The advantages of conversational AI for both companies and customers
Imagine having an important online meeting ahead, and the internet isn’t working. As you call customer support, the voice that picks up the phone introduces itself as a robotic assistant.
You might get hesitant if your issue can be solved anytime soon. The robot, however, quickly understands your problem and provides clear instructions on how to restart the router. No repetition and unnecessary questions are needed. Everything works just fine in a few minutes. This is exactly how the call centres and technical helpdesks might look soon.
In some parts of the world, digital voice assistants and voice bots are a common part of the call centre structure. This trend is slowly coming into the Czech Republic too. In the past, Czechs could only encounter artificial intelligence on helpdesk chats. Today, this technology reaches a new level — the voice level, and it is profitable for several reasons. Voice bots help not only the companies but also the customers and clients.
Studies show that over 80% of people are willing to spend more money on a company they had a positive customer experience with. Although they may not seem so at first glance, voice bots are a great step towards improving that experience. Both companies and customers are often afraid that digital voice assistants will not fully replace human interaction. At the same time, they often overlook many benefits that a voice bot’s involvement in the contact centre brings.
Between the IVR and human interaction
The digital voice assistant takes the communication with customer centres to the next level. Voice bots never sleep, and they can solve different routine problems at any time. Additionally, they have essentially unlimited call capacity. These advantages significantly help to reduce waiting times during, for example, mass outages, when many people suddenly need the help of a helpdesk. Besides, compared to an interactive voice response (IVR) system, that people often mistake for digital assistants, communication with a voice bot equipped with humanlike manners is much more enjoyable.
In comparison with IVR, digital voice assistants excel in every possible way. During interaction with voice bots, you do not need to repeat questions constantly and press buttons to proceed in the answer scheme.
Artificial intelligence itself will ask you to describe the problem and quickly understand its nature. If it can, it will propose a solution.
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Furthermore, digital assistants easily recognize when they reach the conversation dead end. Instead of bombarding you with more unnecessary questions, they connect you to an available and qualified human operator.
Artificial intelligence and natural language processing prevent digital assistants from getting stuck in the wheels of absurd questions. Whenever you call a voice bot because your internet isn’t working, the assistant first asks you to describe the problem. You can explain the situation in your own words because the assistant already knows all the related words and phrases. “I can’t use the internet, our router has stopped working, the wifi is not running again.” It doesn’t matter how you phrase your issue because an assistant armed with artificial intelligence understands and proceeds to ask an additional question.
Helping hand in the Covid times
There are even more advantages to digital voice assistants. One of them is undoubtedly security. If someone calls bank support and requests a forgotten credit card code, the human operator does not have the authority to look for it for obvious reasons. These restrictions do not apply to artificial intelligence since it will not reveal the card code to anyone but your authenticated self. Similarly, it is beneficial to use a voice bot while addressing topics such as health conditions. The digital assistant is discrete and will never make fun of your medical conditions in front of his colleagues.
Today, when everything is affected by Covid-19, other benefits of digital voice assistants have emerged. Some institutions, such as health insurance companies, face an enormous number of callers asking various questions related to the epidemic. The capacity of their helpdesk is unfortunately often limited, sometimes even due to preventive measures. At that moment, the voice bot, which can learn to deal with dozens of often repeated requests quite quickly, has the opportunity to shine. He manages a variety of routine problems as well as his human colleagues and saves them a lot of time to deal with more complicated topics.
With all the advantages mentioned above, the development of technology towards digital voice assistants seems logical. After all, the spoken word is the most natural way for people to communicate their needs and desires.
And although we may see an increasing reluctance to make phone calls in many ways, research still shows that more than half of people prefer oral communication when solving problems.
Of course, artificial intelligence still has a lot to improve in comparison to the human brain. But if, by any chance, you will be connected to a digital voice assistant while calling customer service, do not worry. If it was programmed to solve your problem, it will do it as good, maybe even better, than its human colleagues. If not, it will happily transfer your call to an operator who will.
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Digital assistant on the line. Ready to solve your problems was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.