Today, influential megatrends are reshaping the industry adoption of Conversational AI, reimagining value delivery in unforeseen ways. It includes the emergence of voice commerce, data-driven chatbot design, customer sentiment analysis, multi-lingual support, M2M conversations, voice assistants, and much more.

With proven benefits, enterprises are increasingly putting Conversational AI into action for enriching customer experience, improving bottom-line performance in the process. As per Deloitte’s Beyond Touch: Voice Commerce 2030 study, voice commerce will increase online sales. The decisive factor here is unimagined convenience for the customer, with the study predicting that over 30% of e-commerce sales will be driven via voice commerce by 2030.

Applications of Conversational AI

Businesses leveraging Conversational AI can become an emphatic organization that is more responsive to the customer’s needs. Chatbots depicts one of the most popular forms of Conversational AI. However, there are diverse applications of this emerging technology across business verticals, some of which include:

Online Customer Support: Conversational AI is being implemented by many companies for providing 24/7 customer service support at an optimized cost and much greater reliability.  E-commerce platforms use virtual assistance for product selection and customer service, which helps the business achieve higher customer satisfaction and service relevance.

HR Processes: Most of the time, employees call HR managers to know the information they can look up themselves. To maximize the HR department’s efficiency, a 24/7 employee service AI chatbot can be implemented to answer all the employees’ FAQs.  The HR chatbot is also helpful in passing any relevant information and real-time updates related to any changes in the company’s policy.

Retail & Ecommerce: According to Statista, worldwide e-commerce retail sales are expected to reach 5.4 trillion USD by 2022. At this growth rate, e-commerce platforms often struggle with manual sales and support systems that have their limits to delivering a seamless customer experience. As a respite, e-commerce and retail platforms are shifting towards Conversational AI to increase engagement, elevate the customer’s purchase journey, and offer personalized communication for the buyers.

Gaming: Gamers are usually engrossed and if there is a challenging level to complete, and they happen to face a technical glitch, they want it resolved immediately so that the momentum is not lost. Nowadays, many gaming companies have set up service centers to assist gamers whenever they feel stuck at a level. To help resolve common issues, an AI chatbot is set up to answer these queries. With this help, there is a high chance that the slump faced by gamers will end, and they are less likely to end the game mid-way.

Travel & Hospitality: The traveling customers expect to have their queries resolved on demand. It is where an AI-based chatbot can come in handy for companies that provide travel & hospitality services. Conversational AI is used to keep track of customers booking details, room preferences, opted traveling packages, travel dates, and many other details.

How Does Conversational AI Add Value to A Business?

Conversational AI is a technology that guarantees optimized ROI for growth-oriented enterprises. It brings value for both the customer and the employees and promises exceptional benefits for businesses, some of which include:

Substantial Cost-Savings: About 15 -70% of cost reduction opportunities are available for businesses with Conversational AI depending on customer channel interactions. The algorithm powering the Conversational AI bot can be trained to answer repetitive questions, allowing valuable human resources to focus on more strategic roles like customer relationship development and grievance redressal.

Increased Sales & Customer Engagement: Conversational AI allows customers to engage more frequently with the brand, creating a sense of trust among the target audience and ultimately increasing revenue.

The personalization feature can keep track of customer activity and recommend products or services depending upon their previous preferences.  

Deep Customer Insights: The customer’s interaction with the Conversational AI-based bot provides companies with data on what problems customers face and which issues need to be targeted and resolved on priority.

How Are Enterprises Implementing Conversational AI?

Let’s take a look at some real-life instances of some world-class organizations using Conversational AI to improve value delivery.

A Leading Airline Company Applies AI Chatbots

Germany’s largest airline company implements Conversational AI to update passengers on canceled or missed connection flights. The AI chatbots can answer all the FAQs that a passenger can have while boarding the plane.  If passengers are not satisfied with the answers of Chatbot, then they also interact with human agents without any waiting period. This way, customer service executives can spend more time answering complex and specific queries.

A Mental Healthcare Chatbot

A mental healthcare company makes use of a conversational AI-powered mental health chatbot that has made mental healthcare services more accessible for patients. It breaks all the barriers of mental therapy and allows people to have real-time interaction with the bot. Researchers developed the AI chatbot in collaboration with Stanford University to deliver behavioral therapy to patients at their convenience. It provides psychoeducation to the users and offers insights to deal with their mental issues by conversing with them.

Implementing Conversational AI:

• Making A Smart Adoption Strategy: While making the adoption strategy, businesses should figure out detailed customer persona, narrow down the scope, and use the data that is already available to set up the scene.
• Conversation Design: A lousy conversation design can lead to a bad customer experience. Conversation design plays a massive role in delivering a superior customer experience. A suitable conversation design must be sought out earlier in the development stage as it is easy to change.
• Choose The Right Channels for Integration: Before jumping into the development of Conversational AI, you should figure out which key channel and existing software you are to integrate with it, for example, company website, social media channels, CRM, emails, etc.

Even though Conversational AI has many applications today, there is still much room left for its development. Chatbots will become more personalized with time. According to a survey carried out by Deloitte, personalization is one of the significant fields of innovation and is responsible for 16 % of patents filed today.

Sources: Deloitte, Statista, Juniperresearch,

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The real game-changer in ecommerce came with the recent rise in artificial intelligence (AI). AI has progressed to a point where it has become an essential part of this industry. AI technologies have the ability to demonstrate intelligence that involves emotions and consciousness. With the combination of machine learning (ML), businesses can use algorithms to find patterns in large amounts of data and improve the recommendation system on their website and thus, strengthen the customer experience.

Hyper-personalization with predictive AI based analytics

According to a study by Adobe, although 83% of marketers said that they were familiar with machine-learning solutions, the application remains low, with only 14% of respondents saying they were using them.

In general terms, personalization is another name for recommendations, however, there are a lot of possibilities in personalization. For example, an ecommerce website showing simply the customer’s name after login is one form of personalization. Another example is showing separate landing pages for men and women. While personalization might include a customer’s name in emails or online ads, hyper-personalization involves more parameters like browsing and purchase history and other real-time behavioural data which is more complex as it goes beyond basic customer data. For example, hyper-personalization would include ads showing trekking gear based on the exact location where it was last purchased including payment method, applied coupons, social media activity and more. AI based predictive analytics play a huge role in a customer’s interactive buying process, it also is the driving force behind relevant and lead-generating campaigns.

Let’s take a look at some other important uses of artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) in ecommerce and their role in improving growth and personalization:

Drive product recommendations

The use of recommendation engines has become a significant part of ecommerce businesses; the best examples of a recommendation would be ‘customers also bought’ on Amazon or ‘people you may know’ on Facebook. This is possible with the help of a recommendation engine or system. A recommendation system is a tool used by companies to foresee a customer’s choice of product amongst a long list of suggested items. AI can deliver suitable suggestions based on a customer’s preference. AI, along with ML uses vast amounts of data to offer products they would be interested in, and data here encompasses a lot of things: images, clicks, numbers, words etc. Once all this data is stored digitally, it can be fed into a machine learning algorithm to generate suitable recommendations to the customer.

AI based chatbots for customer service

In an age of conversational commerce, any successful ecommerce business will most likely have AI based chatbots and voicebots on their online platform for driving sales and customer service. AI based chatbots and voicebots, which are powered by natural language processing (NLP), help in assisting customers at different stages of the sales and marketing funnel. To ensure a seamless customer experience, the integration of these assistants is essential for engaging customers. As per a report by Gartner, by 2021, more than 50% of enterprises will spend more per annum on bots and chatbot creation than traditional mobile app development. AI is capable of reducing the workload of customer service agents, as chatbots and voicebots can answer a majority of standard questions and increase the response time. They additionally aid in following a customer-focused approach. With accurate data and insights at their disposal, ecommerce businesses can understand the trends in sales and tackle issues such as abandoned shopping carts, collect first-party data, and notify about promotions and deals which help in humanizing the brand. From making initial contact to answering simple script based FAQs, these AI based agents add to the company’s credibility.

AI visual search and image recognition

A picture is worth a thousand words; an ecommerce product picture is perhaps worth millions to any ecommerce company. Many a time customers see a new product, however, when it comes to describing it they get stuck. Ecommerce websites have improved their interface with accurate text-based search, but many customers might not be aware of the vocabulary that adequately describes a product; we as humans are visual beings after all. It is for this reason that voice and image based search has picked up and will transform the customer experience of a company radically. According to a report by Gartner, ecommerce businesses that implement visual and voice search will increase their digital commerce revenue by 30%. With AI based visual search, customers can simply take a snapshot of the product and search online. The AI powered ecommerce platform can quickly identify the product and line up a list of similar products, turning the virtual world into a shopping catalogue. Visual search is capturing the customer’s attention slowly, as AI based visual search gains maturity, companies have started putting together a gallery of images to be at the forefront of the search engine results. Many ecommerce websites are using a customer’s product preference and with the help of AI, they are able to show a product the way a customer wants, with ease.

Catalog classification using AI and ML

Customer experience is the ultimate factor that separates successful companies. Having a simple ecommerce website will just not suffice. To ensure superior customer experience, ecommerce companies must provide an exceptional shopping experience. To accomplish this, the creation of optimized catalogs that cater to the exact needs of the customer is imperative. Buyers today research online, browse offline and purchase on a website that offers a seamless shopping journey. AI and ML advancements in retail cataloging help in the classification of catalogs based on-demand analysis, local preferences, buying habits and new trends. AI based product catalog management takes care of automating workflows such as product listing, product identifications, and price competition checks. By looking at historical sales, promotions, weather patterns and season, AI can help businesses create an optimized catalog by predicting future demand. The goal is to unify in-store and online.

The buzzword is AI. Soon, personalized online experiences powered by AI will become a basic expectation. Hyper-personalization is here and will remain. IGT has been helping top companies to drive success to their business by delivering a super personalized customer experience.

We have been creating opportunities by leveraging AI/ML to generate models to solve complex business problems with the right mix of robotics and humans. By augmenting decision-making based on vast and complex datasets, millions of variables/unstructured data and enormous distributed computational capacity, AI/ML plays a key role in providing new business outcomes. These technologies have disrupted the traditional way of marketing, customer insights and engagement.

Source:

• https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-top-strategic-predictions-for-2018-and-beyond/
• https://blog.adobe.com/en/2018/07/19/5-trends-transforming-ecommerce-personalization.html#gs.qlu224

Author:

Gurmeet Oberoi is a researcher and writer of change tactics and technologies in travel and other verticals, she frequently posts across the digital ecosystem. With 9-yrs of experience in communications and marketing, Gurmeet has a passion for travel and reading among other things. She can be reached at gurmeet.oberoi@igtsolutions.azurewebsites.net

The post Revolutionize your ecommerce CX with AI enabled hyper-personalization appeared first on IGT Solutions.

With technological advancements, decision making has also changed. With many companies offering comparable deals, and various types of offers catching a trend, consumers today have numerous options to choose from.

Gartner report predicts that 85% of customer interactions will be managed without humans by 2021. 

The travel and retail industry is getting better with the application of technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning). Conversational automation is one such technology that is gaining momentum by creating simulating human-like conversation through chatbots and voicebots. Chatbots are computer softwares that act like virtual text assistants to communicate with users using text messages. They are intelligent and can comprehend even vague queries submitted by users like ‘Australia hiking places’ or ‘Red shoes online’. They can be integrated in websites and mobile applications to help automated regular tasks and maintain customer service standards. Through their customer oriented communication, chatbots are transforming the travel and retail industry by connecting with users on a personal level.

Let’s look at some areas where chatbots are helping transform the customer experience

Travel assistance

From suggesting destinations to recommending closest airports, chatbots have become the go-to personalized assistants for many travelers. Instead of making innumerable calls and emails, customers can use the efficiency and swift response time that chatbots offer in making the right travel choices based on nuances of human dialogue, preferences and budgets. Furthermore, they can send out alerts about any delays in flights or cancellations and offer features in line with the company’s travel policy.

Ease of ordering online

As per Hubspot, 47% of consumers would not only prefer to receive recommendations through chatbots but also be willing to make purchases through them. While having a personalized offer is what consumers look for, chatbots also offer guidance in an online ordering process. In comparison to a physical store, the attention span of online shoppers decreases significantly, which is where chatbots offer an advantage by providing instant ordering assistance.

Feedback collection

Chatbots are not just meant to act like human representatives, they are there to give a holistic solution to the customer. While they are known to provide pre-travel or purchase assistance, they are also extremely useful in post-sales services like collecting feedback from users or asking them to leave reviews. They can automatically send reminders to customers to share feedback of their online experience in the form of ratings and reviews. In the process, if the user is unhappy with the service, it can address the grievance right there and address the issue in the moment.

As per Global Market Insights, the overall market size for chatbots worldwide would be over $1.3 billion by 2024. 

Multilingual Support

Chatbots are conversation tools that have been made to assist customers by understanding their requirements in the broadest possible sense. The digital revolution has broadened the internet user base including large number of non-English speakers. While many of us are used to speaking in English, we feel more at ease when we speak in our native language. Chatbots can be designed to be multi-lingual, which means, you can reach audiences in other countries and offer assistance in their language. Chatbots are anyway able to handle a large number of queries; with multi-lingual assistance, the bots would be able to handle specific and large number of queries efficiently and increase presence in high demand regional markets.

According to a Chatbot Customer Service Study by Invesp, 64% of internet users say 24-hour service is the best feature of chatbots.

Competitive Advantage

Chatbots can analyze a customer’s intent through their tone, choice of words, the pages visited on a website and the journey made on apps. Chatbots can meet the needs of a customer by keeping them engaged, providing high-quality experience and meeting their needs. They can encourage direct bookings and fully support the booking journeys. Based on past travel data, they can also up sell and cross sell by delivering the messages in a natural manner which would appeal the user. Similarly, in retail, chatbots can customize products based on their browsing history and products placed in their shopping cart. With a fast response rate, they can assist several customers at the same time, with tailored offers and 24X7 support which would contribute to the productivity and financial results of a company.

According to a study by Chatbots Life, the top 5 industries profiting from the incorporation of chatbots are real estate (28%), travel (16%), education (14%), healthcare (10%), and finance (5%). Another study by eCommerce chatbot statistics states that over 70% of chatbots accessed will be retail-based by 2023.

 It is highly likely that chatbot technology will be a preferred choice for many travel and retail brands as it will continue to improve customer experience and cost efficiency. IGT has helped several clients receive positive results with its conversational automation solutions. By using cognitive services like Natural Language Processing (NLP), Speech-to-Text, Text-to-Speech and Sentiment Analysis from industry partners like Miscrosft LUIS, IBM Watson and Google Dialog Flow, we have enabled our clients transform their customer service experiences. Our engagement models are flexible and can be customized to suit specific needs of the customer.

You can read more about our chatbot service here: https://www.igtsolutions.com/services/automation/conversational-automation/

Sources:
www.enterprisersproject.com/article/2019/12/rpa-robotic-process-automation-2020-5-trends
www.backlinko.com/chatbot-stats
www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/chatbot-statistics/

Author :

Gurmeet Oberoi is a researcher and writer of change tactics and technologies in travel and other verticals, she frequently posts across the digital ecosystem. With 9-yrs of experience in communications and marketing, Gurmeet has a passion for travel and reading among other things. She can be reached at gurmeet.oberoi@igtsolutions.azurewebsites.net

The post Chatbot: Enabling Enhanced Customer Service in Travel and Retail appeared first on IGT Solutions.