Conversational AI can be described as an artificial intelligence technology that is capable of holding a conversation with a customer like a human would. Because of its ever-developing features, conversational AI has taken the contact centre industry by storm over the last year.
Moving away from the standard, robot-like IVRs, and chatbots, advanced conversational AI uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to interact with customers over text, voice, and even video. The AI provides intelligent responses while also learning how to communicate better in a given context or situation. This way each interaction becomes more natural and more efficient than the previous one.
In an almost all-digital world, companies gravitate towards automation for every possible process. It’s no doubt that automation helps with a host of manual tasks and can save both time and money, however, if employed incorrectly, it can do more harm than good on companies’ overall customer experience.
The new era of conversational AI is upon us. Automated voice recordings and stale chatbot messages no longer work. In an exclusive interview, CX Today spoke with Derek Roberti, VP Technology at Cognigy, to learn more about the ins and outs of an ideal conversational AI solution.
The need for implementing conversational AI for employees
Before delving into the very core of conversational AI, it’s important to understand what pushes companies to turn to this type of technology. Contact centres are the main ‘employers’ of conversational AI and rightfully so since the majority of challenges that occur in contact centres are related to human resources. High employee attrition in such a fast-paced setting leaves little to no time for the drill of the newly-employed workforce.
Roberti begins: “For the past decades, the primary occupation of the contact centre management is dealing with recruiting, training and retaining employees. With the current market forces around employment, these challenges have become even harder.”
As the number of people quitting their jobs increases on a daily basis, the turnover rates are higher, creating even bigger pressure on the contact centre management. This is where conversational automation or conversational AI comes to the rescue.
Roberti continues:
“Being able to automate a lot of the repetitive work that does not require human judgment, decision-making, or empathy adds to the time that human workforce has to do meaningful, challenging tasks.”
This way, human workers are left with more engaging, interesting calls allowing them to become higher-performing employees who are more motivated by the inherent qualities of the job.”
In this case, automation takes care of the repetitive administrative tasks that can take an unnecessarily large portion of humans’ time, but what happens when we automate interactions between customers and businesses?
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Conversational AI interacts with a customer in form of a voice or through text. Before implementing the best solution that fits the needs of a business, customers’ preferences need to be put first. If chatbots are not able to provide the information a customer is seeking, they will likely turn to a phone call.
Roberti says: “We want to give people the option of contacting a human agent, but we want to make it easier for them to do everything in a self-service fashion first.”
“That’s what conversational AI or conversational automation does. It provides a natural language interface and allows users to speak in their own terms so they don’t need to worry about remembering which button to press, and they can quickly solve problems on their own.”
It may sound as if nothing could go wrong with this versatile solution for customer queries. However, the reality is different. Companies sometimes rely too much on automation. Even the most advanced conversational solution still needs to be supported by a live agent on the other end. Roberti says:
“Where that line between automation and human interaction is crossed is when you have a really good self-service experience but still need escalation management. Agents are still receiving calls that need human decision-making despite a well-developed self-service system.”
In sectors like healthcare or financial services, the human touch is key. Focusing on creating a well thought out user experience that embodies both self-service and customer-agent interaction will support customers every step of the journey in dealing with more sensitive information.
“Ongoing monitoring of the solution itself is crucial for future customer interactions, especially after the initial rollout. Regular monitoring allows organisations to fine-tune their conversational AI in real-time and see instant improvements in user experience”, concludes Roberti.
An ideal conversational solution
Investing in the newest conversational AI solution sure can be a huge step for a company, however before embarking on such a journey a few factors need to be taken into account. After organisations have decided that conversational AI will benefit their customer experience, the backend of the software is just as important.
Roberti says: “A key aspect of conversational AI that needs to be considered is who will manage the user experience on a day-to-day basis. Platforms that require a developer or highly technical involvement often cause people to have more missteps than platforms that require no coding experience.”
“Low-code, no-code platforms like Cognigy provide tools for non-technical users who can build, improve and adjust to their user experience, all without coding. From an investment point of view, this is a really good choice.”
Besides technical involvement in the platform, the ability to integrate the solution with existing contact centre applications might be a deal-breaker for companies. If a solution can be easily integrated with a wide variety of apps that are already in use, more organisations will opt for it as their best fit.
“Organisations need to select a system that can easily fit into their current infrastructure, without a heavy lift. When you work with a platform like Cognigy, it’s designed to be able to fit right within your existing infrastructure without a lot of complex and expensive customisation”, adds Roberti.
Conversational AI transforms how agents work and how customers get information. With the right conversational AI solution, companies can see a staggering uplift in employee and customer satisfaction, and also in operational efficiency. From filtering out customer interactions by complexity to completely solving customer queries, we have yet to see how advanced conversational AI will become.
Discover Cognigy’s full portfolio of conversational AI solutions on: www.cognigy.com
