Conversational AI

What is Conversational AI

Conversational AI (artificial intelligence) has been around for many years but only began making the news a few years back. For instance, data released by Google Trends showed that between 2005 and 2017, conversational AI was almost non-existent but witnessed exponential growth between 2019 and 2021. Even now, it’s experiencing an increasing adoption rate. This growth is not only in technology but also in business and entertainment.

The conversational AI sector made significant progress in 2021. This growth – driven by extensive technological innovation and adoption – cut across international markets and involved key organizations, stakeholders, investors, and influencers. According to Artificial Solutions, the conversational AI sector is projected to witness an even bigger advancement in 2021 and beyond due to several defining developmental trends.

The Economist also reports that messaging – which is based on conversational AI – on Instagram and Facebook has risen by 40% since 2020. Data from Statista shows that around 2.9 billion people now use WhatsApp and Messenger and with 41 million messages sent out every minute. These figures are massive and reflect the huge potential in the conversational AI market.

Do you want to know the benefits of adopting conversational AI in your business? Do you want to know how you can implement it? Do you want to know how to place your business in a position that allows you to take a slice of this huge market? Keep reading, and you will find out.

Conversational AI is the set of technologies that facilitate human-like interactions between computers and humans. These technologies work together to provide real-time, automated, and efficient communication. It does this by recognizing text and speech, understanding intent, deciphering context and language, and responding in a human-like manner. This is conversational AI at its highest form.

Components of Conversational AI

As stated earlier, conversational AI is a set of technologies, not a single thing. The component technologies that enable conversational AI are Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural language understanding (NLU), Natural language generation (NLG), Advanced Dialog management, Text to speech (TTS), Machine Learning (ML), deep learning, and contextual awareness.

How Conversational AI Works

To get a better sense of how conversational AI technology, let’s go through the four basic steps through which this technology interacts with humans:

Step 1: This step is known as input generation. Here, information from humans is inputted, either via text or voice, into the computer.

Step 2: In this step, the information input of step 1 is analyzed. For a text-based input, NLU is employed to decipher or pull out its meaning. NLU is one part of NLP. We will get to the other part later.

A different approach is used for speech-based input. Here, ASR, also identified as voice recognition, is the tool to make sense of it and convert it into text or a machine-readable format.

Step 3: This is advanced dialogue management where NLG, the other part of NLP, is used to provide appropriate responses after intent has been established.

Step 4: This is Machine or Reinforcement Learning step. Here, over time, as the application receives information inputs from users and provides the required responses, it uses machine or reinforced learning to learn from the experience and improve response accuracy.

How Conversational AI is Built

Now that you know how conversational AI works let’s talk about how you can build and incorporate it into your business. In a world of digital transformation largely driven by conversations, it makes sense to provide users and customers with a top-notch conversational AI experience. And that is by deploying it in managing and automating customer interactions.

Implementing conversational AI in your business is not as difficult as it sounds. However, for maximum effect, a conversational AI system must be correctly deployed to meet and exceed business and customer expectations. Here are well-thought-out steps to follow in building and adopting conversational AI in your business.

Step 1: Define your goals

Defining your goals for deploying conversational AI by answering relevant questions will help you set the course of the deployment. What purpose does the implementation seek to achieve? Can conversational AI serve your business objectives, and in what ways? What problems does conversational AI want to solve? What kind of conversational AI does our business need?

Step 2: Align business functions and choose a conversational AI building approach

After confirming that company functions, like compliance, customer care, and tech teams are aligned, choose a conversational AI-building approach that fits your business needs. You can choose a Build In-house (DIY) approach. Here, you get to build the application yourself from scratch. Understand that this is time-consuming and expensive because it requires hiring a development team.

You can also choose a conversational AI vendor. This approach highly reduces the risks associated with AI deployment. But the problem with this is choosing the right platform or provider. Voicify offers competence in professional services, industry expertise, an experience-oriented approach for users, and reasonable price plans for businesses. This makes them experts in the conversational AI industry.

Step 3: Strategize for the data source and secure approvals

Decide the source of content to be incorporated into the conversation AI platform. Will the datasets be website FAQs, content from your customer support, etc?

As you do this, make sure different aspects of the company like compliance, security, and legal are on the same page about this.

Step 4: Decide on deployment channels to use

Choose the implementation channels. Will your use case be social media, advertising, website, or in-store displays? You can choose more than one channel.

Step 5: Choose the deployment infrastructure that is right for you

You can use on-premises deployment. Here, you’re responsible for maintaining the AI, but you have complete control over security.

Cloud deployment is a third-party server that hosts your data and allows you access to it anytime and from anywhere you want. Hybrid deployment allows you to enjoy both – cloud and on-premise deployment.

Step 6: Test and monitor the application

Implement the conversational AI stepwise. First, launch it internally and monitor it to see if it’s responding optimally. After this, release it to the public. Monitor customers’ experience to know which aspect to improve on.

Use Cases of Conversational AI

Below are some of the many practical conversational AI applications and use cases of conversational AI.

Customer Support

With artificial intelligence tools, the customer support journey can be so much better and lead to customer satisfaction. There will be a reduced number of human agents needed for resolution, speedy response to FAQs, efficient customer engagement, and 24-hour service delivery.

Although responses to incoming customer inquiries are already high, more and more AI chatbots are being designed to actively interact with employees or customers.

Human Resources

Many human resources processes such as employee training, onboarding, updating employee information, and answering employee questions, can be expertly performed by conversational AI tools.

A conversational AI can ping employees to remind them of their next vacations or the last time they missed work. These smart suggestions help improve business relations.

Government

Government agencies and institutions use conversational AI to send notification reminders to citizens. For instance, drivers are notified about when their license will expire and ways to go about renewing it. These tools are used in identification and verification processes and document processing.

Healthcare Services

These tools help to improve the affordability and accessibility of healthcare services by enhancing its many administrative processes like claim filing for patients and reimbursements processing.

Digital Personal Assistants

There are many devices such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant that use conversational AI to answer questions about things like product availability or pricing.

They are also used in internet-connected devices to give voice commands to home items like refrigerators, lighting systems, sound systems, and ovens.

Benefits of Conversational AI

Every business, from the smallest to the largest enterprises, can benefit immensely from using conversational AI. These benefits can be divided into two broad groups:

Organization-Based Benefits

Companies that use conversational AI to handle the customer service operation spend less on training, salary, and onboarding because only a small support staff is needed for the critical work of the company. This leads to reduced operational costs.

Conversational AI tools raise the likelihood that a purchase will take place. It’s more likely that customers will make purchases when they are provided with relevant information, enjoy reduced response time, and are highly satisfied.

Conversational AI infrastructures are easier to scale as against hiring and training new employees. Also, these businesses are easier to move from one location to another.

Customer-Based Benefits

Apart from business centers, customers benefit from interacting with conversational AI tools. They get to enjoy a better customer experience because of the simplicity and speed of the interactions. Also, being the technologies behind automated messaging, conversational AI provides users with shorter waiting times.

It also serves as an educational means for users. Through the use of probing questions and helpful prompts, conversational AI can educate customers and also provide personalized guidance.

Conversational AI also serves as a valuable guide for customers who needs help navigating a space, for instance, users who need help locating the right department, product, or personnel.