Today, #VoiceBots are being implemented by a number of organizations across the globe to streamline customer engagement and provide a unique experience to users. With voice being a preferred channel of interaction among customers and nearly 60-70% of customer service interactions being over voice, conversational voice bots are the future and can be leveraged to bring a marked difference in the total cost of operations while being able to provide a superior CX.
Ethics in conversation design refers to the consideration of moral principles when designing and developing AI experiences. This is a topic that is not often discussed as part of the design process, perhaps because it’s difficult to talk about, or maybe is often ignored. Conversational technologies can be influenced by the biases of their creators and it’s important to consider this to ensure our designs are inclusive and transparent.
Technology made by humans is subject to the same risks and flaws as humans, and it’s naive to think that our social ills will disappear in the technology we create.
— Tarah Knaresboro, Conversation Designer
So what does that mean? Let’s look at 3 things to consider when designing for ethics and inclusivity:
Conversation Design: 3 Things to Consider When Designing for Ethics and Inclusivity
Biases in Conversation Design
One of our biggest challenges as conversation designers is being mindful of bias. It’s something that often goes unnoticed, especially if there’s a short deadline to meet, but conversational AI is vulnerable to social harm caused by biases. For example, the accent bias that exists in smart speakers. The Washington Post teamed up with two research groups to test thousands of voice commands dictated by more than 100+ participants across 20 cities in the United States.
The Washington Post: Google Assistant and Alexa have trouble understanding certain accents
The results showed that U.S southern accents were 3% less likely to get accurate responses from a Google Home speaker and Midwest accents were 3% less likely to be recognized by Alexa. But more troubling was users with non-English native accents experienced 30% more inaccuracies, facing the biggest representational harm. This is a problem because these speakers were designed to be effective in people’s lives but are creating a negative impact when users interact with them and are misunderstood.
So why did this happen? The data set of training phrases for these smart speakers were composed of predominantly white, non-immigrant, non-regional, English dialects so accents less common or prestigious were less likely to be recognized.
We as designers need to recognize our biases and make sure we’re considering ethical principles in our conversation design to help minimize social harm.
Collect as much data about your target audience and evidence for their needs and review it with your team.
While designing your bot persona, don’t assume everyone will like it. Does it represent a harmful stereotype? Is there verbiage that is offensive to specific groups? Does it have a personality trait that could be insulting in other cultures? Make sure to get feedback from a diverse group of users and see how they react to it.
Use simple language when writing prompts instead of your own language patterns. What you understand may not be clear to others.
Don’t make assumptions about what users utterances’ mean. Certain utterances like “I need to check a reservation” may not mean the same thing to everyone else.
Edge Cases in Conversation Design: Predicting the Unpredictable
Edge cases are scenarios that deviate from the happy path and are mistakenly considered very rare and unlikely to happen. Thus edge cases are written off because of this. However, dismissing these edge cases could also be dismissing how marginalized groups may interact with the solution, putting a group of users’ needs over others.
Edge Cases in Conversation Design
To avoid this thinking, we can ask ourselves if we’re making assumptions:
How are we making this decision? Based on the timeline? Resources? Business needs? User evidence?
What end-users are we ignoring?
Do we have data to back up each edge case? If not, we’re making an assumption. If yes, then why is this an edge case?
Who and where did we collect the data from?
Feedback and the Conversation Design Process
We want to make sure that our designs work for everyone and one of the best ways to ensure that is to collect diverse feedback. You can enlist users to help test your design or product through recruiting companies who can source very specific candidates based on demographics or through remote testing. Having this diverse user testing will help you understand users’ needs and desires and allow you to design conversations for all. This includes diversity in physical abilities, region, fluency, educational background, income, religious and cultural background, age, gender, sexual orientation, and more.
Feedback and the Conversation Design Process
Some things to note while collecting feedback:
Did anyone struggle to understand the goal of the interaction? Was there hesitation or confusion from the user? Did anyone expect a different outcome?
Were users able to understand the prompts and language clearly?
How did users react to the bot’s persona?
Were the interactions difficult for any specific group of users?
Was there an important need that a user had that the bot couldn’t handle?
This article has been mostly focused on designing for all users and ensuring we consider ethical principles in our conversation design. This also includes being as transparent as possible with users.
Users are not always aware of the type of data they’re given and how data is processed and stored which creates privacy concerns. It’s important for individual privacy to make sure users consent to what data they’re given and how that data is used.
We also want to avoid stepping into the Uncanny Valley. It’s crucial to let users know they’re conversing with a bot. When a chatbot or conversational AI seems too human, it can trigger a negative response and make users uncomfortable. It can also mismanage human expectations. Saying words like “I’m designed to” or calling your bot a “virtual assistant” can help set the precedent early on. Disclosure is key. There’s even a law in California where you need to make it clear that your bot is not a human.
Remember Humans Aren’t Perfect
And neither is the technology we design, but it’s important that we try our best to catch these biases by recognizing them in the early stages of design, questioning our edge cases, and diverse user testing, because if your bot is launched into production without these considerations there may be ethical consequences.
If you’d like to learn more about Conversation Design and the role of AI chatbots in implementing this design philosophy into your business, please reach out to us at Master of Code.
Sharing an upcoming seminar by Aravind Ganapathiraju, on taking Conversational AI from research to production. He will dig into the challenges and some approaches that are used to overcome them. The challenges covered will include: data curation, modelling, optimization, service delivery and customer success.
#ConversationalAI can help boost motivation differently for different employees, identify gaps and issues, report to management in-time, and lead to keeping the balance and harmony of enterprise business goals and employee motivators. AI-powered chatbots have become increasingly prevalent in customer-facing functions such as customer support, marketing, and sales.
Me and my buddy develop a custom hybrid ChatBot. Basically the ChatBot can do operations to provide information from APIs and present it on the chat based on user options selection. In addition at some point request live chat if needed. The agents (one or a group) can use whatsapp to respond the session request. We have sold 15 chatbots and currently paying $100/mo.
Do you have any ideas how to market or sell our product?
What’s the most used chatbot that either is decision tree or AI powered to integrate into an HR matching platform where people will ask questions and then get matched accordingly? Wondering if there’s a list of the most popular in general?
Will be initially for responsive platform and the will push out via Reactive Native.
Audio ads: they’re all around us today. People listen to them on a range of distribution channels, like radio, podcasts, smart speakers, music streaming services, and more. Audio ads are a key component of the audio revolution because they are central to the promotion of products and services.
Audio ads are a type of marketing that can be especially powerful. These advertisements typically take the form of radio broadcasts or podcasts where a story is told to listeners concisely and compellingly. When done correctly, advertisers can take advantage of one of the most resonant marketing means such as audio. With the power to engage, inform, and entertain people outside of their homes, advertisers can find success.
Advertising for your brand can be complex. It can range from using Alexa Skills, Google Assistant Actions to TV ads. Using a Skill or Action on Alexa or Google Assistant is one of the best ways to make sure your audio ads are making their way into the homes of millions of people who own a smart home device. These devices speak with these people every day, which will make sure that your audio ads are heard.
How to make your Audio Ads conversational through Voice Apps
Creating great conversational ads is a delicate art, and it’s not as easy as you might think. When writing a script for your ad, you must put yourself in the shoes of the listener to make it work.
More and more listeners are turning to audio streaming services that are available through smart speakers. This means that traditional radio and similar broadcasting services will have to compete with this new technology.
Developing clever conversational ads for voice-driven platforms will be essential for success in the voice space. Of course, dedicated voice applications sound like the best solution to reach such an audience.
However, don’t worry about how to create a truly effective conversational ad for this platform.
Here are 4 tips on how to create the best of them:
1. Focus on making it as conversational as possible
Consider that the primary reason people use smart speakers like Amazon Echo is their ability to provide conversational experiences through the specific voice assistant, in this case, Alexa. Therefore, when creating your audio ads focus on making them conversational. When designing the conversational flow do it by analyzing how your target audience reacts to such experiences. Finding the appropriate voice tone for the audio will be the key to making it conversational and friendly, and ultimately attract the attention of the audience.
2. Find the best way to approach your target audience
In the space of voice applications, you will have two ways to reach your future customer.
The first and the simplest one is to use an already existing streaming service like Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, etc. But, their services offer little to no possibility to control the user experience. This means lower chances of gaining new leads.
The second one is to develop your own voice application. This way, you will have total control over the user experience, while generating valuable user analytics. Later, the collected data will provide you with the information you will need to improve your ads and better target the audience.
3. Harness the characteristics “voice” has to offer
Different from written ads, if used correctly, Audio Ads have the opportunity to better engage your audience. What makes them unique is the ability to transmit emotion and humor. These qualities of voice can be a powerful tool if placed well within the audio content.
4. Consider offering something extra
One of the best ways to gain the attention of the listeners and push them through the next steps is by offering something special. It can be a special promotion, a discount, a voucher code, something free, etc. This will surely attract more listeners to take further action and generate more leads. Furthermore, this way, you can hook them up for other services or products your business has to offer.
Artificial intelligence is a greath helper, if we teach it so. (source: unsplash.com)
How AI facilitates communication between companies and their customers
Imagine having a crucial online meeting in a couple of minutes, but your internet connection refuses to work. Stressed out, you call the customer support line, and the voice, that picks up the phone introduces itself as a digital assistant…
You start losing faith in solving the problem in time. The robot, however, quickly understands your issue and provides clear instructions on how to solve it. You don’t have to repeat your questions or push any numbers for forwarding the conversation. Everything works fine in a moment.
This example is how the company call centers and technical helpdesks might look in soon future.
Whenever you call for help, artificial intelligence is ready to answer (source: unsplash.com)
More than 80% of people spend more money in a company they had a positive customer experience with. And AI voice bots represent a significant step towards improving that experience. Companies and customers alike often fear that digital voice assistants are an obstacle to their relationship. But at the same time, they often overlook the many benefits of involving a voice bot in a contact center.
Close to the humanlike interaction
Digital voice assistant opens customers new ways of communication with the companies. It never sleeps, so it can solve various routine problems at any time. Additionally, there are no waiting times with voicebots because their call capacity is unlimited. When there is a mass internet connection outage, you will not get stuck on the line. And last but not least, communication with a voicebot is natural and enjoyable.
There is a reason why people often feel unsure about voicebots, and it is called the Interactive voice response (IVR) system. Communication with this predecessor of virtual assistants was slow and frustrating. Compared to it, voicebots excel in every possible way. They do not force you to push numbers, repeat weird structured questions, or wait on the line with an annoying melody playing in the background.
The time of Interactive voice response system is gone (source: unsplash.com)
Artificial intelligence will first ask you to describe the problem to understand its nature. Then, if it can, it will propose a solution. The digital assistant also recognizes when it reaches the conversation dead-end. Then, instead of bombarding you with more unnecessary questions, it connects you to a qualified human operator.
The huge advantage of an AI voicebot is its ability to understand natural language. When explaining the issue, you can use your own words because the assistant is trained to understand all the related phrases. “I can’t use the internet. Our router has stopped working. The wifi is not running again.” It doesn’t matter which words you use, the voicebot will understands and proceeds to additional questions.
There are even more advantages of digital voice assistants. Security is undoubtedly one of them. When someone calls bank support and requests a forgotten card pin code, human operators do not have the authority to do so. 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 condition in front of his colleagues.
Whenever we have to keep our distance, AI does not (source: unsplash.com)
In current times 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. At that moment, the voice bot, which can learn to deal with dozens of often repeated requests quite quickly, has the opportunity to shine. It manages a variety of routine problems and saves its human colleagues lots 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 people communicate their needs and desires.
Of course, artificial intelligence cannot replace human operators in every aspect of their work. 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.
