menu
Digital Transformation-IT Consulting-Techigai
Digital Transformation-IT Consulting-Techigai
Techigai is a global IT services and consulting company that accelerates digital transformation journeys across industries through custom software engineering, cloud enablement, data analytics, AI-driven automation, and more.

Conversational AI in Customer Service: Why Your Business Needs It?

In a world where customers are increasingly expecting near-instant gratification, the trick to keeping the customer happy is to be always available to them and being highly responsive to their online interactions. By helping significantly reduce costs and priceless minutes off each interaction, conversational AI solutions have become an ideal solution for customer-service focused businesses. How can it help yours? Read on.

CONVERSATIONAL AI

 

CHATBOTS

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

 

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Conversational AI - Chatbots - Techigai

A business is all about satisfied customers. Consumers today are tech-savvy and know how technology can make everything accessible faster. So they expect instant resolution to their  concerns. This is why relying only on human agents or legacy technology solutions for customer service processes is no longer going to cut it. 

Conversational AI is paving a new way for faster and more effective customer communication for businesses across industries. Unlike a traditional rule-based chatbot that offers the same set of responses based on keyword-based scripts, conversational AI delivers answers by relying on customer intent using natural language processing, and the best part is that it gets smarter and better with each interaction using machine learning.

WHAT IS CONVERSATIONAL AI?

It enables machine-to-human interactions through virtual assistants, chat and voice bots using NLP, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and Machine Learning (ML) technologies.

Your customers appreciate your responsiveness and availability. However, ensuring round the clock support can be an operational nightmare and expensive. Although rule-based chatbots do help to an extent but given their limited scope of interaction, they cannot cover a considerable breadth of user queries. Even with bot deployment and swift responses, 90% of users reported poor customer service, especially during the last two years (amid the pandemic), according to a survey conducted by Replicant.

Conversational AI addresses this challenge by taking away the dowdiness of bots. In a way, It empowers machine-to-customer interactions by deciphering consumer intent, and delivering better resolutions, thereby enhancing customer experiences with the brand.  

Conversational AI chatbots and voice assistants are capable of responding to both voice and text inputs, allowing more convenience to the customers. So, the appeal of these conversational systems will never go unnoticed. They can be deployed for any industry; and across numerous use cases.

“According to Valuates Reports, the global conversational AI market size is expected to reach USD 32.62 Billion by 2030 from USD 5.78 Billion in 2020, with an annual compound growth rate of 20% in these 10 years.”

Two possible reasons for this growth:

  • Messaging platforms with massive user bases like WhatsApp and WeChat are giving opportunities for businesses to interact with customers through seamlessly-designed chatbots.
  • Growing popularity of voice assistants like Google Home, Alexa, Siri etc., are paving the way for businesses to create their own affordable speech-based assistants that easily integrate into their websites and other applications. 

COMPONENTS OF CONVERSATIONAL AI

Conversational AI can identify the speech patterns to send responses in different languages, thanks to the incessantly improving AI, ML algorithms.

Microsoft predicts AI-powered chatbots will play a crucial role in the next-gen customer experience. More than 90% of customer interactions will happen through conversational AI-supported channels by 2025.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

When a customer provides a text input, conversational AI utilizes the power of NLP to interpret the meaning. If the input is voice-based, it uses both NLP and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to decode the meaning.
Once the meaning is comprehended, NLP sends the output and the advanced ML algorithms refine these responses for accuracy. This entire process is nothing but structuring the unstructured data into a readable format by the machines/computers in order to divulge the right response to humans.

2. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)

It is an important conversational AI component that helps your voice-based assistants receive inputs to drive meaningful conversations. It uses NLP to decode phonemes and words. With time, ASR will continuously evolve with the strenuous efforts of data scientists. Also, ASR and NLP combined will help the chatbots understand voice modulations and accents to decipher the mood and intent of the customer before giving a response. 

Components of Conversational AI - Techigai

3. Machine Learning

Being the sub-field of AI, ML has complex algorithms that make much smarter predictions for enhanced customer service. ML is a combination of datasets and algorithms, and the features are only going to improve with time. ML acts as a bridge between man and the machine and transforms machine outputs into a human-readable format. 

CHATBOT VS CONVERSATIONAL AI

Although chatbots can be powered by AI to make them more powerful, it must be noted that not all chatbots are AI-powered.

A basic chatbot is programmed in a way to respond to only a limited number of tasks like answering FAQs and sending to desired landing pages of an application. Meanwhile, conversational AI goes beyond this to perform functions like blocking credit cards, booking an appointment with a healthcare provider, filing insurance claims, updating your data plans – all just through a simple chat window. Here’s the basic difference between basic chatbots and conversational AI chatbots:
Rule-based ChatbotConversational AI Chatbot
24X7 Online Support
Natural Language ProcessingKeyword-based
Multi-level Intent DetectionWith If/Then Statements
3rd Party IntegrationLimited
Self Improving With Time
User Authentication
Voice Assistance
Multilingual
Context-based NavigationButton-focused
Privacy and Security Compliant

NOTABLE BENEFITS OF CONVERSATIONAL AI

The biggest advantages of deploying conversational AI for customer services are – significantly improved customer experience and reduced cost-to-serve.

Conversational AI for customer service is extremely versatile, and it may be used in a range of customer care channels such as email, voice, chat, social media, and messaging platforms. Across industries, conversational AI is used by businesses to engage their customers and users throughout the customer journey with the brand.

Customer Experience - chatbots - Techigai