When we talk about Conversational AI, we’re referring to an array of technologies including chatbots, virtual assistants, and conversational IVR. They are technologies that users can talk to.
Conversational AI is basically a virtual agent that can interpret intentions and respond in the same way a human would – only faster, more accurately, and at a much lower cost per interaction.
Most Conversational AI have extensive analytics capabilities and deliver a human-like conversational experience. Route 101 partner with Gartner and Forrester approved Conversational AI vendors to help organisations cut costs, drive efficiencies, and deliver better CX.
What is Conversational AI?
Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful technology for customer service, combining Natural Language Processing with machine learning -to process, understand, and respond to user queries in a natural way.
According to Gartner, by 2022, 20% of all customer service interactions will be handled by Conversational AI agents.
These technologies use large volumes of data, machine learning and natural language processing to deliver human-like conversational experiences. In simple terms, it’s technology with the ability to understand text and speech in the same way human beings can.
By using Natural Language Processing, the AI can understand the context behind words in a sentence and respond much more effectively. This means the AI can alter a conversation based on factors like a person’s historic relationship, sentiment, and context – just like a human agent.
Conversational AI is extremely useful when it comes to customer service: you have these virtual agents that can interpret intentions and respond in the same way a human would – only they do it faster, more accurately, and for a much lower cost per interaction.
Gartner says that by 2025, 30% of major enterprises will have selected a single conversational platform both for customer service and to improve employee effectiveness.
[Read the Gartner Report on Evolving IVR's to Conversational Platforms here]
How does Conversational AI work?
Conversational AI uses Natural Language Processing to understand user utterance – either through a chat application or a voice channel. When setting up a Conversational AI, organisations will need to model their business processes to ensure the Conversational AI behaves the way they want it to in any given customer facing situation. This process modelling is why adopting a holistic approach to Conversational AI tools is so important.
What is Natural Language Processing?
Natural Language Processing strives to build machines that understand and respond to text or voice data—and respond with text or speech of their own—in much the same way humans do. This means that it can comb through a customer’s user utterance to find the meaningful terms and phrases that it will use to respond.
What is Machine Learning?
IBM defines Machine Learning as "a subset of Artificial Intelligence, made up of a set of algorithms, features, and data sets that continuously improve themselves with experience. As the input grows, the AI platform machine gets better at recognizing patterns and uses it to make predictions."
What is the difference between Conversational AI and a Chatbot?
The main difference lies in the ability to recognise and respond to intent. Conversational AI can detect intent behind a user utterance, whilst chatbots are much more transactional. Conversational AI can triage requests, track, and remain aware of the context behind queries – so it’s much better when it comes to providing a human-like experience.
Chatbots might be able to handle customer issues, but likely won’t be equipped to handle multi-part requests as they aren’t able to triage and decipher the context behind the requests. They’re much more linear, and often rely on specific scripts. Any deviation, and they’ll need to transfer to a human agent.
Moreover, Conversational AI can handle dialogue variations. For example, if a customer realises half way through an interaction that they’ve been referring to the wrong credit card, Conversational AI can simply revisit the point in the conversation at which it confirmed which card was being discussed, redo that interaction, and continue the process without losing any of the information it retrieved previously. This is a huge difference to a Chatbot, which would need to either begin again at the start of the script or escalate the call to a human – neither of which is efficient nor caters to the customer experience.
To see the power of our Conversational AI solutions for yourself, book a discovery call with a member of our experienced team.
