Where Should You Apply Conversational AI?

Delve into several excellent use cases for conversational AI

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Where Should You Apply Conversational AI?
Speech AnalyticsInsights

Published: January 25, 2023

John Flood

John Flood

In the 2000 cult film, “Dude, Where’s My Car,” two layabout teenage friends wake up one morning, unable to remember where they parked their car after a night of extensive partying.   

Starring Ashton Kutcher as one of the teens, the movie is a low-brow comedy comprised of outrageous characters and droll – if low-brow – situations.   

Nevertheless, for all its brainlessness, it skilfully stays the course. Our heroes need to find their car.   

Dude, Where’s My AI?

If the main characters had access to conversational AI, they could have called a contact center, engaged with a voicebot, and uncovered the location of their car.  

After all, virtual assistants have become incredibly advanced in monitoring and managing data. As such, businesses in the automotive industry can track the journey information of customers.   

So, by the time Kutcher’s character asks: “Dude, where’s my car?”, conversational AI would have had his answer.   

Of course, this would have made for a less entertaining movie, but it’s an excellent example of how virtual agents are adding value to customer experiences in new ways.  

Moreover, the automotive dealer may harness this journey data to provide customers with more relevant offers down the line.   

There are many further possible applications of conversational AI within the industry too. It could schedule test drives, calculate loans, and send service reminders.  

Yet, each use case is perhaps not for everyone. So, the question remains; what are the best uses of conversational AI for my organization?   

Can I Bring My Dog?

Conversation mining harnesses analytics to spot the most prominent, easy-to-answer customer queries: prime candidates for contact automation.     

Without this, getting a handle on the dizzying array of questions contact center agents face and the complexity of handling each is tricky.    

Consider a hypothetical five-star Las Vegas hotel. Agents field questions ranging from the banal, like when is check-in, to more the interesting, like whether a guest can take her pug to the hotel pool. Never mind that pugs can’t swim.   

Those repetitive queries are tailor made for conversational AI, which frees up agents to increase revenue, book more rooms, and upsell travel packages.  

Sticking to the Vegas theme, consider how Golden Nugget Casinos deployed conversational AI within its IVR, targeting non-revenue producing calls like; what time does the pool open?    

Delving deeper into this example, Dawn Harpster, Senior Conversation Architect at Talkdesk, said:  

“The company lowered it’s IVR abandon rate by 40 percent, freeing up agents to handle more revenue generating calls about booking rooms instead of answering questions about valet parking. It does really well handling those kinds of routine repetitive questions.”

Where Conversational AI Doesn’t Do Well

The American psychologist Abraham Maslow once said: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Consider that a cautionary signal to IT managers.   

Indeed, AI isn’t a panacea. It has limits. Here is a scenario to avoid.  

When a company offers thousands of products on its website, customers face a staggering number of choices and navigational challenges. Conversational AI is not always the best solution for narrowing these down.  

“When customers need to filter through thousands of products, and the don’t have a specific option in mind, it’s almost impossible for conversational AI to help,” says Harpster. “A guided web page interface is a better solution.”  

Better Use Cases for Conversational AI

Harpster has worked on many conversational AI projects during her time at Talkdesk and has implemented many successful virtual assistants across various industries.    

Here are three excellent examples that improved key customer, employee, and business outcomes.   

  • An insurance company used conversational AI to guide customers to the correct policy options with screening questions.
  • A city and government agency answered calls with a voicebot handling questions about license plate tags, renewals, or building permits.
  • A bank contained many queries about loans, credit cards, and balances in the IVR, with a native virtual assistant.

Yet, Harpster admires many more use cases, including a virtual assistant at a fast-food drive-thru that takes orders to improve revenue and lower the demand on staff.  

Such an example again highlights how conversational AI can automate repetitive tasks that follow a simple structure.  

Moreover, Harpster recommends organizations “leverage back-end information and make the system do the heavy living, not the user. Instead, the user experience should be seamless, quick and to the point. 

“Yet, the beauty of all this is that it’s only limited by your imagination.”  

To improve your customer self-service experience, click here to learn more about implementing conversational AI with Talkdesk. It might just help someone find their car.

 

 

Artificial IntelligenceConversational AIVirtual Assistant

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