Chatbots are today a commonplace technology, with many of us having had some experience of them, particularly in a customer service context. These chatbots are typically located on an organisation’s website and used to deflect common FAQs and to submit sales or support queries.
The primary benefit of a chatbot deployed in this way is to reduce the number of calls and emails needing to be dealt with by contact centres and customer service teams. However, when a user needs to find information about a complex issue or perform a task (such as updating personal details), they are still required to contact support teams, as many chatbots are limited to performing more simple and scripted interactions. This leads to frustration from the user-created by the wasted time when they are not able to get the outcome needed within the chatbot and are required to revert to more traditional contact methods.
Delivering Actionability with Conversational AI
There is a solution. Conversational AI Assistants, which crucially provide not only more advanced Natural Language Understanding (NLU) enabling far greater understanding of user requests and sentiment, but also integrations that deliver actionability to users. Enabling improved experiences through the ability to self-serve more effectively, improving an organisation’s reputation and retention, and delivering increased time savings to contact centre teams – freeing them up to focus on more sensitive and critical queries and tasks.
For example, a Conversational AI Assistant can be deployed to support a customer who wants to update a delivery date on their order. Generally, to achieve this the customer would need to either make a call, send an email or submit a form to an organisation’s customer service team– at time an effort.
With a Conversational Assistant, this request can be simply and quickly performed within the chat interface, utilising secure integrations with a business’s CRM and order management systems. The Assistant guides the user through the necessary questions needed to enact the order change request and then references internal systems to validate and perform the update.
All this is done in a matter of seconds. Significantly reducing waiting times from traditional communication channels and leading to improved satisfaction and more compliant and up-to-date data for supply chain processes.
Actionability through integrations is, therefore, key to helping advanced chatbot technology and helps to deliver a more comprehensive self-service and on-demand experience for users.
If you would like to find out more about Conversational AI, get in touch today.