Artificial intelligence innovations are helping customers increase customer satisfaction and reduce support costs.
Artificial intelligence innovations are helping customers increase customer satisfaction and reduce support costs.
Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technology is rapidly becoming an important communications tool between computers and humans. A company’s ability to use conversational AI in chatbots and other digital assistance solutions can have a significant impact on customer satisfaction and other metrics.
Greg Plum, senior vice president of strategic alliances at Markee and chair of the CompTIA Emerging Technology Community, and Mady Mantha, senior evangelist, conversational AI and NLU, at Rasa and member of CompTIA’s AI Advisory Council, discuss the benefits and challenges of developing conversational AI solutions in this episode of CompTIA’s From Promise to Profit series.
Who doesn’t enjoy wading through a maze of corporate customer service options to get help for a problem? The answer, presumably, is almost nobody. Customer service can be a frustrating experience for both the user who needs assistance and the business trying to help. Organizations today want to rely on more automated features to help customers in order to save time, money, and theoretically help customers more quickly.
Today, even chatbots are viewed with some skepticism, in part because initial expectations were too high when they were first introduced years ago, according to Mantha.
“There are certain things chatbots are very good at. It takes a lot of training data and improvements to get where you want to be,” she said. “Overall, conversational AI is a great way to offer superior customer experiences. Customers want to be immediately understood and heard. That kind of customer satisfaction is a key differentiator in today’s digital world.”
Innovations in AI technology have helped to transform the way companies interact with customers. Digital assistance solutions today are capable of providing a seamless, successful experience. Chatbots now are capable of advanced search capabilities within a conversation, which means users no longer have to navigate through a database or website for the answer they need. That allows companies to transition some HR or IT resources to perform higher-value tasks and to automate repeatable and simple tasks.
For example, Rasa helped one large telecom carrier simplify and improve customer service functionality during the pandemic, a time when up to 20,000 customers could be waiting to talk to a representative, Mantha said.
“COVID-19 really highlighted the need for a self-service option. We worked with the customer to create an automated chatbot,” she said. “The goal was to decrease wait times and time to resolution, relieving pressure from human agents. They wanted to create value for their customers to create simple tasks online. Chatbots can talk to hundreds of customers at the same time. For example, one of the most-asked questions was ‘I don’t understand my bill, can you explain it to me?’ That’s something a chatbot can quickly provide answers to.”
Rasa helped the carrier answer customers’ questions via the chatbot, but it also built in AI algorithms that accurately direct the customer to an appropriate human agent if it can’t answer the question, according to Mantha.
“A misrouted call is times more expensive than a regular call, and customers are not willing to put up with that kind of service anymore,” she said.
After launching in 2020, the carrier’s virtual assistant has increased from reaching 10% of messaging customers to 25% and it reached 750% ROI within three quarters, Mantha said. The project helped Rasa attract several other clients, building similar solutions with similar results.
“We saw great customer satisfaction scores, containment rates and net promoter scores,” Mantha said. “Having these proof points are a great way to continue working with biggest brands out there.”
“Conversational AI is a great way to offer superior customer experiences. That kind of customer satisfaction is a key differentiator in today’s digital world.” – Mady Mantha
When it comes to helping customers solve customer service issues through digital assistants and chatbots, it’s critical to take an outcome-based approach, said Mantha.
“Think about the customer’s current pain points, identify them and see if you can answer them through conversational AI,” she said.
One thing not to do: assume that conversational AI can solve every problem. “I wouldn’t start by saying ‘we definitely need conversational AI.’ I would start by looking at the pain points and see if AI-driven solutions can solve that. Think about opportunities for automation and start with a proof of concept followed by a data-driven metrics-based approach.”
Closely monitor the metrics tied to your goals and slowly start iterating the solution to reach milestones, then continue to build on top of it until all goals are met, Mantha added.
Watch the From Promise to Profit episode now to learn more about: