa contained more than 130,000 skills that could be used to automate transactions. Virtual assistants will soon be able request service, get messages, make recurring payments, report issues, and gather product information through every customer service channel.

Organizations face increasing customer service demands, which can be a problem. Gartner predicts that virtual assistants will account for 20% of all inbound contacts within two years.

Many companies have invested in systems to use these capabilities, such as a printer ordering ink for customers so they don’t have too. Chatbots and interactive voice systems are being used to automate customer service.

However, these interactions with virtual assistants are legitimate and will open the door to protests, according to Gartner analysts.

According to the report, “Protests against government and business organizations are becoming increasingly digital.” “In 2021, there were at most 9.84 million distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), attacks to shut down websites and overwhelm them with traffic. This is 14% more than in 2019.

Virtual assistants will be easy to use and a powerful tool for protest.

According to the report, “Citizen-led Denial of Service Attacks (cDoS),” is a new type denial of services, which are led by ordinary people and not hackers. They are performed using virtual assistants. “By 2024, citizens can shut down the contact center of a large global enterprise company through denial-of-service attacks launched by virtual assistants.”

People protesting “social issues” are likely to trigger these attacks. Large businesses could suffer hundreds of thousands in operating expenses as a result. This is in addition to lost productivity, customer turnover and long-term brand impacts.

The post Siri, Alexa could be used by protesters for attacking customer support channels appeared originally on MarTech.