Conversational AI: The Future of Customer Experience, Sales, and Marketing

Executive Summary

Business leaders are exposed to a lot of innovative technologies and tools to help them scale their businesses rapidly. This technology is new, and companies have made great strides in implementing these solutions in many large enterprises. Early use cases successfully implemented were for customer service and support. AI was used for handling frequent and repetitive inquiries by offering instant responses and providing 24/7 support. The impact was a reduction in the load on human agents and increased satisfaction.

At the VOICE & AI Conference in Washington, DC in September, 2023, attendees saw some of the best demonstrations of how AI is improving business communication with clients and prospects. These are some of the main sectors and scenarios that can gain a lot from using this technology:

Conversational Agents – AI conversational agents are increasingly being used in customer service to improve efficiency and user experience. These agents use advanced technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning to understand and respond to customer queries. They can quickly retrieve information and provide answers to frequent questions, reducing the time it takes for customers to get the resolution they need. In more complex cases, a human agent can intervene to provide further assistance. This hybrid approach allows for a more seamless and efficient customer service experience.

Human Resources – Efficiently addressing internal inquiries, promptly delivering information, and decreasing the volume of routine queries managed by HR (Human Resources) through ticketing. Here are two use cases that demonstrate the benefits of AI in HR:

• Automated Recruiting: AI can help HR teams to efficiently screen resumes, schedule interviews, and even conduct initial interviews with candidates. This can help to reduce the time and resources required for recruiting, while also improving the quality of hires (Forbes, 2022).
• Employee Engagement: AI can help HR teams to better understand employee sentiment and engagement levels. By analyzing data from employee surveys, chat logs, and other sources, AI can identify patterns and trends that can help HR teams improve employee engagement (SHRM, 2022).
  
  

Retail and E-commerce–Assisting users in product discovery. By utilizing conversational AI, e-commerce vendors can assist customers in adding items to their shopping carts through voice commands, leading to an increase in sales and a more seamless shopping experience.

• Personalized product recommendations: Conversational AI can use data about a customer’s browsing and purchase history to provide personalized product recommendations through chatbots or voice assistants.

Banking and Financial Services– AI is being increasingly used in banking and financial services to answer queries related to account balances, transactions, and credit card applications, or even guide users through complex processes like loans or investments.

Some of the case studies on how AI is being used in banking and finance services include JP Morgan Chase using AI to analyze legal documents and contracts faster and more accurately (LinkedIn, 2022), and HSBC employing AI for money laundering detection, saving both time and money (Google Cloud, 2023). AI can also help banks detect fraudulent activities and improve customer experience by providing personalized recommendations and services (Financial Times, 2022).

Healthcare – AI is being increasingly used in healthcare to provide initial medical guidance, appointment bookings, medication reminders, or address common medical inquiries. AI-powered chatbots can schedule and remind patients of their upcoming in-person visits or simply notify related patients of important health reminders (Telemedicine Arizona, 2022). One example is the chatbot myCheck-in, which was developed by Myriad Genetics (Telemedicine Arizona, 2022).

Travel and Hospitality– The travel and hospitality industry has been revolutionized by the advent of technology. With the help of technology, travel companies are now able to provide a seamless experience to their customers. For instance, travel companies are now able to assist their customers with bookings, check-ins, itinerary planning, and answering frequent travel-related questions.

Conversational AI can provide significant benefits to any industry that involves regular interactions with users or customers, whether for support, information sharing, or transactions. As the technology continues to evolve, it will become even more deeply integrated into various sectors, increasing efficiency, and enhancing the overall user experience.

Introduction to Conversational AI

Conversational AI is a form of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand, process, and respond to human language in a natural and intuitive way. It is far more advanced and has been the farthest along in the adoption of AI. Conversational AI uses the power of AI for analyzing huge pieces of data, i.e., Analytical AI. Using this analytical function, it can predict (Predictive AI) and generate responses using Generative AI. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers, providing a more personalized and efficient experience.

Conversational AI is changing the way businesses interact with their customers. It can improve customer service, boost sales, and make tasks easier, so it makes sense that more businesses are using chatbots for different purposes, like customer service and HR. Find out the many benefits that Conversational AI can offer for your business.

The roots and evolution of Conversational AI

Conversational AI has come a long way in overcoming challenges such as accurately comprehending and processing human language, maintaining context in conversations, and providing relevant responses. With the continuous advancements in AI and machine learning, Conversational AI is poised to bring greater efficiency, scalability, and improved user experiences across various industries.

In 1999, I had my first experience with voice recognition technology. I used my phone to ask questions to a company named TellMe Networks, and I was impressed by how efficiently it provided me with voice results or even connected me to the business. The technology even recognized my Indian accent, which amazed me. In 2007, Microsoft acquired TellMe Networks.

The potential of Conversational AI on mobile devices was first highlighted by the introduction of Siri, Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant. This was followed by the launch of Amazon’s Alexa in 2014 and Google Home/Assistant in 2016. Major tech companies began to invest heavily in speech recognition and natural language understanding. In 2021, Microsoft acquired Nuance, a voice intelligence company specializing in conversational AI and cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence for healthcare providers.

Conversational AI becomes an enterprise solution with proven return on investment (ROI)

The earlier technology was for consumers, but voice and Conversational AI have also advanced a lot in the B2B area. Here are some examples of how they are used:

• Customer Conversations:
  • Analyzing voice conservations and providing intelligence around trends, keywords, and sentiment.
  • Multimodal analysis of voice, text, chat, and email to provide a holistic view of top reasons for calls, categorize calls, and provide intelligent insights enabling businesses to analyze, predict, and solve call volumes.
• Sales Intelligence
  • AI can significantly enhance sales intelligence by providing valuable insights into what works and what does not, helping sales teams close more deals.
  • Companies like Gong, Clari, and Chorus have been established to analyze video conversations and voice, email, and chat data to improve sales performance.
  • By leveraging AI and machine learning, these companies can identify patterns and trends in customer interactions, providing sales teams with actionable insights to improve their strategies.
  • AI can also automate routine tasks, freeing up sales representatives to focus on building relationships and closing deals.
• Voice and Chatbots
  • The advent of voice intelligence also provided companies with a solution for improving their customer’s experience, making call centers more agile by:
    • Using technologies such as phone numbers and voice signatures to reduce call times and automate caller verification.
    • Enabling the customer to interact with the voice bot and get further along instead of waiting.
    • Routing the customers based on their identity and call history, then assisting the agents with the information collected and prompting them to ask questions and suggest products.

2024 Conversational AI Trends

1. Using AI to improve customer experience, sales, and marketing is not new; companies have worked on this for at least a decade. See my article Outperform Your Competition by Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Your Sales and Marketing Funnel. For B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) organizations, this area has the highest ROI and is entirely measurable.
2. Business owners should prioritize the top use cases for ROI and business outcomes and work with their counterparts in Information Technology (IT), Data Science, and so on, to find solutions. The context explained in a panel discussion was where the business leader asks the Data Science leader how to use AI, and the Data Science leader asks what you would like to use it for. Here is an excellent recommendation from my colleagues at Info-Tech Research Group for evaluating AI solutions: Select Your Generative AI Vendor
3. Having a human being in the mix. From taking orders at fast food drive-throughs to handling calls, early adopters of Conversational AI agree that it is not a simple off-the-shelf solution. These AI bots are designed to assist humans and intervene when necessary. For instance, Joanna Stern, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, tested the Hardees Voice bot ordering system developed by Presto, a technology company, and found it to be effective. “Of my thirty passes with Presto’s system, a human only had to step in three times to help,” Stern said. (WSJ, July 26, 2023).
4. Empathy training uses voice analysis and speech emotion recognition to educate representatives to respond more effectively to customers by identifying the feelings they express when speaking to service representatives.
5. Developing custom AI models versus publicly available models. Many companies built their AI models with open-source large language models (LLM). Ther trend now seems to lean toward proprietary models to ensure compliance, increase data privacy, and have an LLM specific to a vertical or functionality.
   
   

Recommendations

Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service leaders should explore these technologies with their Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to radically improve customer experiences, speed up current sales, and increase expansion revenue through Conversational AI.

Visit the Info-Tech Research Group’s AI Research Center for resources to get started AI Research Center.

Conclusion

There is a lot of hype around using AI. Leaders are pressured not to miss the boat and to implement AI quickly in their business. This is driven by the mass scale at which ChatGPT was introduced to the world with a simple to use browser interface. Companies that were early adopters of AI used it to solve problems like customer service hold time, correct routing of calls, identifying customers versus new prospects, and creating one-to-one marketing experiences by analyzing behavior and predicting intent. Front-line teams, like customer support, are now assisted by Conversational AI bots, which eliminate repetitive, mundane tasks and allow teams to focus on the customer.

All these AI initiatives were not vanity initiatives; they were funded because the ROI on these initiatives was measurable. Research and explore the advances in Conversational AI, and with the right mission and goals, you will get buy-in for the investment in Conversational AI.

To test the power of this technology, I was impressed by a demo on Yellow.ai. You can try it by going to https://Yellow.ai/yellowg, entering a website address, clicking “generate,” and having a newly created chat bot answer questions about your example website.

Other Related Publication and Deliverables:

Select Your Generative AI Vendor

Get Started with Artificial Intelligence

Outperform Your Competition by Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Your Sales and Marketing Funnel

Generative AI: Market Primer

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