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With its inherent intelligence, artificial intelligence (AI) makes our lives easier. If I want to play some music, I don’t need to swipe or click. All I have to do is say: “Siri, play my favourite song.” AI-powered solutions that can be interacted with in human-like ways extend beyond voice assistants and IVR. This is the reason why the demand for conversational AI has boomed over the years.
The concept of Conversational AI has been around for decades, but it wasn’t always popular. According to Google Trends data, interest in “conversational AI” was virtually non-existent from 2005 to 2017. However, interest in Conversational AI has grown exponentially over the last four years.
Conversational AI: What Is It?
Conversational AI is the artificial intelligence that enables machines to understand, process, and respond to human language. Consider conversational AI to be the “brain” that drives a virtual agent or chatbot. It is a collection of technologies that work together to enable efficient, automated communication via text and speech by understanding customer intent, deciphering language and context, and responding in a human-like manner.
How Does Conversational AI Work?
Conversational AI uses NLP as well as other complementary algorithms to engage in contextual dialogue. As a larger corpus of user inputs is amassed, your AI becomes more adept at recognising patterns and making predictions. Conversational Al interacts with customers in four broad steps, which we’ll look at to get a better understanding of this technology:
- First, a user inputs data either through voice or text.
- Next, the conversational AI platform analyses the data by applying natural language understanding (NLU) or automatic speech recognition (ASR).
- Then the platform uses natural language generation to generate a response to the user’s query.
- Furthermore, all user inputs are analysed to improve replies over time in terms of accuracy and coherence.
How Conversational AI Benefit Businesses
Conversational AI is on the verge of a major industrial revolution. Businesses of all sizes are investing heavily in this cutting-edge technology, and I believe these are some of the main reasons why:
1. Personalised conversation
Conversational AI enables more personalised customer conversations to be delivered at scale. Customers today expect an omnichannel experience, which conversational AI can help deliver at scale.
2. Handle spikes in customer calls
Conversational AI is critical in managing large volumes of calls and customer queries. The deployment of AI chatbots and voice assistants assists in dealing with call spikes, assuaging customer anxieties, and satisfactorily resolving their queries.
3. Boost customer service
Conversational AI platforms can assist in delivering on this promise of excellent customer experience by understanding the intent, emotion, and sentiment with self-service, increasing first contact resolution (FCR), and eliminating the need to wait in line to be resolved by a live agent.
Summary
Conversational AI is no longer just an optional technology; it is critical to developing a brand’s overall customer service strategy. With customer expectations skyrocketing, it is only natural to understand conversational AI in-depth, including how it can benefit your business, what areas you can implement conversational AI solutions, and more.
Related: What is the difference between a chatbot and a virtual assistant?
