Here’s a list of things that will dominate the conversational commerce industry in 2022.
Image Credit: Polina Pirogova
A recent report states that in 2021, consumers spent $871.03 billion online with U.S. merchants, which makes it a 14.2% rise YoY from $762.68 billion in 2020. The past two years of the COVID pandemic have fostered retail digitization and AI-powered conversational agents like chatbots and virtual assistants are among the main drivers. Juniper Research expects that chatbots will save retailers $439 million annually by 2023, while retail sales via conversational channels demonstrate a 98% annual growth rate and are projected to reach $142 billion by 2024. All in all, global spending on conversational commerce is predicted to grow nearly sevenfold to about $290 billion, by 2025. We’ve put together a list of trends and drivers that will dominate the conversational commerce industry in 2022.
Stay-at-home-economy on the rise
Since the 2020 lockdown, much of our lives moved online, and new consumer patterns have been established: according to McKinsey, more than 75% of consumers who turned to online shopping will not return to pre-lockdown patterns after all restrictions are over.
In 2021, Walmart U.S. had eCommerce sales amounting to 43 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of over 70% in comparison to 2020’s figure. So, what started as a necessity forced by coronavirus persisted even after the restrictions softened. People discovered a new way to shop and now are sticking to it.
Offline and online blend together
In some ways, the pandemic has blurred the line between online and offline. During the lockdown, many consumers opted for the “buy online, pick up in-store” aka “click and collect” model, and half of those surveyed by McKinsey enjoyed it. Statistics say, “сlick and collect” sales more than doubled in 2020, and are expected to make 10% of all sales by 2025. Although right now retailers view online and offline as two independent directions, customers expect seamless integration between the two, so businesses will have to deliver.
Conversational AI automation continues
Further automation in retail will affect the areas of customer service that consume the most time and effort. When it comes to inbound customer interaction, chatbots and voice bots will handle Frequently Asked Questions on delivery, returns, order changes, as well as loyalty and reward programs. While outbound voice bots will conduct NPS surveys and notify customers about promotions and special offers.
Omnichannel customer experience
Services and support that customers used to get in stores migrated online and now exist as chatbots and virtual on-demand assistance. So, online platforms available to retailers such as websites, mobile apps, voice assistants, messengers, and social networks are becoming increasingly important.
“Chatbots are platform-independent and available across several channels,” says Kevin Cook, CPO at TrackRight, — “Many of these chatbots are presented to the service as another end user, which simplifies their deployment and integration into the platform. This maximizes reach by deploying bots on numerous platforms such as Facebook, SMS, and Twitter, where customers already have an established presence, and stimulates multi-channel engagement, which results in greater brand perception and outreach.”
Omnichannel presence makes it possible to merge all these platforms into a single system, evaluate the customer journey, and offer a seamless brand experience.
Proactive personalization
AI and machine learning technologies allow retailers to create comprehensive customer profiles and offer products and services that are based on customer preferences and anticipate their needs. Thus, customer experience changes from responsive to proactive. According to Microsoft, 63% of online shoppers are willing to share personal information if it results in more personalized offerings from brands and retailers.
“Personalization is crucial in retail. It produces the “how did they know?” effect, which increases customer loyalty,” says Alex Lartey, CBDO at Tovie AI, a London-based Conversational AI solutions and technologies provider, — “Naturally, customers will opt for companies that can take personalization to the next level.”
Integration with messengers and social networks networks
Over 40% of Statista’s respondents stated that they had spent more time on social media during the lockdown. This resulted in a dramatic increase in purchases made through this channel. According to ResearchAndMarkets, this market is expected to grow by more than 30% YoY and reach $604.5 billion by 2027. Chatbot integration with social media and messengers will foster this trend.
Voice-powered interactions
Increasing use of voice search shifts brand-to-consumer interaction to the most natural interface — the human voice. Customers will use voice search on smart speakers, smart displays, TV set-top boxes, as well as voice-powered wearables and mobile apps, meaning businesses will also need to adapt if they want their products and services to be found.
Voice shopping and video shopping
According to eMarketer, 21.6 million Americans used a smart speaker to make a purchase in 2020. The increasing adoption rate of voice-powered smart devices, along with growing ecosystems for developers and skills stores are opening up new opportunities for voice-powered e-commerce experiences and video shopping. Smart displays hold a lot of promise for online retailers, as they pair voice controls and visual channels.
AI-powered speech analytics
Recording customer interactions and analyzing them with AI technologies allow businesses to find the best communication and sales scenarios, as well as monitor the general level of employee training and motivation.
We live in an era of “now,” where everything we want needs to be given immediately. From purchase to customer service, your customer is looking for real-time communication.
According to a survey conducted by Salesforce, 80% of customers said that the company’s customer service is as important as the products/services they offer.
When Salesforce conducted a similar survey, they realized that 80% of the buyers expect immediate communication. This survey showed that people expected the companies to respond on messenger apps within the hour.
Even today, the statistics remain to be true. At least 79% of millennials want mobile responsive customer support, while 90% expect businesses to have some kind of online support.
People don’t prefer waiting in long queues or holding on to their phones till a customer service agent comes to offer them a response. They want something more real-time and practical.
Messengers are becoming the go-to for most business buyers who want to know more about the product or get some support regarding implementation.
Among the several Messenger applications currently being regarded by businesses, WhatsApp Business API is growing popular. It has opened up new business opportunities and increased the support landscape further.
It is not just another support channel but a multi-faceted and highly conversational channel that can be used for purposes including but not limited to lead generation and customer service.
In this article, we go over what is WhatsApp Business API, why should a business use it, and how is it helpful.
So first.
What is WhatsApp Business API?
It is a product offering of WhatsApp catering to businesses that need to make use of automation to interact with thousands of their customers, and they do this using this API.
Now, let’s break this down to understand it better. Say you have several agents employed with you, working round-the-clock to extend customer service and engagement. How will you manage their schedules and ensure they converse in real-time?
WhatsApp API ensures that large companies can easily cater to their pool of customers easily using the API. As a result of this API, the business can interact with all its customers with a common number whereas giving its agents the capability to view their conversations.
In return for using this service, WhatsApp would charge you for the usage. It calculates usage based on the number of sessions/interactions that occurred using the WhatsApp API.
You can plan to either send transactional messages, use it to perform live chat, or design drip campaigns to cater to several use cases. With the real-time communication this platform offers, you can enhance the capabilities of your business.
I know you must be confused about what this is and how it compares to the regular WhatsApp that we use and love.
Differences between WhatsApp, WhatsApp Business, and WhatsApp Business API
When do you need WhatsApp Business API?
Now that we have looked at the various offerings from WhatsApp, let’s take a look at when you should consider using this WhatsApp Business API.
1. Handling high volume of queries
As a mid-size or enterprise company, you might be juggling between queries about products and support. Your sales and support team are constantly trying to meet the needs.
If you want to make query handling mobile and immediate, you can use WhatsApp API. You can use chatbots to manage all the chats that occur within your WhatsApp account, thereby giving immediate assistance to all users.
Popular and widely used chatbot platforms like WotNot help you to easily build bots using its no-code bot builders so that you can build bots and optimize them based on the data of the interactions.
Additionally, you are not restricted by device, the number of users, or contacts with the WhatsApp Business API; you can send messages to as many users as you want and have as many agents operate the account simultaneously as it would be managed through a third-party platform like WotNot.
2. Your users are on WhatsApp
When you target countries where WhatsApp is the primary means of communication, you cannot shy away from using it. You have to be creative in your communication and engage customers through conversations.
The WhatsApp API offers a chance to be where you have a mine of opportunities and assists in converting them easily.
3. Catering to a global audience
When catering to audiences living in different times zones, it becomes essential that you employ agents working in shifts. It is also necessary to use a single number that acts as your service/sales contact.
WhatsApp Business API supports both purposes. When your customers need to connect with the sales team, they can click on the business number and start chatting. The agent available at that time will take over and start responding. Else, you can always build chatbots that collect the information from users enabling your sales reps.
This will make it easier for your business to keep operating and ensure you don’t lose a single lead.
4. Scaling customer service
Companies that excel at delivering positive customer experiences notice a 4–8% increase in their revenues. People look for positive experiences before supporting the business or repeating their purchases.
WhatsApp Business API will ensure you are at the helm of support and service. You can extend immediate support through automation. They can connect through the messenger, whether they want to learn about a new product launched or have troubles with the existing features.
Immediate conversations can help them take care of the issue and improve your reputation.
Benefits of WhatsApp Business API
The most important question that most businesses ask before purchasing software is why we need it. Through these benefits, we aim to help you understand the same.
1. Rich and immediate conversations
Let’s take a use case to understand this benefit. A customer is looking to purchase your newly launched product. They couldn’t find information on the integration offered by this product. They approached you with the query.
Your customer service team can immediately take on this query and start answering it. They can either share the same knowledge base article or offer the answer in the same chat.
This immediate response helped convert a lead into a customer. This is just one case. There are several use cases for immediate conversations. You can talk to the customer, tell them about your brand, help them understand the product better, and extend after-sales support through real-time messaging.
2. Extensive reach
When you check the data on how many people check emails immediately against real-time messaging, you have the answer to extensive reach.
Many people may not own an email address or frequent their emails; however, they would use messaging apps like WhatsApp, which goes to tell about the reach you are likely to get.
When you send a message on WhatsApp, there is a likelihood that they will read, show interest and even respond to the message.
3. Improves productivity
Imagine a case where you have to respond to every query coming your way. How time-consuming would that become for your business?
Despite having several agents and a plethora of resources at your disposal, you won’t see growth or profits in your business. Why?
Most of your resource time is spent solving queries that you could automate. With WhatsApp API, you can automate specific workflows and train the API to learn from past questions.
The app will respond immediately to specific queries, and the interaction would seem human-like. This way, you can free up resource time and focus on core business.
If you are in the food delivery business, you can use this tool to enhance the productivity of your service team. For example, automation can seek basic questions and know the problem. When the questions are answered, the app can decide whether to transfer to an agent or resolve it immediately.
4. Customize your campaigns
You may want to create specific campaigns for specific customer segments. The API allows you to create your templates and customize the campaigns for the customers. It helps you segment your customers and drive personalized conversations.
Say you don’t have a template that says you need to recharge your credits for the SaaS tool that the customer is using. You can create one with this API, get it approved and use it. you can add customers by including some restrictions to the template and ensure this message is sent only when they enter the particular algorithm.
5. Improve sales
When you invest in WhatsApp API, you also invest in sales growth. Business buyers look for immediate answers to some of the questions they have before purchasing. if you answer them correctly and immediately, you have managed to help them make the right decision.
For example, if there is a buyer who is confused about two different products that offer the same features. they would reach out to your sales team. if you take the opportunity to respond first, tell them why they should choose you, and help them make the decision, you have your conversion.
What can you do with WhatsApp Business API?
There is a saying that “If you’ve got APIs, you can absolutely anything you want”. And that holds true with the WhatsApp Business API.
You can perform functions like automated messaging, transactional messaging, payment collection, product showcasing, and a whole lot more. And with the updates and improvements that WhatsApp is adding to its APIs, you will more use cases.
Here are some of the most common things you can do with the WhatsApp Business API,
1. Transactional messaging
You may already be using other messaging channels like SMS and email to send acknowledgment messages, monthly statements, and a whole lot more.
The main challenges that you face with such channels i.e. open rates and engagement are what is solved greatly with the WhatsApp API. Being the world’s most popular app of choice for personal communication, you can rest assured that most of your users will be available on WhatsApp; and there will be higher chances of that user opening your message on WhatsApp than any other challenge.
Studies have shown that users generally open WhatsApp at least 10 times a day, and messages sent by businesses on WhatsApp have a ~80% open rate.
2. Running drip campaigns
Every business in the world wants to generate more business. And the only way a business can do that is by interacting with your existing pool of customers or talking to users who had once shown an interest in your business.
Products like WotNot, provide you with tools to design your drip campaign workflow wherein you reach out to a segment of contacts with a specific message.
Some popular use-cases of companies using this method are feedback collection, new offers, cart abandonment recovery, lead enrichment.
3. Automate replies with chatbots
If you have used WhatsApp, you know how easy it is to get swamped with tons of messages from your loved ones and groups that you are a part of.
Imagine the scale of this problem with large businesses. You have hundreds and thousands of queries coming in each day about product inquiries or support queries.
Chatbots coupled with the WhatsApp Business API enable you to automate lead enrichment, feedback collection, product showcasing, and answering of frequently asked queries. Furthermore, if a query absolutely requires the involvement of a human agent, products like WotNot provide features like Live Chat to transfer the conversation from the bot to an agent.
The Future of WhatsApp Business API
There are approximately 2 Billion WhatsApp users in the world, and as more people get access to the internet, this number is bound to increase. Especially in some countries like India, the UAE where a majority of the population uses this app for their day-to-day communication among family and for business purposes.
As a result, businesses will find it more lucrative to use WhatsApp as their primary channel to promote their business offerings and help users with any queries that they may have around the clock.
If you are not using the WhatsApp Business API for your business, get an overview of how it can help your business grow with a demo.
Have you ever wanted to skip ahead and respond to a voice assistant or voice IVR before the bot was finished speaking?
Barge-in is the ability for a user to interrupt a voice system, usually through speech, and give it a command or response. This can be useful in many scenarios, such as when a user wants to quickly ask a question or give a direction without having to wait for the system to complete playing back a lengthy prompt (like an IVR menu).
Barge-in can be a helpful feature, but it is a double-edged sword and can also be frustrating if a user accidentally interrupts a conversational thread that is already in flight. To avoid this, many systems disable barge-in by default or to set it to only work when a specific keyword is used.
If you’re considering using barge-in for your next project, be sure to test it with users to ensure that it works well for your specific use case.
How does barge-in work?
To use barge-in, the user simply speaks while the Voice Assistant or Voice IVR is speaking. The system will then stop speaking and process the user’s input and respond accordingly. You’re probably already familiar with barging-in in your day to day communications with other humans.
Check out Intel’s patent for the nitty gritty on start-of-speech, end-of-speech detection and duration are used.
What are the benefits of barge-in?
There are several benefits of barge-in, including allowing customers to interrupt automated systems and to request speak to a human agent, reducing wait times, and improving customer satisfaction KPIs. Additionally, barge-in can help to reduce costs associated with automated systems by reducing the amount of time phone lines are tied up.
How can barge-in be used in Voice IVR?
Barge-in is an advanced Voice IVR feature that allows callers to interrupt the automated system. This is useful for callers who may want to fast track their navigation in an IVR menu, or who have an urgent issue that needs to be addressed immediately.
Have you used a Voice IVR and expected you could barge-in? Well, here’s the documentation to enable barge-in on Google Dialogflow to ensure you’re not building “one of those dumb bots”.
Confusingly with Amazon Lex barge-in is enabled by default, but with Amazon Lex (Classic) barge-in is disabled by default! Read the docs here.
What are the best practices for using barge-in in Voice IVR?
Barge-in is a great way to make your Voice IVR more user-friendly and efficient. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when using barge-in:
Use barge-in sparingly. Barge-in should only be used when it will truly improve the user experience as with all speech recognition it is not 100% accurate.
Make sure barge-in is properly configured. Barge-in should be properly configured to recognize the user’s voice and respond accordingly. If barge-in is not configured properly, it can cause problems for users.
Test, test, test! As with any IVR interaction, it’s important to test barge-in functionality before going live to ensure a positive caller experience.
How to use Barge-in to improve the customer experience
When it comes to customer experience, barge-in can be a powerful tool. By allowing customers to interrupt an ongoing interaction, barge-in can provide a more natural and efficient experience. There are several benefits of using barge-in for customer experience.
First, it can help to reduce wait times by allowing the customer to skip forward in conversational areas of familiarity.
Second, barge-in can help to improve the accuracy of customer interactions by allowing the customer to correct the system if it makes a mistake when coupled with #ImplicitConfirmations.
Third, barge-in can create a more efficient customer experience by reducing the need for customers to repeat themselves.
Barge-in can also help to create a more personal customer experience. By allowing customers to interrupt, barge-in can help to create a more conversational interaction. Natural human conversations often see a response just as the initial speaker is finishing their question. This can help to build rapport and trust between the customer and the company.
Overall, barge-in can be a beneficial tool for customer experience. By reducing time spent, improving accuracy, and creating a more efficient and personal experience, barge-in can help companies to better serve their customers.
One of the biggest risks is that, if a system is not designed to handle barge-in properly, it may cause errors. For example, if a system is expecting a user to input data in a certain order, but a user barges in and gives a response out of order, it may leave the system in a confused state and result in a poor customer experience.
Background noise can trigger trigger barge-in. For example, if a system is designed to allow barge-in, any background noise can be mis recognised as user input and cause the system to take the user down an unexpected path.
Inconsistent use of barge-in can confuse users. For example, if a voice IVR allows customers to barge-in at the menu, users might also expect when providing information for transactions (API fulfillments)
If you are considering using barge-in, it is important to weigh the risks and benefits carefully. In some cases, the risks may be worth it, but in others, they may not.
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 and hit follow for more tips.
As an EdTech company, Noodle Factory is a big proponent of AI in education. We’ve previously discussed how AI can change learning, onboarding, and even tutoring.
Today, we’re going back to the basics to give you a recap on what AI in education is, why it should or shouldn’t be used, and how you can use it.
Don’t get me wrong, using AI as a part of your content creation process can be very helpful, and it can help with providing value to your readers and viewers. However, if you use it carelessly, it can be harmful to your career as a content creator.
As the director of product management at Munch, I have access to a vast amount of data about content creation. I also took part in hundreds of interviews with content creators of all kinds. I noticed that many creators started using AI tools as a part of their creation process. I see great threats hiding in this trend.
In a way, using AI to create content is a deception on your followers and your most loyal audience. For some reason, readers and viewers decide to receive information from you, and not from another person. You are not the only person that is making videos or writing blog posts about a certain subject. And trust me, your information about NFT and web 3.0 (or any other hot topic you are talkingwriting about) is not that unique.
“You might say that your scent, taste, and feel are embedded in the content you create, whether you are aware of that or not…”
Yet, with each word you write or each sentence you say, you provide the audience with a part of yourself. I call it the “own voice” element. You use your words, your way of saying things, your little jokes, and your point of view. You might say that your scent, taste, and feel are embedded in the content you create, whether you are aware of that or not. That is the “why” for choosing you over another content creator that is talking about the exact same thing. For that reason, posting AI-created may be interpreted as a breach of authenticity that might lead to the abandonment of your viewers and readers.
Creation vs. Repurposing
It is crucial to fully understand the distinction between content creation and content repurposing to see the danger in using AI for content creation.
Content creation
A term that means to make something out of nothing. It involves finding a topic to focus on for that specific creation, planning it, producing it, and at the very end of the creation process you get a content piece — A “PILLAR PIECE”. Generally speaking, Pillar pieces are created for a specific crowd and a specific distribution platform. For example, you are making an explainer video about Etherium for unprofessional crypto traders and intend to post it on Youtube. Using other sources for data or inspiration is perfectly fine, but it must be created with originality to be called content creation.
The new wave of AI-powered copywriting and AI video generating tools is highly appealing to creators. We’ve all experienced the “blank page” sensation and the frustration it causes, so it’s terrific to have something to help us get started. You must be thrilled about using a machine to do your work and make article publishing a breeze. You might be tempted to type a sentence into an AI copywriter and have it generate a complete piece for you. Well, I say, don’t do it! You can lose your audience as a result.
Content repurposing
This term refers to the process of leveraging the pillar piece you created. The goals could be approaching different crowds, gaining followers on more platforms, or increasing traffic to the pillar piece’s web page. Repurposing content may involve editing a pillar piece to make it longer or shorter, converting its format from video to text, adjusting it to fit more distribution platforms, creating snippets from it, or gathering many pillar pieces to create a newsletter.
In contrast to content creation, there seems to be no danger in using AI for content repurposing if done correctly. The key thing to remember is to keep the content authentic and to reflect the creator’s own voice. Among many other uses, you can use AI to turn a video into a blog post or a blog post into social media posts.
AI has the potential to be a blessing to content creators. It can assist you in overcoming a variety of obstacles and barriers. You can use it to reach out to new viewers or readers. But keep in mind that your audience isn’t just looking for information; they’re also picking the vessel through which they’ll get it. Using AI to completely create content for you, or instead of you, can be pretty harmful. Your relationship with them may eventually fall apart because no one wants to be deceived.
Who doesn’t want to have more time and work less? If you’re going to live a whole life and find time not only for work but also for recreation, hobbies, and travel, you are interested in the basics of time management. So have I.
Why build time management?
Everyone has a different purpose for organizing processes in time. In general, it is necessary to choose a convenient method of time management to
effectively allocate time for personal and work, for self-education and hobbies, for family and friends,
separate important tasks from secondary ones,
to think about your life goals and set priorities,
to take time and learn to plan the day, week, month, or year,
not procrastinate,
motivate yourself and achieve your goals.
What are the methods of time management?
There are many methods of time management. They help me manage time better distribute it between important and unimportant tasks.
I tried different techniques until I came up with my system and picked up the tools to fit it. So please familiarize yourself with other methods, but take the best of them for yourself.
The bottom line: work for 90 minutes, then 30 minutes to rest. Each complete cycle takes two hours. The first cycles should be set aside for the most critical and urgent matters, the next — for more straightforward or less complex tasks.
You can try changing the time interval: 52 minutes for work and 17 for rest.
This is a Japanese scheme with which you can visualize the work process. It was used at Toyota.
The idea is to draw a table with three columns: “To be done”, “In progress”, “Done”. All the planned activities are entered into the table, and during the day, crossed out of one column and transferred to the next. A plus of the method is visibility.
The app summarises how much time it will take to complete tasks for the day and moves them to the next if the time limit is exceeded. Conveniently, there is integration with the calendar.
I use it as a reminder system for small and minor tasks so that I always have them in front of me.
The thing is, according to a study of scientists from Harvard University, a person can keep no more than seven tasks in his head at a time. And I’d rather concentrate on something more important than on the small routine tasks (call a colleague, answer a message, translate a document, etc.). By the way, if a task takes less than 2 minutes, I try to get it done right away, rather than entering it into Todoist.
The service helps minimize the time I spend editing emails, messages, and posts.
Notion for organizing your life and creating a personal knowledge base
This service for creating notes and documents, to-do lists, databases, tables, knowledge bases deserves a separate post. For now, I’ll just focus on the fact that it helps me organize my life. I also actively use it to collect knowledge and information for projects, travel, etc.
My favourite email service works under the “100 milliseconds” rule. It allows me to process all incoming emails very quickly. I’m also impressed with the clever hotkey email management system.
Slack has a treasure of bots and apps, and integrations, that can be used to make daily efforts in the workplace easier.
Here are some essential Slack apps that you should install right now. We believe these apps will help you and your teams.
1. Google Drive
Use Google Drive within Slack to create new Google Docs, Slides, Sheets files, import an existing file from Google Drive into a channel or direct message and search directly within Google Drive files shared within Slack.
2. Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts lets you communicate with your team via instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls. This integration allows you to easily start a Hangout with the members of a channel. To start a Hangout, enter /hangout in any channel.
3. Asana
Asana is the easiest way for teams to coordinate and manage their work. With Asana for Slack, you can turn your conversations into action and create new tasks in Asana — all without leaving Slack.
4. Mailchimp
Mailchimp and Slack integration will allow you to receive updates when people subscribe and unsubscribe from your audience and see the sent status of a campaign.
5. Google Calendar
From automatically updating your Slack status to getting up-to-the-minute reminders, keep your calendar top of mind without leaving Slack. Respond to invites, get a heads up before meetings start, and automatically set your status to show when you’re busy.
6. Trello
Link your Trello and Slack teams to harness the power of productivity with the Trello app for Slack, and create a seamless and collaborative workflow between your favorite apps. Add new Trello cards to boards directly from Slack without needing to hop through the app-switching hoop.
7. Slack for Gmail
Send emails into Slack to discuss them with your teammates. The Slack Add-On for Gmail helps you move conversations along by bringing context from an email into a Slack channel or direct message. You can add a message and include attachments along with the email as well.
8. Zoom
Start Zoom Meetings and make Zoom Phone calls with flawless video, crystal clear audio, and instant screen sharing from any Slack channel, private group, or direct message using the /zoom slash command. You can also play virtual games with your team over Zoom.
9. Google Analytics Insights
Customizable reports with your key data. Realtime alerting when your data changes. All in Slack. This app helps you to get sent your key metrics in daily & weekly reports so you can see how your sites are performing at a glance.
10. Canva
Instantly publish your designs to Slack and collaborate with your team real-time to increase productivity. Canva integrates with Slack so you can automatically send designs directly to your Slack channel(s).
11. Hubspot for Slack
With live chat, team email, and an easy-to-use chatbot builder, HubSpot gives you the messaging tools and context to have personalized conversations with prospects and customers at scale.
12. Dropbox
Connect to the Dropbox and Slack integration and begin to — Share Dropbox content to Slack channels or indirect messages, right from Dropbox, and see your Dropbox file previews right within your Slack conversations.
13. GitHub
Bring your code to the conversations you care about with the GitHub and Slack apps. With two of your most important workspaces connected, you’ll get updates about what’s happening on GitHub — without leaving Slack.
Use /github subscribe [owner/repo] in Slack to start receiving updates about that project.
Facial Recognition In Retail — Digital Innovation — Tech Journal
The covid-19 implications coupled with customer expectations have raised the need to go digital. As a result, retail stores have become experience centers than just store outlets in the digital transformation era. To provide an engaging customer experience and boost the marketing strategy, facial recognition has brought a whole new level of advancement in AI technologies.
And don’t you find it fascinating if shoppers pay the bill at check-out by just representing a face, not any card or wallet? Facial recognition allows retailers to analyze shoppers’ moods and preferences based on their past purchases. Want To keep pace with digital transformation, then it’s the right time to rethink technology adoption? Let’s dig into this blog and learn how facial recognition helps retail boost sales like never before.
How Does Facial Recognition Dataset Helps Retail Industry?
From attracting customers to boosting revenue, in-store retail faces a more significant challenge. Something all customers are looking for is a convenient shopping experience. And in order to accomplish the same, retail stores must have access to datasets that they can’t get from the basic information of customer accounts. Facial recognition is the missing link between retail and greater customer experience. Leveraging facial recognition enables the retail industry to open new avenues in digital transformation.
Let’s look into how facial recognition helps the retail industry impact customer experience.
1. Self-Checkout With Facial Recognition
American express global customer support study stated that “Around 30% of customers said they consider switching companies after a single instance of poor service. Unfortunately, multiple payment methods such as cash, cards, and digital wallet require multiple POS terminal setups and higher manual intervention. At this juncture, facial recognition services are a convenient and faster solution to eliminate the limitations.
Facial recognition services enable shoppers in the retail industry to quickly pay for their shopping by presenting their faces on tablet-like devices and kiosks. Facial recognition fast-tracks the payment checkout in a three-step process-
Scan the face on the digital tablet or at kiosks after verifying the purchase item list
Identify the looks from the user database by using AI and Machine Learning (ML)
Authentication of the face and generating payment and user details to approve
2. Provide Tailored Customer Assistance In-Store
As per a customer survey, 91% of unhappy customers who are non-complainers simply leave. Facial recognition enables the retail industry to obtain far more information than the basic one. For instance, facial recognition can record users’ emotional qualities like how long they explored a specific product or how long a user explored the particular shop in their retail store. Using sentimental analysis can also track whether the user is pleased, dissatisfied, or confused and determine their satisfaction during checkout. This deep learning mechanism helps retailers employ the data to improve store displays and promotions and identify flaws that disappoint users.
3. Personalized Customer Service
To offer a personalized customer experience, you must have the data to identify shoppers based on their demographics and choices. Facial recognition plays a crucial role in identifying shoppers’ information such as gender, age, location, etc. With Machine Learning (ML) capabilities, facial recognition enables retailers to offer various digital recommendations based on past purchases. That’s how retailers can easily send push notifications directly to customers with their preferred choices.
4. Theft And Shoplifting Prevention
Using facial recognition is an excellent way for the retail industry to discover shoplifters from the stores in real-time. It identifies the previous offender and matches it with the database to notify the security team. Facial recognition dataset-
Capture the facial image and extract features
Extract features, convert image into grayscale, and crop face
Convert the photo into a template and search in the database
Compare the template database and notify fraud
5. Workforce Productivity
Having facial recognition in retail is a helping hand to employees as well. With facial recognition services, the retail industry keeps a track record of employee working hours, provides security and data access during working and checkout hours, and restricts unauthenticated access in the store. In addition, facial recognition enables employees to monitor real-time interactions and record conversations to improve the business process.
How Does Data Collection Enterprise Help Build Facial Recognition Model?
Data collection is the foundation stone for building a facial recognition model. Since facial biometrics is different from person to person, the facial recognition dataset must be adaptable to reading, identifying, and recognizing every face. And to make this data collection enterprise can be a great help. Data collection enterprises help the retail industry by collecting photos of several people from various parts of the world and assisting in creating a heterogeneous database of their own. With a database in hand, the retail industry can identify and authenticate faces amidst a large crowd present in front of them.
Final Thoughts
Shopping with augmented reality to provide virtual chats, the retail industry has been adaptable to innovative technologies in the past. And facial recognition is a revolutionary step in maintaining an edge over competitors and creating a benchmark in their business process. With an extensive collection of facial recognition datasets and optimized AI models, retailers can revolutionize and standardize customer self-service throughout the organization.
Author Bio
Vatsal Ghiya is a serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in healthcare AI software and services. He is the CEO and co-founder of Shaip, which enables the on-demand scaling of our platform, processes, and people for companies with the most demanding machine learning and artificial intelligence initiatives.
Chatbots are not just the helpdesk assistants of the future, they are the helpdesks of the future.
There, we said it.
As a company that makes chatbots and has access to a tonne of data that repeatedly shows how chatbots are more effective than your typical customer service agent, we at Kommunicate believe that there will be only one channel of communication between you and your customers in the future — chatbots.
1.4 billion people on the planet currently use chatbots on a regular basis, according to this report by Acquire. That’s close to twice the population of Europe.
As more and more millennials become paying customers who prefer to talk to a computer rather than a real human being, adding a chatbot to your website is not just common sense, it is a matter of survival.
But what if you already have a chatbot involved, which is taking care of all those customer conversations, doing a bit of lead generation for you, handling customer support, and even helping out the sales team. You must have got it all figured out and would now just have to sit back, sip iced tea (or coffee, if you prefer) and watch your business grow, right?
Wrong.
Chatbot analytics is as important as adding a chatbot to your website. Having a feedback loop helps you find areas of improvement for your chatbot, which can only lead to greater business.
In this blog post, we are going to examine:
Why it’s important to measure chatbot performance
Top metrics you should monitor
Additional resources to learn more about chatbot metrics
Why it’s important to measure chatbot performance
Focus on the right metrics: Implementing chatbots to your website is just step 1 of ensuring that none of your customers falls through the cracks. Many times, businesses do not get the desired results from chatbots because they have been optimised for the wrong metrics. Measuring chatbot analytics helps us to track the most important KPIs and make decisions that are data-driven.
Gauging how effective is your chatbot: If you have the right performance indicators in place, you can measure how effective it is to have a chatbot on your website. Answering a few basic questions like, “How helpful are chatbots in solving my customer queries?” or “ Are the chatbots directing my customers to drive profitable actions?” will go a long way in gauging the effectiveness of your chatbot.
Understanding customer journey: To be data-driven, you need to visualise certain aspects of your customer journey on your website, such as user paths, exit points etc. A good chatbot solution comes bundled with a chatbot analytics dashboard that helps you map all these details, helping you understand the customer journey that much better.
Measure ROI on business: Chatbots have a real impact on business, and chatbot analytics provides information such as the total number of leads generated, total tickets resolved, average time spent per conversation etc. With these metrics in hand, you can take calculated business decisions such as how much additional investment is required on your website and in which areas.
Top Metrics to Measure Chatbot performance
We have classified the metrics that you need to track into 4 broad categories, and are listing them out here in the order of least important to most. Here are the top 10 metrics, in our view, which you need to keep track of to measure how effective your chatbot is.
Goal Completion Rate
Conversation Starter Messages
CSAT Scores
Bot intent analytics
Bot Messages
New Users
Total Users
Active Users
Engaged Users
Bounce Rate
Fallback Rate
Conversation Duration
Goal Completion Rate: GCR is on the top of our list because it successfully measures how effective your chatbot actually is, by capturing the percentage of user interactions that have been successful over the chatbot. Your bot essentially exists to answer a customer query, and this metric tells you how effectively your bot processes input and gives a response that answers that customer query satisfactorily. GCR is dependent on how good your Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence Capabilities are.
Conversation Starter Messages: Interactions between the bot and the customer is a two-way street, and the number of times the bot initiates the conversation forms the basis for this next metric. Companies need to initiate conversations with customers so that they stay on the website longer, so in a way, conversation starter messages help measure the organic reach of your platform. Be careful to not sound too pushy in your conversation starter messages though, they may scare away your potential customers. Sound natural, and be warm.
CSAT scores: Customer satisfaction scores are an important metric to measure since all businesses want happy customers who will keep coming back. To measure customer satisfaction with your chatbot, all you have to do is ask the customer to leave a “like” or a “thumbs down”, or leave a score out of 10, as we do here at Kommunicate.
As you can see, Kommunicate’s chatbot “Eve” is right there at the top with the human agents when it comes to CSAT scores, meaning the bot is effective and people actually like interacting with it. But since the agents still beat Eve to the top position, there is a lot of scope for improvement. Another way of measuring the effectiveness of your chatbot is by measuring the CSAT scores before and after the bot was introduced onto your website. If the CSAT scores show a dip, it means that probably the chatbot was not as effective as you wanted it to be and you might want to reconsider having one on your website.
4. Bot Intent Analytics: Bot Intent Analytics helps your developers assess how their messages are mapped to specific intent categories. It is a measure of how “smart” your bot currently is and how it can be improved.
As you can see, the Welcome intent was triggered the maximum number of times, which means most of the visitors to your chatbot started their question with a “Hi” or “Hello” and the bot responded accordingly.
5. Bot Messages: The total number of messages sent by the bot during the course of a conversation forms the basis of this next metric. This metric measures the length of the conversation between the customer and the bot, and we generally want this number to be high. An important caveat to note, we don’t want this metric to be high for the wrong reasons, like, for instance, if the bot gives the same answer over and over again to a query it doesn’t understand.
6. New Users: This is an important metric to measure, especially if you have just deployed a chatbot onto your website. The number of new users that your chatbot has helps you gauge how popular your chatbot really is, which will then drive your business decisions on making the chatbot handle more things. As with any new fancy technological advancement, customers’ interest is bound to decrease over time in your chatbot, and if you are able to attract a good pool of new users to your chatbot, you can keep the momentum going.
7. Total Users: As the name suggests, this metric tells you the total number of users who are interacting with your chatbot. This is an important metric to track since it allows you to measure the impact of your chatbot and its overall success. The total users also give an indication of the amount of data that the chatbot is exposed to, and you can use this information to calculate the market size.
8. Active Users: Active users are those who have read the messages from your chatbot in a given time frame. This is an important metric to track because, given the number of your active users, you can easily get an idea of how many potential customers you have for your product or service. This in turn lets you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and you can now invest resources where they are actually required. Note that with Active users, Engagement is not guaranteed, and the metric only shows how many people have seen the content on your chatbot.
9. Engaged Users: Unlike Active USers, Engaged users measures how many people actually send back messages to the chatbot, once your bot has initiated the conversation. This is an important metric to track, since it can give you access to conversation statistics, telling you exactly how effective your chatbot is. If you have set up a chatbot to answer FAQs or simple billing questions, you want this number to be higher.
10. Bounce Rate: This is an important metric to track, not just to measure the effectiveness of your chatbot, but to measure how well your website is performing as a whole. The bounce rate represents how many people are visiting your website, and leaving without interacting with your chatbot. We want to keep this number as low as possible since there is no point in making your bot smart and able to answer all those complicated queries if no one is interacting with it. There are a wide variety of reasons why bounce rates are high, including poor UX, website design, longer loading times etc.
11. Fallback rate: A FallBack response is one in which the bot does not understand the query from a user and gives a canned response that has been set by the bot designer. The rate of occurrence of this Fallback response is called the Fallback Rate and to effectively design a chatbot, you should know the user messages that trigger these fallbacks. If the chatbot is placed wrongly, then the FBR is bound to go up, or it could also be a fault in the NLP engine if the bot is not able to understand what the user is looking for.
12. Conversation Duration: The last factor on our list is a bit tricky to quantify since there are 2 sides to this coin. The conversation duration between your chatbot and the user needs to be just right, neither too long nor too short. If the conversation duration is too long, it means the user is having a tough time finding what they are looking for, and will most likely navigate away from the website. If the conversation duration is too short, it means the bot has effectively failed to engage the user, and they have moved out of the website without staying too long. Either way, it is very important that you keep a close eye on the conversation duration since it will help you make subtle changes to your chatbot design and keep your customers engaged on your website.
Parting words:
Having close to half a decade’s worth of experience building chatbots, we at Kommunicate have access to chatbot data that is sure to make the analyst in your team go “Ooohhh.”.
By the end of the Chatbot Conference, you will know what use cases are best for Conversational AI, what tools and resources you need to organize your project, how to design a Conversation Agent, and how to develop one.
By the end of the Conference, you will have an MVP Bot that can take orders, and answer questions and which you can share with your team or implement in your business.
