Post Menu and Details.
- What is conversational AI?
- Conversational AI begins by offering self-help options
- Chatbots fall short of providing adequate support
- Chatbots aren’t that great with self-help options, either
- What makes conversational AI so different?
- Why conversational AI is better
- Conversational AI increases customer satisfaction
- The future of customer support is a mix of live support and AI
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Do you have a chatbot on your website designed to help your visitors get answers to questions? How well does it serve your visitors? Do you feel like you could use a better application, but you’re not exactly sure what your options are?
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably noticed the shortcomings of your chatbot and are wondering if there’s a better option. The answer is yes, and it’s called conversational AI.
What is conversational AI?
Conversational AI is an advancement in artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology that provides users with personalized conversational experiences in response to their service requests. For example, a virtual assistant on a website powered by conversational AI provides users with personalized answers and resources when they interact to ask questions.
Although this process is similar to the traditional chatbot, it’s quite different and more sophisticated. Conversational AI uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to resolve support requests automatically and is capable of discerning user intent.
In addition to providing fast, relevant support for your visitors, conversational AI reduces the workload for your customer service representatives. It also provides quick and accurate self-help resources.
Conversational AI begins by offering self-help options
When a visitor engages your virtual assistant, the application will look for existing content on your website that matches their search intent. When pages are found – usually from a FAQ section – those links will be sent to the visitor. Most of the time, their questions will be answered quickly through this self-help option. If these options don’t work, they can always request a live agent and that’s when one of your customer service reps can step in to help.
Chatbots fall short of providing adequate support
Standard chatbots – even some powered by artificial intelligence – are limited and often miss the mark when it comes to providing users with relevant information. For instance, it’s common for web visitors to ask a question multiple times and never get a satisfactory answer or resource from one of these chat bots.
The chat bots we know from the past are only programmed to give responses to a small selection of phrases and keywords a user might type. It’s up to the website owner to determine which answers are provided based on keywords and phrases. This only works to an extent. For example, it works well when a user asks for contact information, but not for more nuanced requests.
Chatbots aren’t that great with self-help options, either
In order for a chatbot to deliver relevant resources, it has to know which web pages to send the user. Relying on general tags or categories won’t help because the system might send the user five different pages that still don’t answer their question.
Users aren’t likely to read through five pages just to get an answer. Furthermore, they’ll see the page descriptions and titles and immediately know which pages aren’t relevant. This will not only prolong their ability to get help, but it will make visitors lose faith in your brand.
Without a good machine learning algorithm driving a constantly-updated database, chatbots don’t stand a chance at delivering relevant self-help options to users who need more than basic help.
What makes conversational AI so different?
Conversational AI understands the nuances in a user’s request for support and can learn unique industry terms. This technology learns to discern a user’s intent by analyzing millions of previous support requests and billions of conversations. Based on these past interactions, an algorithm can be trained to use the information to identify the right solutions for current interactions.
Regular chat bots – including standard AI-powered bots – can’t achieve this level of accuracy because they aren’t analyzing millions of real-world support interactions.
Why conversational AI is better
Conversational AI is better than the old chat bots because it solves the problems chatbots failed to solve. Unlike the original chat bots, conversational AI solves problems, answers questions, and provides appropriate resources for even the most nuanced questions.
The chatbots of yesterday failed because they didn’t use machine learning effectively, they were almost never maintained by the developers, and businesses used them as a replacement for live support. It would be nice if everything could be automated, but there are some questions that require help from a real person.
With conversational AI, businesses have the option to bring in a live support agent when necessary. Most requests can be handled automatically, but users aren’t left to fend for themselves when the automated system can’t help them any further. With old chatbots, users had no choice but to keep asking the same question with different words or bounce.
Conversational AI increases customer satisfaction
Every business wants to improve customer satisfaction and many accomplish this through automation. Customers are satisfied when they get fast answers and solutions to more complex issues. Conversational AI helps with this. However, having this kind of system also reduces the workload for the live support team.
When a business implements conversational AI, it enables their live customer support team to provide better service because they’re not overwhelmed by so many requests. With fewer repetitive support requests to answer, customer service agents are more likely to be patient and understanding when interacting with live customers.
The future of customer support is a mix of live support and AI
Currently, businesses offer varied customer support options that include no support, live support, and some type of automated support. Automation helps with customer support. However, the businesses that will thrive in the future are the ones that bring in a live agent when necessary.
This is exactly why conversational AI is the future of customer support. It can understand a user’s intent, provide fast answers and accurate self-help resources, and call in a live agent if the question is too nuanced for an automated reply.
If your business isn’t using conversational AI yet, it’s time to look into this technology because in the future, businesses that don’t embrace it will be left behind.
Thank you for reading!