Rasa Technologies has published a poll that has found CX is the number of reason companies are investing in conversational AI across an array of sectors.
Among industries as such as healthcare, retail, telecom, and financial services business leaders have cited CX and customer engagement as being critical to their deployment of AI.
Key findings in the report include:
- 72% of organisations leverage their assistants for customer-facing operations, although organisations reported using assistants for internal operations as well. 64% were motivated by providing 24-hour support to customers
- 67% of conversational AI stakeholders expect their conversational AI budgets to increase in the coming year, and an additional 13% said they expect it to increase significantly. Businesses that have already taken steps toward building virtual assistants are doubling down on that investment
- One third of enterprises surveyed are currently in production with virtual assistants. The top barrier reported is a lack of experience building virtual assistants, showing that companies are still in the process of developing the people, processes, and patterns needed for successful deployment
- 70% reported that customer satisfaction metrics were used to track the success of virtual assistants, indicating that value to the customer outweighs immediate business benefits like cost savings
- The report highlights that many large organisations are also employing virtual assistants for internal use cases, such as automating helpdesk and HR functions. In some cases, internal use cases may serve as pilot programs to build conversational AI expertise and test technologies before putting a virtual assistant in front of customers
Overall, the report illustrates why so many businesses implement conversational AI: virtual assistants offer value to customers and to organisations in equal measure.
Alex Weidauer, CEO & co-founder of Rasa, said: “Leading enterprises have existing customer experience automation strategies in place. They also understand that customer service today is a maze that leaves everyone involved disoriented and disengaged.
“In order to meet customer and employee expectations, enterprises will have to redesign their customer experience into a single, unified, AI-first interface that allows for personalised, instant interactions at a fraction of the cost. In order to do this, enterprises need to make conversational AI a core competency and invest significantly in an enterprise-grade platform that can integrate deeply into their systems and processes, and provide measurable value.”
Visit Rasa to read the full report on the state of conversational AI for customer experience
