Enhancing the Business Experience with IoT, AI, and chatbots

5 minute read

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a huge buzz word throughout the world over the last few years. The impact of AI's potential transforms the decision-making process through the use of highly accurate digital data.

Users tend to be more friendly to social media channels as opposed to direct contact.

Many businesses are thinking about or in the process of transforming the way they interact with users or clients. An Artificial Intelligence chatbot is typically made up of conversation and dialog flows, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Machine Learning (ML).  Combined they enable conversations with humans in real-time and in a more natural setting.

Think about how you interact with Siri or Google Assistant...

Below we will discuss AI chatbots and how they can be part of Digital Transformation.

Why are AI chatbots the trend?

An AI-enabled chatbot is designed with the user interaction experience as the focus and is geared towards delivering predetermined business outcomes. AI-enabled chatbots can drive automation and help the business make better decisions. They can also notify users of real-time insights and information updates as part of a daily routine.

AI-enabled chatbots can build new relationships or channels with clients.  In many cases, you can interact completely by voice.

A growing trend is to create skills or applications for Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortona.  This creates an ongoing relationship with the end-user and can grow over time.

AI chatbots bring the opportunity to greatly improve a company's customer service function and the overall customer experience.

Customer Experience:

Chatbots are beneficial for both parties. Developing chatbots is cheaper than training and hiring customer service agents, and customers often prefer a quick mobile interaction over talking with someone in person or with the call center.

People-to-people conversations, people-to-digital assistants, people-to-bots … that’s the world you’re going to get to see in the years to come. - Satya Nadella

Chatbots have so much potential for businesses because of their ability to scale and availability.  They can be amazingly efficient for both the business and customers.  They can reduce costs by minimizing expensive interactions with traditional call centers, agents or, customer service representatives.

They streamline interactions and make it more convenient for customers to interact with businesses.  Many customers would prefer recommendations and purchase something on their mobile device instead of parsing online reviews and trying to buy products in person or through a call.

This all leads to increased customer engagement and efficient request fulfillment, directly enhancing the customer experience.

Understanding users:

A key aspect of AI-enabled chatbots is the ability to understand what customers want by means of a natural conversation, either through speech or text.

A chatbot that leverages Natural Language Processing provides the customer with the ability to speak to the chatbot like they would any other human. Conversation and dialog flows can be created to fulfill what the customer intent is.

A few examples are:

• "I need help with an order I placed 2 weeks ago"
• "Please notify me when this item goes on sale"
• "I'm checking on order AZ12345, where is it?"
• "Show me all items that are compatible with XBOX One"
• "I need to change an order I just placed"

These examples depict customer engagement at a conversational level.

Empowers Business Intelligence:

In the past users or customers might have 'consumed' recurring reports looking for specific data or information.  The onus was on their side to find what's important or what may have changed.

Businesses can implement chatbots that are integrated with Business Intelligence data sources and have the chatbot become more of a virtual assistant.

One example is integrating a chatbot with a spreadsheet and have it give you relevant cells when data changes or during your daily brief or routine.

Another example is having a chatbot notify you when someone hasn't submitted something by a certain time.

A final example could be a chatbot that executes a procedure after an alert has been generated.

These examples are simplistic but can give an idea of what could be done.  The key aspect is that you would leverage the chatbot to provide relevant Business Intelligence when you wanted it and directly to you via a conversational means.

By reviewing historic conversation flows the business can gain a better understanding of what the customer is looking for or what is needed.

Maintaining a connection with the customer:

Chatbots can provide automated solutions that enable businesses to interact with many consumers at once. They can provide a new channel for communication with the customer in a conversational way.  Chatbots with AI allow for customers to efficiently fulfill their requests without being limited to scripted interactions or simple decision trees.

As customers begin to leverage chatbots more like a Virtual Assistant they develop an ongoing relationship with the business that can grow over time and result in increased proactive use.

In Conclusion

Chatbots that are enabled with AI and NLP are becoming an ever-increasing means for businesses to enhance the Business & Customer Experience while on their Digital Transformation journey.

We can assist you with your journey in many ways:

• Digital Transformation Strategy
• AI, ML, NLP, & DL Strategy
• Chatbot use case development & Strategy

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