If you’re tracking the hype, you may be sick of hearing how AI will eat the world. And maybe it will eventually!
From writing a novel to deeply unsettling conversations, the use cases for ChatGPT and related AI tools are evolving by the day. Many experts are predicting a “tipping point” in the near future, similar to the emergence of the internet, making it an exciting yet unsettling time for businesses.
If you’ve tuned out the ChatGPT buzz so far, you can catch up on the first frenetic months of the AI arms race in this Time cover story, which offers a good summary including the $10B investment from Microsoft, and Google’s response.
As the world continues to search for the most effective ways to leverage these emerging AI advancements, there are already many straightforward and high-impact ways to integrate conversational AI into your business today, and it’s not as daunting as you may think!
Below we look at 6 of the most popular strategies that we see businesses use when it comes to incorporating conversational AI into their everyday operations.
Teaching old bots new tricks
Going around in circles to hear, “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that” or “I’m still learning”, we’ve all come across those chatbots that make us want to scream! Yes, they may have earned their keep by automating and streamlining many processes – especially during the pandemic ecommerce boom – but in reality, they failed to live up to the hype.
Beyond customer service, major telcos, banks and digital-first startups have used AI as a competitive advantage for years across contract management, forecasting, recommendations and optimising supply chains. But smaller businesses have been slower to embrace it.
The explosion of the scarily smart ChatGPT has captured the world’s attention. Businesses and consumers are ready to give conversational AI another crack.
Technology and cost is no longer a barrier
Alongside improving algorithms, the tools used to build bots have become faster, easier and cheaper than ever before. Not to say it’s effortless, but the barrier to entry is lowered to the point where the focus is now primarily on identifying the right use case where conversational AI can streamline the process.
AI doesn’t have to be an overwhelming all-or-nothing proposition. We often have discussions with clients along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be great if we could automate X?”
Of the 10 items on the list, several are hindered by issues related to data integration or outdated systems, but there are always a handful that can be tackled with relative ease. Start with those and gradually build on this over time.
Overwhelmed by AI? Here are 6 simple ways to get started
A personal assistant for agents
Put conversational AI to work behind the scenes to support your staff. It can monitor customer interactions in real-time, retrieve relevant content, and present it to agents to enhance conversations with customers. AI can even detect the emotional disposition of a customer during a call. This can be used to improve handling times, first call resolution, customer satisfaction and employee turnover. Over time, assistance bots can also learn from past interactions, identifying patterns in order to provide more accurate and effective answers.
Intelligent triage
Well trained bots can be used to identify online or phone enquiries, collect data and qualify customer needs before directing them to the best department, digital channel or agent. For example, if a customer has lost their credit card and needs to block it, an AI bot can direct them to the online form or an agent with the relevant information pre-filled. This offers a much faster resolution time for the customer, and also provides a goldmine of data that the business can use to better understand what customers are trying to accomplish and which topics can be automated with a bot.
Customer follow up summaries and actions
Streamline after-call work by automatically tagging, taking notes and recording key information after each customer interaction – a task which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. AI can simplify this process by automatically summarising key themes and identifying agreed actions, reducing the amount of manual work required and allowing agents to focus on providing quality customer service.
Staff training and onboarding
By training AI bots using your existing onboarding materials, data and product information, they can start to assist new staff in real time by filling in gaps in product knowledge or processes. Finetune the bot’s performance by first deploying it to a subset of qualified agents who can provide feedback, improving the accuracy of recommendations. This is particularly useful in contact centres and customer service where turnover rates are high and employees may lack deep business knowledge.
Consistent omnichannel management
Businesses are increasingly urging customers to adopt digital channels, but there is an issue with staffing these channels as well as blindly directing customers to them without guidance. AI can help with both of these issues. By collecting data through AI, businesses determine which requests are best resolved online and direct the user to the exact location via SMS or mobile notification. It is also now fast and affordable to migrate an existing bot to a new platform, so you can have a consistent experience across websites, mobile apps and social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger – with centralised staffing across them all.
Using bots to build better bots
Not only has bot development technology come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, but so too have the tools used to train your bot. Innovations like ChatGPT can help you build more intelligent bots faster by generating the hundreds of different ways people might ask common questions of your business. This way, you can direct customers to the best possible answer regardless of their question. In short, you can now achieve greater speed while still retaining control over your bot’s content.
Progress over perfection
The holy grail of automating everything and achieving complete end-to-end self service is still limited by siloed legacy systems and disconnected data. However, conversational AI can still be leveraged to solve specific business problems and provide immediate business benefits right now.
If you’d like to chat about chatbots or converse about conversational AI, the team at Nexon would be happy to share examples and insights on where and how to get started.
Dave Flanagan is Head of Digital & Conversational AI at Nexon Asia Pacific. For a no-obligation discussion about your requirements, contact Nexon today.
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