Year: 2021

  • Drift vs Intercom, which platform is better in 2021?

    Drift and Intercom are the most popular chat solutions for enterprise B2B websites.

    They both offer live chat and chatbot solutions for your website.

    But which chat platform should you use? What are the differences between them? And which platform is better?

    Find it out in my comparison here: Drift vs Intercom

    submitted by /u/jorenwouters
    [link] [comments]

  • 5 Ways to Prepare Chatbots for The Holidays: Chinese New Year Edition

    5 Ways to Prepare Your Chatbots for The Holidays: Chinese New Year Edition

    Tip #1: Give your chatbot avatar a festive outfit for Chinese New Year

    We know that having a cute chatbot avatar is enticing and important to many users, so we’re encouraging you to make your chatbot avatar look even more adorable by dressing them up for the holiday season.

    What better way to ring in the holidays than to change your chat header, icon, and avatar’s outfit to be Chinese New Year-themed? It’s super simple to do so – all you have to do is go to the Noodle Factory portal and click on ‘Chat Channels’.

    P.S. Did you know that you can use GIFs in your chat headers and icons? Yup, you really can use your favourite moving pictures!

  • How to get started with Conversational AI

    Conversational AI has been on the radar for many organisations over the last few years. The challenges of the pandemic have brought the technology to the forefront of many businesses’ priority investment lists because of its ability to provide connectivity and on demand support. In fact, industry analysts Markets and Markets predict that by 2025 the Conversational AI industry will grow from $4.8 billion in 2020 to $13.9 billion in 2025.

    With such demand, it is important for organisations to understand what exactly Conversational AI is and how to implement it to achieve transformative efficiencies and the outcomes desired.

    What is Conversational AI?

    Chatbots have been around since the early 1960s, getting slightly more sophisticated as the decades rolled on, but only as proof points of what was to come downstream. By the mid-2000s, chatbots began to be commercially deployed, automating basic customer requests, but largely proving to be disappointing and frustrating as their binary nature was limiting, often resulting in hilarious ‘rabbit holes’ of confusion with customers ultimately desperate for a real person to contact.

    Over the last five years, rapid advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) combined with access to affordable computer processing has seen Conversational AI solutions emerge as the successor to the unsuccessful early attempts at automating repetitive tasks. User experiences delivered today are unrecognisable from the early chatbots with many interactions now indistinguishable from that of a human.

    Crucially, these solutions can handle an ever-growing number of more complex tasks and requests. Furthermore, some Conversational AI Assistants solutions are now able to seamlessly integrate with enterprise applications, gathering data and information and presenting personalised responses back to the individual requestee. All the while respecting security parameters and data sensitivity.

    What are the benefits?

    Conversational AI enables organisations to provide an on-demand support resource for customers, suppliers, and employees. Its utilisation of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning means that the technology is able to understand the meaning and intent of user queries in a much more personalised and sophisticated manner than chatbots.

    This means that organisations can provide significantly enhanced experiences and improves customer and employee satisfaction leading to greater retention and brand reputation. Additionally, the Assistants deliver time savings and efficiencies to internal teams such as HR and Customer Service through streamlining the handling of requests, freeing them up to focus on more strategic and higher-value tasks.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. The Messenger Rules for European Facebook Pages Are Changing. Here’s What You Need to Know

    2. This Is Why Chatbot Business Are Dying

    3. Facebook acquires Kustomer: an end for chatbots businesses?

    4. The Five P’s of successful chatbots

    From a technology perspective, Conversational AI offers many advantages over traditional chatbots, through the platforms ability to learn as a natural consequence of processing but also through automated training and ingestion of documents to create user journeys

    This means platforms such as Humley’s Conversational Assistant require no coding or technical knowledge to set up, putting the power in subject matter experts’ hands rather than IT teams, leading to rapid deployment and realisation of ROI.

    Steps to deploying a Conversational AI Assistant

    1. Identify a Use Case

    With AI and automation technologies becoming such a top investment priority for enterprises, AI for AI’s sake can tend to lead the project objectives rather than the business case itself.

    ‍For example, a customer service team has been given a budget to investigate automate customer care. They have identified that a chatbot will enable them to do this, however, upon implementation have discovered that the technology is not returning the efficiencies they were hoping for.

    Consequently, the project fails to scale or move past POC. Yet when it comes to addressing the reason for the failure, the technology is working as intended, rather it is the internal company processes that have created a barrier. On closer examination, the challenges that the customer service team faced are not an inability to handle call volumes, but rather the internal processes and systems that do not allow them to do it efficiently.

    The problem within this scenario is that the team has not understood what problem they are trying to solve. In order to ensure the success of any project, organisations and teams must truly understand the outcomes they are looking to achieve and whether Conversational AI is the most appropriate solution to achieve this.

    Example Business Cases Where Conversational AI Can Help

    HR

    A Conversational Assistant within HR eliminates the need for employees and managers to navigate complex HR, Payroll, and Business systems and reduces the pressure on HR Teams through automating all of the common HR requests and associated tasks. Delivering improved compliance, awareness, productivity, and employee engagement leading to increased retention and satisfaction.

    IT & Help Desks

    Reduce the pressure on IT Teams by enabling users to resolve their own tech issues and queries quickly and seamlessly. Assistants enable users to ask general IT questions, submit tickets, and even set up new devices and system access.

    Contact Centres

    Conversational Assistants help to reduce the pressure on contact centres by providing agents with a single point of reference for all customer information as well as enabling customers to self-serve through resolving their own queries. Reducing waiting times, increasing first-time case resolution rates, and improving customer experiences.

    2. Creating User Journeys

    One of the major challenges faced by organisations looking to implement a Conversational Assistant is establishing the likely customer, employee, or supplier interactions. This task can be complex and time-consuming, typically relying on functional teams such as HR, Sales, Support, and IT to understand and identify the wide variety of queries and outcomes. This can take up valuable resources and means projects may take longer to move to ‘live’ than anticipated, resulting in frustration and delays.

    In order to, accelerate this process and reduce the pressure on functional teams, organisations must look to their existing knowledge base and documents to kickstart their deployments.

    This approach not only significantly reduces the time and resource needed to build the platform, but also means that employees and customers can access the relevant information they require quickly — improving compliance, productivity, and satisfaction.

    3. Iteration & Data

    Data is a key part of any AI project, particularly if there is some element of Machine Learning or analytics. The principle here is laudable: the collection of data to understand user behaviour is essential, as is a clear understanding of what the technology success metrics are. However, the desire to keep these technologies in stasis during a trial period is perhaps a misunderstanding of what role applications such as Conversational AI must play.

    There are two reasons for this. For example, Conversational AI will not have been trained correctly, have the right information or the experience of dealing with real people.

    All of which means that within the first few days, weeks, and months the Assistant will need considerable care and attention. Providing this level of support, is perhaps not what a team was expecting and therefore can immediately reduce adoption and usage, particularly if some technical knowledge is required. Hence, iteration is crucial, and the success metrics need to be based on the rate of improvement as much as the overall accuracy of the service itself.

    4. Onward Journey & Optimisation

    Once the first use case has been successfully implemented and is deployed within a ‘live’ environment, the process can easily be scaled and repeated into other areas of the business, applying learnings and utilising the project successes to gain wider organisational adoption.

    Continual optimisation is key to the ongoing success of any Digital Transformation project. Therefore, organisations and solution providers should ensure regular reviews and service monitoring as part of their processes.

    Fundamentally, the success of any project is based on the strong relationship between key stakeholders, users, and technology vendors. Through adopting a collaborative and open approach to achieve the goals of the organisation, long-term success can be achieved.

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    How to get started with Conversational AI was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • 3 Purpose Chatbot Types For Business Growth In 2021

    There are several new ideas arising from the emergence of artificial intelligence, and certainly, this cannot be denied. In chatbots, the sharp use of AI is itself a major achievement because you have ever found that in terms of features, interface, purpose, and more, the two or more chatbot styles are never the same. Isn’t it an achievement that two or more working under the same system are not the? However, I will be discussing the top 3 purpose chatbot types that shall be the best to look upon for maximum business growth in 2021.

    1. Support Chatbots:

    Support chatbots are programmed to master a single domain, such as company information. It is important for these chatbots to have character, multi-turn functionality, and context awareness. They should be able to walk a customer through some major business processes and answer a broad range of FAQ-type questions. You would want to have a short-tail and long-tail combo solution when developing this chatbot type.

    This chatbot functionality is not limited to support areas, but it can also manage ticket booking and scheduling. Tickets such as flight status check, book price, slots, scheduling, etc.

    If you own an e-commerce business then support chatbots are the right solution for you, because it provides on a personal level development of the customer relationship. Also, solving the queries for cart abandonment.

    2. Skills Chatbots:

    These are usually more single-turn-type bots. They set commands which they can easily obey, such as “close the window” or “play Ed Sheeran’s song for me.” Speech functionality is suggested for this type of chatbot so that the user does not need to turn on a screen or click any buttons.

    They can quickly follow commands so that users can do multitasking while dealing with the bot. These chatbots do not need to worry too much about contextual awareness unless you want to create a highly advanced one, as people can easily learn what to say and say it correctly.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. The Messenger Rules for European Facebook Pages Are Changing. Here’s What You Need to Know

    2. This Is Why Chatbot Business Are Dying

    3. Facebook acquires Kustomer: an end for chatbots businesses?

    4. The Five P’s of successful chatbots

    Did you know which industries are gaining from chatbots? The finance, healthcare, education, travel, and real estate industries. Also, roughly 80% of the businesses are projected to integrate some form of chatbot system by 2021.

    3. Assistant Chatbots:

    Assistant chatbots are a middle ground chatbots, more or less, between the two chatbots types above. They do better when they know a little bit about a variety of subjects. Many individuals hope that these bots will one day become navigators like all the other bots that are out there now.

    Siri is a fine, modern example. While she just does so much and in virtual assistants she is phenomenal, individuals continuously ask her for things simply because even though she does not perform the order, the response she gives seems to be humorous.

    When companies implement automation strategies correctly, they can increase sales and brand awareness while saving time, effort, and money. Chatbots take on the responsibility for time-consuming, recurring tasks. They make communicating with consumers, adding value, and delivering better customer experiences simpler and easier.

    So, get your one purpose chatbot today!

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    3 Purpose Chatbot Types For Business Growth In 2021 was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • What is a Digital HR Assistant and why does it matter?

    A Digital HR Assistant is an easy to use Conversational AI tool which enables employees to access all the information they need and perform tasks within one easy to use interface. Crucially Digital Assistants enables HR Teams to focus on the tasks that really matter, delivering strategic business value through automating repetitive and manually intensive tasks involved with processing communications and giving employees instant access to all the information they need in the channels they use, 24/7 regardless of location or time zone.

    Meaningful and accurate responses to users in seconds — improving satisfaction and engagement.

    How does it work?

    Enable employees to ask questions and perform tasks associate with every stage on the employee lifecycle such as recruitment, onboarding, learning and development, day to day support.

    Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, Digital HR Assistants are able to understand and interpret human language to a much higher accuracy and therefore, able to provide meaningful and accurate responses to users in seconds — improving satisfaction and engagement.

    The technology enables employees to ask questions and perform tasks associate with every stage on the employee lifecycle such as recruitment, onboarding, learning and development, day to day support such as booking holiday, timesheets and payroll enquiries, employee feedback and even offboarding processes .

    A Digital Assistant can even support employee’s wellbeing by enabling them to seek advice without the need to speak to a person — allowing them to remain anonymous whilst still providing them with the right information and advice.

    Additionally, Through intuitive dashboards and reports, the Assistants can even help HR Teams to provide employees with greater insight into employees through tracking metrics such as FAQs triggered, employee feedback and volume of communications. These metrics provide HR experts with an insight into employee satisfaction and proactively help to identify trends which could impact the long-term success of an organisation.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. The Messenger Rules for European Facebook Pages Are Changing. Here’s What You Need to Know

    2. This Is Why Chatbot Business Are Dying

    3. Facebook acquires Kustomer: an end for chatbots businesses?

    4. The Five P’s of successful chatbots

    More than your average chatbot …

    The HR Assistant is the employee gateway to the business, the first and second port of call for all information and requests.

    Where Digital HR Assistants differ from traditional chatbots is through their speed of deployment and ease of use. Many Digital HR Assistants, such as Humley’s, utilise automatic document ingestion in combination with pre built employee experiences to fast track the deployment process — this means there is no coding required, technical expertise or lengthy development periods.

    Moreover, tools such as Humley’s Digital Assistant are Pre built with ready to deploy integrations with all of the leading HRIS, Payroll and other business systems. This means all an organisations information can be securely accessed, updated and actioned within one interface. This integration capability also enables the assistant to automate tasks such as travel booking, updating timesheets, and even booking candidate interviews through connecting with RPA and other automation technologies

    The HR Assistant is the employee gateway to the business, the first and second port of call for all information and requests. Delivering true transformation and efficiencies through automation of end to end processes.

    Key Benefits of deploying a Digital HR Assistant

    • Improved employee experience & satisfaction
    • Enhanced employee Support
    • Improved compliance & adoption of handbooks & guidance
    • Integration of all systems and information in one platform
    • Task automation
    • Efficiency gains for HR Teams
    • Improved visibility of employee trends and feedback

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    What is a Digital HR Assistant and why does it matter? was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • Where should I start learning to use chatbots?

    Hello to everyone. I want to start learning about chatbots. How to use chatbots? Where should I start learning to use chatbots? Which is the best chatbot?

    submitted by /u/ErebosGamer
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  • Voice Control: Building Your Voice Assistant

    Voice control used to be a Sci-Fi dream. Now, Machine Learning at the edge has made it an everyday reality. Here, you will learn how to create a simple voice controller.

    https://www.codemotion.com/magazine/dev-hub/machine-learning-dev/voice-control/

    submitted by /u/codemotionworld
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