Assistive technology 3: Conversational AI

Conversational artificial intelligence

Conversational artificial intelligence, often referred to as conversational AI, is a subfield of artificial intelligence that focuses on enabling machines to engage in human-like conversations with users. Conversational AI systems are designed to understand natural language, interpret user input, and generate appropriate responses, simulating a conversational interaction.  By ‘natural language’ we mean language as we use it to communicate between friends, colleagues and family members.

Conversational AI has broad applications, including customer support chatbots, virtual assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, online chat services, and more. It is intended to improve user experience, automate tasks, and enhance communication by enabling users to interact with machines in a natural and conversational manner.

Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is widely used in customer service to improve the customer experience, streamline support processes, and provide efficient and effective assistance to customers. Here’s how conversational AI is used in customer service:

Chatbots:

• Chatbots are AI-powered virtual agents that can engage with customers through text-based or voice-based interactions.
• They can answer frequently asked questions, provide information, guide users, and resolve common issues.

Automated routing:

• Conversational AI can use natural language processing to understand customer queries and route them to the appropriate department or agent.

Self-service portals:

• AI-driven self-service portals enable customers to find answers and solutions to their problems without the need for human assistance.

Personalised recommendations:

• Conversational AI can analyse customer data and preferences to provide personalised product or service recommendations.

Proactive engagement:

• AI can proactively reach out to customers with personalised messages, reminders, and offers.

Order tracking and updates:

• AI-driven systems can provide real-time order tracking and updates to customers, reducing the need for them to inquire about the status of their orders.

Natural language understanding:

• AI can understand and interpret customer inquiries in natural language, allowing for more human-like conversations.

Multichannel support:

• Conversational AI can provide support across multiple channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media, and messaging platforms.

Quality monitoring:

• AI can monitor the quality of customer service interactions, assessing agent performance and customer sentiment.

Scalability:

• AI-driven customer service solutions can scale to handle a large volume of inquiries and interactions as a business grows.

The impact of conversational AI

1. Chatbots offer 24/7 availability, reduce response times, and can handle a high volume of customer inquiries, potentially leading to improved customer satisfaction.
2. Customer inquiries are directed to the right personnel, reducing the need for customers to be transferred multiple times and improving the efficiency of support teams.
3. Customers can get immediate help, leading to faster issue resolution and reduced customer support costs.
4. Conversational AI can boost sales and enhance the overall customer experience by offering relevant solutions.
5. Proactive engagement can improve customer retention, reduce churn, and drive sales.
6. This enhances transparency and improves the customer experience by keeping customers informed about their orders.
7. Customers feel more comfortable and satisfied when communicating with a system that understands their language and context.
8. This allows customers to interact with a company on the channel of their choice, making support more accessible and convenient.
9. Companies can use this data to provide feedback to agents, improve training, and enhance the overall quality of customer service.
10. This ensures that customer service remains efficient and effective even as the customer base expands.

The impact of conversational AI in customer service is significant, leading to improved customer satisfaction, reduced response times, increased efficiency, and cost savings. By automating routine tasks and providing personalised assistance, companies can deliver a higher level of service to their customers, ultimately leading to better customer relationships and loyalty.

Challenges of conversational AI

However, it’s important to strike a balance between automation and human interaction, as some complex or sensitive issues may still require the human touch. Some users and customers also have negative experiences with chatbots because they aren’t able to provide the help they need (has this ever happened to you?).

Next: Listening to people talking about the impact of AI on their role

Having learned something about the three types of AI in use in the workplace, listen to three workers discuss their experiences of AI at work in the next step.