As you will have heard (several times since the original announcement) the planned transition by BT to phase out its traditional analogue
"Hey Google! What’s the weather going to be like today?"
In today’s society we aren’t surprised by the use of Artificial Intelligence integrated into our lives to help us with our everyday tasks. Most of us have quickly adapted to include these friendly robot personas into our homes, laughing at their jokes and relying on their knowledge. Can we harness this power of Intelligent AI in the business world? Can this technology help us to improve customer consumer relationships, reduce the amount of labour in call centres, and supercharge our customer service forces? In this article we take a deeper look at Conversational AI and how it can help your business.
What Exactly is Conversational AI?
As its name suggests, ‘Conversational AI’ is Artificial Intelligence based around human conversation and interaction. In more detail, it uses a combination of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to enable a machine to interact with humans using advanced communication software. This software can also learn how to improve its responses to customers over time through repeated use.
To break down it’s individual parts:
Machine Learning refers to a computing machine’s ability to “learn” new behaviours and human-like functions by computing large amounts of data. It is able to improve over time to better imitate human interactions and decision-making processes.
Natural Language Processing is providing a computer with the ability to understand text and language in a similar way to the way human beings can. Together with a series of complex linguistical technologies NLP enables machines to understand the human language, it’s nuances and how to respond to/use it.
Now the technical bit is over, what does this mean for the business world? Rather than a world where robots replace humans these powerful machines can work with humans and even equip people with the skills usually learnt by years of experience. This is especially helpful in the world of customer experience.
Conversational AI and Your Business
Time Saving – Queries are a natural part of the consumer journey but how customers get the answers to these questions can vary. Some queries might not require human interaction… Lets say that a customer requires information about delivery times and they want to get in touch. If they were to ring the contact centre to speak to an agent this would resolve the query but at the same time use precious staff resource to deal with this issue. Would it not be better to try and determine what the customer requires before they have to deal with an agent? This is where conversational AI can help, by automating customer support options, listening and understanding what your customer needs and providing satisfying answers quickly and effortlessly. Leaving human agents more time to deal with the more complex queries. Therefore saving time, money and contact centre space.
Open All Hours – Consumers are becoming increasingly used to instant business transactions outside of regular business hours. Sometimes if a query goes unanswered at the point of interest in a product it can lead to a loss of a sale. Conversational AI can help you provide a 24-hour service that may just provide the answer to a question that the customer needs in order to complete their purchase. Making the most of every potential sale!
Personalized Services – Knowing more about your customers and what their preferences are can help your business provide more tailored experiences. One major benefit of this is the ability to upsell. Conversational AI can be used to intelligently interact with your customers – suggesting additional products that user might be interested in based on previous interactions or knowledge of the user. Win, win! Your customers enjoy a more personalized tailored experience while you sell via a means which can even be accessed at a time outside of business hours!
Aid to Human Agents – There often isn’t time to provide extensive training to call centre agents. Conversational AI can provide an abundance of real time data which can be utilised to equip agents ready to help with issues, reducing the need for extra training and experience sharing.
Self-Service – Conversational AI is empowering customers to serve themselves quickly, efficiently, and most importantly satisfyingly – without the need to contact somebody. Therefore, giving customers more control over their interactions and their relationship with your business. Executed well, this can be a powerful tool for improving CX.
Emotion Detection – Another element that can be an invaluable tool to improving CX is the capability to detect emotion. The ability to combine text with an analysis of speaker tone, can provide a picture of how that customer is feeling, allowing you to filter and help users more effectively.
Conversational AI and NT Voice & Data
These are only a few of the benefits of Conversational AI and how it could help your business. With the ability to use this huge wealth of data and analytics to provide better customer experience the possibilities are endless! If you would like to know more about conversational AI and how it could be implemented in your business. Chat to NT Voice & Data today. You may also find other articles on Speech Analytics and Call Centre Automation interesting for other uses of Machine Learning.
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