Technological innovations are necessary to cope up with the customer demands. Customers nowadays use multiple channels to access the services from a business. Thus, they expect multiple channel customer service from companies. "Conversational AI is a programmatic and intelligent way of offering conversational experience to mimic conversations with real people, through digital and telecommunications technologies." In the midst of new emerging technologies, AI powered solutions have created a wave of chat enabled customer service. have become an underlying aspect of any industry that plays a significant role in delivering personalized services. AI-based solutions Conversational artificial intelligence is being used by businesses to facilitate communication between computers and humans. It has significantly changed the way industries interact with the customers, that is, in a frictionless and convenient manner. According to a , the Conversational AI is estimated to grow into a $15.7 billion market by 2024. report Its power can be measured by its ability to carry out personalized interactions with a large number of individual customers. Before moving ahead, let us understand what Conversational AI is. Defining Conversational AI Conversational AI refers to the set of technologies behind automated messaging and speech-enabled applications that offer human like interactions between computers and humans. The conversational AI brings together eight technology components – • Natural language processing It is the ability to read or parse human language text. • Intent recognition It is the ability to understand the intent of the user; that is what he is expecting even if phrased unexpectedly. It is also important to differentiate between good and bad user intent. • Voice optimized responses It is the ability to engage in a human like conversation with the use of emotions to deliver an optimized experience. • Dynamic text to speech It converts text to speech in natural voice and accent, allows for the emphasis of capital letters and tonal inflection. • Entity recognition Understand that some text refers to informative abstract categories (entities) such as "February 2" = Date - Necessary for more complex commands and analysis. • Machine learning Learn how to respond to users by analyzing human-agent conversations. • Fulfillment The ability to pull data from web services or databases using APIs, run conditions, and inform the Dialog Manager. • Contextual awareness Ability to follow conversation history, translate, recall, and memorize information over conversations - necessary for natural, human like back and forth communication. Many businesses are incentivized to continuously deliver excellent customer experience in order to keep customers happy. Therefore, businesses are increasingly plugging conversational AI into their customer support for faster customer on boarding, better retention rates, and shorter claims cycle. Best Customer Services Use Cases: Engagement The number one use case for conversational AI is customer engagement. Companies can achieve frictionless customer interactions by deploying chatbots and virtual assistants to solve customer queries. According to , customer engagement represents a 23% premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth. Gallup Understanding Conversations Conversational AI's second-best utility is understanding conversations. At a narrative level, businesses get to know their customers through the insights they derive from thousands of messages. While at the magnitude level, AI-enhanced solutions can convert hundreds of calls to text, parse through thousands of emails, and route them to the right departments. How Are Customers And Businesses Reaping The Benefits Of Conversational AI? Conversational AI makes it easy for the customers to find information about products and services and make a purchase anytime, anywhere. It also facilitates the purchasing process by offering customers personalized products and recommendations according to their buying history. 1) Improve Customer Acquisition can even be scaled up and down to serve new customers in a cost-efficient way. AI-powered chatbots For Example, the cosmetic giant Sephora uses Facebook messenger bots to book appointments to reserve a makeover at Sephora stores. The , Sephora reservation assistant Converts natural language The bot has seen an 11% higher conversion rate versus any other channel for booking in-store makeover appointments. Image Credit: Google 2) Increase Personalization Delivering personalized customer service is more than just addressing the customer by their names. Instead, it is a way to capture customers’ attention and create a relevant experience for the customers’ journey. Businesses practice tailor messaging their customers at an individual level based on their interests, purchasing behavior, and past responses. AI-enhanced solutions like virtual assistants and can be used for mass personalization. These AI elements harness a massive amount of data from data sources and uncover the patterns in human behavior. chatbots For instance, the online fitness firm Verve Health's helps users to set individual fitness goals. Ziggy guides the users to customize goal-setting process and comes up with a measurable fitness goal. fitness bot Ziggy Image Credit:Google 3) Reduce Cost and Increase the Efficiency Conversational AI-enabled channels allow a reduction in costs for the customer interaction channels. The algorithms in AI assistants are trained organically, which enables cost-efficient improvement continuously. Also, the AI assistants increase the efficiency of the sales teams by freeing up human power that can be used for other significant tasks. The conversational AI assistants are available to the customers at any time of the day. This feature reduces the need for human resources and the operating costs significantly. Since conversational AI performs the regular customer interactions, this provides the opportunity to the agents to sell more products and services. Leveraging it to power customer conversations can enable sales by making the whole process of buying contextual, personalized, and simpler. 4) Help Drive Sales To leverage conversational AI to improve sales performance, businesses must build a digital sales ecosystem. In such an ecosystem, the on its own and also enables the sales specialists to focus more on value-added work. conversational AI drives interactions The Key Takeaway An overwhelming number of enterprises have already adopted conversational AI. One of the primary reasons is the large number of benefits that this technology offers businesses, which ultimately yields increased efficiency, cost savings, and improved ROI. Also, the customers have embraced AI-enhanced solutions as they are reliable, easy to talk, and stay available for 24*7. Conversational AI will undoubtedly bring a lot of improvements and advancements in the industry. Industry leaders should consider incorporating more technologies that leverage conversational AI within their business strategies to stay competitive and provide an exceptional customer experience.

Facebook

Google

Read My Stories

Too Long; Didn't Read

Developers: Build Less. Deliver More. [Learn how]	

Understanding Conversational AI: As Chat Enabled Customer Service

Too Long; Didn't Read

People Mentioned

Companies Mentioned

Kritagya Pandey

About Author

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN...

Understanding Conversational AI: As Chat Enabled Customer Service

Too Long; Didn't Read

People Mentioned

Companies Mentioned

Kritagya Pandey

About Author

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN...

RELATED STORIES