Conversational AI: what is it and what can you do with it?

‘Conversational AI’: a popular term that marketers love to fling around the digital web - ours included. The term lends itself to an innovative image and sounds pleasingly high-tech.

But what is it? Why are people convinced it is the future of customer service? And how can you use it for your company? You can read it in this blog.

First of all: what is conversational AI?

Right. Beneath the fancy, high-tech veneer, ‘conversational AI’ simply means that a conversation takes place with a conversation partner that answers thanks to artificial intelligence. Although the software behind artificial intelligence can differ, the result is the same: the computer has an answer ready to more questions.

So AI makes the computer smarter. The combination of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and traditional chatbot software means that more and more companies are putting a digital colleague on customer service.

Chatbot vs. AI chatbot

A chatbot does not always work on the basis of artificial intelligence. The ‘ordinary’ chatbot works on the basis of the rules you teach the bot. Often this is what is known as a ‘button bot’: the chatbot that leads the customer to the right answer by offering answer options they can click on.

This is where the chatbot differs from the AI chatbot. The AI chatbot learns to make connections between different subjects, categories and question variations. In this way the bot learns to recognise questions and link them to the right answer. The chatbot then does not have to ask the customer to phrase their question differently, for example. The AI chatbot recognises the question faster, therefore answers faster, so the conversation runs more smoothly. That way a conversation is genuinely simulated.

Why is conversational AI nicer for the customer?

It was already mentioned above: thanks to conversational AI the conversation runs more smoothly. The customer has to repeat themselves little or not at all and gets the correct answer to their question faster. The speed and accuracy of conversational AI make the AI chatbot more user-friendly for your customer. We see that reflected in our customers' figures too: the AI chatbots show better numbers around customer satisfaction.

The future of conversational AI

What makes conversational AI and the AI chatbot so popular? In many cases a button bot does its job up to a point as well. The AI chatbot earns its success through the human technology behind it. Never before did a conversation with a robot come so close to a human conversation.

The AI software makes contact more personal, more human and frictionless. That the focus on customer service is becoming ever more pronounced at companies has certainly been clear since the pandemic.

Trends show that this will keep growing in the coming years too. Companies have therefore invested en masse in automating customer service. With customer satisfaction as the driver of success, the technology will make bigger leaps as well. There is, for instance, more and more research and development around chatbots that can also detect emotion in the customer, in order to give an even more fitting answer.

Not only for customer service

It is also expected that conversational AI will be used in more areas than customer service alone. Think for example of conversational AI for the HR department at large organisations. Questions about HR-related matters such as sick leave, holiday days and policies around work can be answered thanks to conversational AI.

An HR employee no longer has to spend time on this, and the colleague has an answer straight away. The expectation is that conversational AI will support people in various ways in the future.

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