5 Use Cases for Conversational AI Assistants in Enterprise
The adoption of Conversational AI both by enterprise and end-users is increasing, with analysts predicting the global market expected to rise by a CAGR of 22% to 14 billion dollars by 2025 (Markets and Markets). The increase in popularity has been expedited by the pandemic, which has driven many consumers and employees to digital channels to communicate with brands.
Conversational AI and its application within chat and communication assistants are fast becoming a viable solution for many organisations who want to connect users more efficiently (customers, employees, suppliers, etc.) with their systems and information. Helping enterprises to deliver not only time and cost savings but also improving user experiences leading to improved longevity and success.
For organisations who are just starting on their journey with Conversational AI Assistants, the below provides some useful insight into 5 key business functions where the technology can be deployed to deliver transformational benefits.
1 – Contact Centres & Customer Support
The primary challenge for many contact centre and support departments is balancing delivering exceptional customer service whilst still ensuring that they are working as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. In recent years this has become more of a difficult balancing act, with an increasing volume of inbound requests and queries, channels to serve, and the 24/7 service culture.
These factors have meant that not only are teams under more pressure and have less time to speak with and resolve customer queries but also that customers’ experiences are negatively impacted – with often long waiting times for responses and information.
Conversational AI Use Case
Conversational AI Assistants help reduce the pressure on contact centres by enabling customers to more effectively self-serve and manage their requests without the need for human support – delivering greater deflection from teams.
Conversational AI is the next evolution of chatbots, providing enhanced capabilities through its utilisation of Machine Learning and Natural Language Understanding and in the case of Humley’s solution, actionability through integrations with RPA and internal business systems.
These capabilities mean that Conversational AI Assistants can respond to a far greater variety of and complexity of customer requests, deploying AI to understand the true meaning and intent of an interaction, delivering personalised and meaningful interactions in seconds. Secure integrations mean that Assistants can interact with systems to support the retrieval and update of information live in a conversation enabling users to perform the tasks that they need – when they need it and in the channels they use.
Conversational AI Assistants provide customers with a unified hub for all their information that is available 24/7. Significantly improving experiences and engagement with a brand and freeing up contact centre staff to spend time with the customers that really need it.
2 – HR
For many organisations, employees are not located in one central location, and this is truer now than ever with the switch to more remote working. This means it can be more challenging for HR teams to communicate with and provide support to employees who are reliant on more traditional channels of communication (email or telephone) or navigating complex systems and documents to find the information that they need.
This has resulted in HR teams spending an inordinate amount of time responding to increasing volumes of inbound queries and requests, taking them away from focusing on strategic initiatives. On the other hand, employees are subject to long waiting times for responses, leading to frustration, inhibiting them from getting the job at hand, and reducing engagement with an organisation.
Conversational AI Use Case
Conversational AI Assistants can be deployed by HR departments to enable employees to access all the information they need and perform tasks within one easy to use interface. Crucially, Conversational Assistants free up HR Teams to focus on the tasks that really matter, delivering strategic business value through automating repetitive and manually intensive tasks involved with processing communications and giving employees instant access to all the information they need in the channels they use, 24/7 regardless of location or time zone.
Additionally, not only can Assistants provide help with FAQs and policy searches but can also help employees to perform tasks. Solutions such as Humley’s, come prebuilt with ready-to-deploy integrations with all of the leading HRIS, Payroll, and other business systems. This means all an organisation’s information can be securely accessed, updated, and actioned within one interface. This integration capability means the assistant to automate tasks such as travel booking, updating timesheets, and even booking candidate interviews through connecting with RPA and other automation technologies.
3 – Finance
The Finance and Procurement functions within an organisation carry a high level of responsibility, ensuring the profitability and success of a business – from selecting the right goods and services to ensuring compliance, receiving and reconciliation, invoicing, new supplier onboarding, and payment. Yet these vital processes are often manually intensive, paper-based, and are reliant on information that is siloed within multiple (often legacy) systems leading to difficulties in data retrieval, errors, delays, and missed payment discounts as well as inhibiting productivity.
Conversational AI Use Case
With Conversational AI Assistants organisations can deliver significant efficiencies to Finance and Procurement Teams and improve data access by providing a unified point of contact.
Assistants enable teams to submit questions, make requests and perform tasks such as checking the status of an invoice or submitting a PO all within one multi-channel conversational interface. Delivering significant time savings for teams, helping to eliminate lengthy paper trails, improving data accuracy and user experiences.
Additionally, Conversational Assistants can also be deployed to support customers and suppliers by providing them with easy access to key information and to perform tasks such as onboarding or finding out about a contract. This delivers further efficiencies to finance teams through deflecting the number of queries they receive and improves customer and supplier relationships by providing immediate support.
4 – Supply Chain
For many businesses supply chain operations and processes are essential for ensuring they can deliver on customer expectations as well as maintain profitability from keeping track of inventory to booking freight. However, often the management of this essential function is reliant on multiple systems, manually intensive data entry, and review processes all of which can be can costly in terms of resource and time to a business.
Conversational AI Use Case
With a Conversational Assistant, organisations can unify all of their systems and data sources in one easy to use tool which is accessible by employees and customers whenever they need it. Assistants allow employees to submit queries about BOMs, check workshop rotas, and even book time off. The solutions help to improve visibility and the accuracy of data by enabling users to update information on-demand, contributing to better planning and efficient operations.
5 – Center of Excellence
Intelligent Automation technologies such as RPA have grown in adoption and popularity over recent years. The challenge for many businesses is now how they scale the technology beyond initial deployments or POCs to deliver efficiencies and savings far wider within their processes. There are numerous reasons why many organisations struggle to achieve this, however, one of the most common is the lack of adoption of the technology by employees, either driven by lack of awareness or fear.
Conversational AI Use Case
A Conversational Assistant can be deployed by technology and Centre of Excellence teams to help increase understanding of new technologies in employees through providing them with an easy way to ask questions and find out information. Additionally, Assistants can also help to reduce the fear of new technology by providing employees with direct experience of it either directly through the use of conversational ai for FAQs or through the control of RPA bots and processes via it.
Conversational Assistants can also be used to support a more organic form of process discovery, enabling employees to submit ideas and utilising evaluation criteria to sore them for feasibility and ROI. Helping businesses to accelerate their automation pipeline.
If you would like to find out more about how your organisation could transform your processes and user experiences with Conversational AI Assistants, get in touch today.