In 2020, CIOs and other IT leaders have solved several unprecedented challenges and became key enablers in business continuity. CIOs are now in a dilemma regarding the orientation of their efforts and resources in 2021. While building resilience is still a priority, it’s time to plan for recovery post pandemic.
As millions of workers shifted to the remote setup, and customers moved online, businesses leveraged digital technologies to augment customer and employee experiences.
In aHarvey Nash/KPMG 2020 CIO survey, which polled 4,200 IT leaders, 61% of CIOs say they feel more influential than ever before, courtesy of their work to help hedge their businesses against the coronavirus.
However, rapid digital acceleration and adoption of cloud and other technologies have also brought many pressing issues to the forefront – the most significant one being the management of an increasingly complex IT infrastructure.
Entirely contrary to Artificial Intelligence’s image that Hollywood has brainwashed into our heads, which includes rather comical portrayals of power-hungry robots on a mission to end the human race. AI, in its many applications, has dramatically impacted the way we lead our lives today. Whether it is the fantasy of a self-driving car, data protection, or home assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa that answer our annoying queries in a matter of seconds, the ever-growing technology of AI has eased modern life in a multitude of ways.
However, speaking of artificial intelligence’s more practical applications, perhaps no application is as useful as the chatbot’s highly convenient invention.
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is an AI-powered wonder that significantly strengthens communication within businesses by providing automated responses to common customer queries in a matter of seconds. While there is a certainty that the massive potential that AI has will only lead to the culmination of more tech miracles, the significant role that chatbots play within companies needs to be acknowledged, and consequently, explored further.
Not only do chatbots allow for effective communication to occur between a business and a potential consumer. But this handy technology also makes it significantly easier to handle customer service operations as a whole. Furthermore, an additional benefit of utilizing the AI-driven chatbot is that businesses don’t have to invest a mind-bogglingly large sum of money on customer service operations. It means that they get to enjoy a significant reduction in overall operational costs. According to industry reports, companies that deploy chatbots in their customer service operations get to save as much as 30% of their investments. It is a vast difference compared to taking a traditional customer service approach.
In an attempt to bring our readers up to speed about the massive potential that chatbots have in boosting customer service operations, we’ve compiled an article that highlights some of the ways through which chatbots ensure seamlessness within a business’s customer service operations. If you’re a business owner interested in the perks that chatbots have to offer, keep reading on!
Perhaps the most significant feature that chatbots have to offer to a business these days is the option to be available to existing and potential customers 24/7. Chatbots significantly increase a company’s availability. It does this while increasing efficiency in responding to customers’ queries, which ultimately makes for a timely response.
In today’s highly digitized age, most consumers have an attention span big enough to scroll through their social media feeds, and even then, many complain of getting bored by the content shown to them. In the age of information, time is of the essence. The sooner a consumer is responded to, the higher their chances of purchasing their product from a particular business. It is only natural for organizations to desire 24/7 customer support, which can respond to customers effectively regardless of their time.
While businesses can also deploy live customer agents to offer ‘personal’ customer support to their clients, the fact of the matter is that no customer agent can be available round the clock. As an alternative to chatbots, businesses may deploy customer support agents on a shift-basis. But that is bound to result in a significant portion of the company’s budget allocated to customer service. Moreover, this option isn’t feasible for smaller companies, who don’t have the financial resources to invest in 24/7 live support.
Fortunately, however, chatbots provide a much affordable and much efficient alternative. By deploying chatbots, businesses can ensure much greater availability. The AI-centric technology can handle customer service queries all round the clock without costing much money. According to some surveys, it would seem that a staggering 64% of customers find chatbots more appealing, primarily because they offer 24/7, hassle-free support.
Customer service’s primary goal is to produce happy, satisfied customers, which is where chatbots shine in all their glory. However, once a business offers an overall satisfactory customer service experience to the consumer, they have gained the customer’s trust. They have scored a long-term relationship with them, proving extremely beneficial in building the business’s reputation. A company’s growth always lies in tandem with the degree of customer satisfaction achieved.
Owing to the competitiveness of the business landscape, consumers now have high expectations of customer satisfaction and expect companies to go out of their way to make them happy. Modern customers will only rate their customer service experience as positive if brands surpass all their expectations and develop a unique approach that caters to their individual needs.
Generally speaking, customers look for the following positive components in a customer service experience:
Quick and apt responses
High Average Handle Time (AHT)
Similarly, if a customer service experience contains the following factors, it is most likely to get marked as a negative experience by customers:
Silly mistakes, such as grammatical errors, communication gaps.
The unprofessional attitude of the customer service agent
By deploying chatbots, businesses can quickly secure much higher customer satisfaction levels. They provide customers with prompt responses to their queries and stray far away from simple human errors. While some individuals might deem chatbots as “impersonal,” the fact of the matter is, they are far more efficient in offering customer support than live support agents.
Chatbots Significantly Reduce Waiting Time for Customers
If you’ve ever contacted a live customer support agent on the phone, you might be familiar with the plight of having to wait for hours to have a simple question answered. Unless you’re someone who’s taken a vow of patience, chances are you wouldn’t enjoy being put on hold during a customer service interaction, which is precisely where chatbots come in handy.
Through the deployment of chatbots, companies can ensure that no customer has to deal with the hassle of waiting for an answer. Instead, chatbots offer a seamless experience, with one-stop solutions to even the most complex of problems. However, it is worth mentioning that chatbots work best when used in tandem with a comprehensive database that allows for a more personalized experience.
Parting Words
As the world continues to rely on artificial intelligence and its many applications, we can only hope to see further developments in chatbots. However, it is worth mentioning that a perfect business model incorporates elements of both chatbots and traditional customer service methods to offer customers the best of both worlds!
Chatbots use their wealth of knowledge to provide comprehensive answers to your simple queries. They convert the input text into a structure to convert it to an internal query, obtain output, and then deliver the output. Their ability to provide relevant information on a continuous basis to simple queries is why chatbot seem to be really smart.
Customers always expect an incredible experience. Chatbots offer exactly what the customers want. In other words, your brand and customer bridge might be a chatbot. But does chatbot is smart enough to understand the customer regionally?
Suppose that you talk to a chatbot, you understand Spanish and the chatbot answers you in English. Certainly, the customer will get upset and leave the discussion. Chatbots are all sophisticated and all fine, but are they smart enough to understand demographics?
Let’s look at a few points that chatbots should adapt to be more precise and smarter.
Name Entity Recognition
It is important for bots to be more detailed and specific. A key element of the application to process natural languages (NLP) is called Named Entity Recognition (NER). It helps the bot to correctly recognize entities such as dates, times, places, numbers, names, and product descriptions in the input document. The ability of a bot to detect, comprehend, and obtain information from words is crucial to their service.
In essence, chatbots would recognize, extract, and detect entities in languages that are suitable for their business.
Switching Languages
Not all customers are comfortable to talk in English, your chatbot should be very versatile to switch between customer’s preferred languages. This provides a sense of satisfaction for consumers and lets them know to like the company is mindful of their needs. It should also be noted that users can always change their preferred language.
The chatbot should be intelligent enough to provide personalized content. Intelligent chatbots can take decisions in order to produce content that is more susceptible to gaining momentum based on an interpretation of consumer information, expectations, trends of customer behaviour, market data, and different factors.
A chatbot can encourage better customer involvement and drive content when engaging with customers based on previous customer communication, purchasing history, and patterns that can be unique to each of its customers.
Demographics
Regionalization is important! It is important that your customers are relaxed and customized. Imagine a Tamil customer talking to a chatbot, then chatbot should be so clever in adapting tonality to the customer’s responsibility. Then, during communication, a customer is secured and open.
Chatbots take customer relationships (CRM) up to a new stage, with the automated and enhanced communication of business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and consumer-to-business communication in the form of the right information.
Add human touch
Human touch can be more than enough to improve interactivity to compensate for a less human chat. Even minor dialogue adjustments can make the chatbot more interactive. With the growth of the chatbot, companies can offer a more or less real-time feature to drive human touch in their conversation.
Conclusion
The successful implementation of AI chatbot, nevertheless, poses its own challenges. There is a startling difference between various generations and the way they communicate with technology, and companies that do not know that is not likely to accomplish this with their chatbot application in natural languages. In order to satisfy their desires and preference, you should be able to recognize the platforms that your customer base uses.
Your awareness and methods of communicating with customer service are one of the first building blocks your organization can use to make a chatbot implementation even more seamless and efficient. Bear in mind that this information is not only true for new chatbots — organizations with existing chatbots can also decide who they are targeting and which channels their clients want.
Until now, Xatkit was “only” a low-codechatbot development platform (or better said, a chatbot orchestration platform) that you could use to create all kinds of (chat)bots with our chatbot domain-specific language. As with any low-code tool, Xatkit helps you to define chatbots minimizing the amount of code you need to write. But it doesn’t completely remove it. You still need to have some basic tech skills to create your bot.
Now, Xatkit is becoming also a no-code tool that enables you to create a chatbot with absolutely zero code. Even more, Xatkit is not only a no-code tool but also a no-learn one. Meaning that, instead of forcing you to learn a new interface to define your bots, you can just use Excel for your chatbot definitions. Creating bots doesn’t get easier than this!. As you can see in this demo, even the chatbot we have on Xatkit’s homepage has been fully generated from an Excel file.
You have all the details about this new Excel to chatbot service we’re offering on this page. We hope you find it useful. We do believe it really helps to democratize the creation of chatbots by bringing the chatbot definition process as close as possible to the end-user. And nothing more universal than a spreadsheet 🙂 . No need to code, no need to learn. If you know Excel, you can define your own bot!. Fill the template and in a couple of days we’ll get back to you with a ready-to-test bot. We’ll use this time to validate your bot definition, create and deploy the bot and do some internal testing before showing it to you. We’ll also take some notes on potential improvements in the bot definition that we can fix together before releasing your bot to the world.
Of course, you cannot create just any bot. This is an obvious trade-off if you impose the condition of writing zero-code to define the chatbot. Right now we’re focusing on Question & Answer bots but we’re working on other powerful templates that offer more flexibility while sticking to the no-code paradigm.
And we also plan to go beyond Excel files or, in fact, any kind of spreadsheets. If you have your bot defined somewhere/somehow, feel free to reach out with whatever you have and we’ll see how we can derive a chatbot from it, always looking to minimize your time investment. From our conversations with potential clients, we have realized that this initial effort to define the bot is one of the major factors that stop people from creating (and benefitting from) bots. At Xatkit, our commitment is to lower the barriers to entry to the chatbot world!
Contact centers are at the heart of every customer-serving enterprise. In an increasingly virtual world, developing highly personalized, valuable relationships with customers requires organizations to augment human interactions with technology.
The trends highlighted above will pave the way for next-gen contact centers. And, as you explore them, do have a look at our digital solutions, including our enterprise chatbot builder platform (BotCore), our Microsoft-powered RPA-bot integration, and advanced AI and analytics technologies that can reshape your contact centers in 2021 and beyond.
So I want to create this workout and diet bot, does any of you already know a chatbot that does this (in that case could you provide me with a link with the source code). If not, could you help me with the possible questions a user could ask the chatbot, such as how to do push-ups, what are some high in protein meals, etc. Edit: Forgot to mention I am writing using AIML. (more specifically in pandorabots for now)
Why banks need to embrace Conversational AI … quickly …
Hey Bank! Listen! Do me a favor and just get a chatbot to talk to me. Enough of the long waits, unending IVR menu items, and dumb customer support agents
-A frustrated bank customer
For customers, dealing with banks once meant visiting the branches, waiting in line and getting the work done. But in this digital age, websites and mobile apps are the go to communication channels between customers and banks. This has made it very easy for banks to reach their customers and have enabled customers to have their financial information at the click of button. This shift in communication channels has led to customers expecting quick, delightful and personalized experiences from the banks.
Banks and Financial institutions have always been slow in adopting the latest technology and hence are falling short of customer expectations. They are also missing out on an opportunity to build a relationship with their customers through efficient and cost-effective digital channels which would lead to higher customer LTV(Life Time Value). Financial institutions need to stop waiting for customers to approach them and rather become proactive and start interacting with customers to build better relationships.
Banks need to embrace AI-powered chat software (chatbots and virtual assistants) to engage customers through familiar text and voice based interfaces. These virtual assistants are programmed to solve common customer queries and guide them with various processes and procedures in a conversational manner. These interactions can be done over well known channels like FB messenger, WhatsApp, IVR and many others.
What are the benefits, you may ask. Here are a few
Improved customer experience — Virtual assistants provide consistent support to your customers, 24×7
Greater reach — Virtual Assistants provide delightful customer experiences through the channel of their choice be it voice or chat
Low maintenance — Virtual Assistants need not be monitored continuously and can be updated easily using a chatbot platform (Check out the Smartbots Platform )
Higher Productivity — Virtual Assistants handle common tasks so that human agents can concentrate on complex tasks at hand
High self-service rate — Virtual Assistants are designed to resolve customer queries without human intervention
Greater Customer insights — Virtual Assistants provide insights about customer queries & requests leading to greater engagement, relationship & loyalty
Conversational AI and chatbots in Banking are redefining how banks talk to their customers by making two-way communication possible. Today’s customers expect exceptional digital experiences. AI-powered Virtual Assistants not only ensure automated, delightful, personalized customer experiences but also provide useful information and insights that prove to be a great advantage for the banks.
Check out Smartbots.ai to start your journey with enterprise Conversational AI
Legal chatbots are empowering law firms to automate routine tasks and simplify customers intake process
Role of Technology in the Legal Industry
The legal industry has undergone a significant transformation over the last decade and will continue to grow at a significant pace. Several law firms across the world are expected to increase their annual investments in legal technology. For instance, the year 2019 witnessed an increase in legal tech investments, which surpassed $1.2 billion.
Digital transformation is changing the face of the legal industry by creating several opportunities for law firms in terms of global market expansion, remote working, customer experiences, social media marketing, and much more.
Legal firms are also emphasizing on migrating to the cloud for assisting their IT departments in terms of agile working, improving security, and data storage. This shift towards the cloud has empowered lawyers to work flexibly from any location and any time of the day.
Legal tech — Easing the practice of law for lawyers and paralegals
Legal tech refers to the set of technologies that can significantly change the way of using legal services. Major technologies uplifting the legal industry include Big Data, AI, Cloud, RPA, IoT, and Blockchain, among others. These technologies are enabling law firms to better serve their clients as well as internal employees. Majorly, law firms are looking towards legal tech for enhancing productivity, reducing costs, and boosting customer satisfaction.
Few advantages of technology in the legal industry include:
Reduced risk of errors
Increased transparency
Improved customer service
Higher convenience
Enhanced employee engagement
Better resource management
The sector is showing a growing interest in legal AI solutions, which has the potential to transform the practice of law and streamline work processes. The trend is expected to continue in the coming years with several AI applications, including chatbots and virtual assistants being adopted by legal professionals for augmenting the workflows.
Legal Chatbots — A solution to get ahead in a fast-changing legal environment
AI-enabled chatbots are evolving rapidly and are creating unprecedented opportunities for law firms to optimize their work processes. Law firms are utilizing conversational AI tools majorly for streamlining and augmenting legal services offered to clients. However, Law firms are also deploying chatbots for simplifying monotonous internal tasks done by attorneys or partners. Deploying these AI-enabled chatbots is a smart and effective way to relieve the legal department from the tedious and time-consuming administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on billable tasks.
Legal chatbots, being available 24/7, offer instant support to attorneys across channels and eliminates the need to call or email to support staff. Chatbots are enabling attorneys to ease the access to legal source materials from any device and at any moment of the day.
Chatbots will continue to play a significant role in digitally transforming legal firms and enhancing overall business processes. These legal chatbots are helping law firms in different ways, which include the following.
Automated processes:
Chatbots and virtual assistants help lawyers in managing their daily routine tasks of scheduling meetings, processing titles, and other odd jobs, which were earlier done by junior attorneys. Chatbots provide law firms an opportunity to effectively use their resources and cut down the chances of errors.
Generate and review legal documents:
Chatbots have automated several in-house legal tasks that were earlier performed manually by lawyers. Chatbots help attorneys and partners to create the filled-out documents based on their data inputs. These chatbots are enabling lawyers to focus more on other complex issues, resulting in an enhanced pace of operations.
Legal research:
Chatbot provides lawyers an updated and revised laws as well as regulations to ease the research and maintain the necessary knowledge and skills. Attorneys and partners are leveraging chatbots to easily look for relevant documents while working on a particular case.
Due diligence purposes:
Due diligence is one of the primary processes that an attorney needs to perform on behalf of their clients. It is often a tedious and time-consuming process where an attorney thoroughly assesses a legal situation and confirms facts and figures. Here AI-enabled chatbots can automate and speed up this process by conducting a comprehensive investigation. These chatbots can review hundreds of documents and ask numerous questions to unveil key information and produce a full report for attorneys.
Time tracking:
A chatbot gathers all the information from attorneys to fill up timesheets and create comprehensive reports. These reports are further used by account teams for billing purposes. Chatbots eliminate the inaccuracy in billable hours and allow attorneys to calculate the effort being spent on each client for estimating the potential future efforts.
A robust, secure, and incredibly intelligent platform for creating chatbots
KLoBot — Offering partners and attorneys great value
KLoBot is enabling law firms to create a new legal culture that is data-driven, customer-centric, process-oriented, collaborative, and transparent. Chatbots built on the KLoBot platform empower law firms to streamline the internal processes and upgrade the attorneys, partners, and associates experiences. These chatbots act as a personal assistant for attorneys to easily lookup for a client- and matter-related information.
KLoBot-enabled legal chatbots can identify and analyze the complex issues, which need human support. With KLoBot live agent handoff capabilities, chatbots can seamlessly transfer those complex queries to live support agents. The transition from chatbot to human agent helps attorneys to get accurate and in-depth responses.
