Customer experience has emerged as the most important differentiator for any business. More than pricing strategy or product features, it’s the personalized support and guidance companies give their customers that determines their likelihood of success. In fact, studies show that 86% of customers will actually pay more for a guaranteed good experience.
Conversational AI is emerging as a crucial tool among companies looking to enhance and optimize the customer experience for their clients. Not only does the right technology provide a crucial insight into the voice of the customer through natural language processing and understanding, but it paves the way for new customer service opportunities.
With the right Conversational AI tools, businesses can develop engaging, efficient self-service strategies for consumers, pave the way to proactive service, and even empower agents to accomplish more. The question is, how do companies choose the right technology?
Here’s a simple guide to comparing conversational AI tech in 2023 and beyond.
Step 1: Evaluate the Conversational AI Landscape
The first step in choosing the right conversational AI technology is exploring the different kinds of technologies and tools available to modern CX leaders. In recent years, conversational AI has evolved drastically, with new discoveries in natural language processing and understanding algorithms, enhanced machine learning tools, and numerous opportunities for creating bots.
Today’s business leaders have a range of options to choose from, starting with intelligent chatbots which leverage conversational AI to support customers during the self-service journey, to voice-enabled solutions for personalized IVR experiences. There’s even the option to create virtual assistants specially designed to support employees in real-time, with next-best-action guidance, feedback, and coaching.
The generative AI landscape, and large language models is also having an increasing impact on the conversational AI space, allowing companies to create more intuitive bots and systems capable of delivering creative, human-like responses to queries. Conversational solutions built with generative AI could assist business leaders in building more powerful self-service solutions, as well as fantastic tools for proactive customer support.
Step 2: Set Goals for Conversational AI
After evaluating the current marketplace and the technologies available, business leaders need to determine what they want to accomplish with their conversational AI investment. While the primary focus of most companies is on improving customer experiences, increasing retention levels, and reducing churn, conversational AI tools can deliver a host of other benefits.
Some tools provide access to valuable automation solutions and analytical tools, which assist companies in securely collecting valuable data about the customer journey. These solutions, combined with customer journey orchestration tools, can assist businesses in enhancing every touchpoint with customers, and making more intelligent business decisions.
Conversational AI solutions can also provide deeper insights into the customer experience, offering information on the voice of the customer, sentiment, and consumer intent. In certain instances, they can even be used to enhance employee experiences, improving staff retention, and assisting teams in becoming more productive and efficient. Defining the core goals of a conversational AI strategy will allow team leaders to monitor the ROI more effectively from their investment.
Step 3: Define a Deployment Model
The next stage is determining how the company will deploy conversational AI into its CX workflow. There are numerous options available to business leaders today. Some organizations choose to develop their own bots and conversational tools from scratch, using SDKs and code frameworks. Others prefer to leverage the benefits of low-code and no-code tools offered by CX market leaders, to simplify the process of developing a conversational AI strategy.
Increasingly, powerful conversational AI tools are also appearing as an embedded part of many of the technologies business leaders already use for customer service and experience. CRM leaders are implementing these tools, alongside generative AI into their frameworks. CCaaS solutions frequently come with access to IVR systems, customizable workflows and self-service tools featuring conversational AI technology.
