Conversational AI: What is it, and what should I do (now) with it?
Thomas Leek
| 4 min
The world of marketing and business in 2022 is full of futuristic (and difficult-sounding) words. This makes it difficult for most people to keep track of which technologies are useful to them and which are not. One such technology that we can assure you is useful, is Conversational AI. And while that may sounds very fancy and nice, but what exactly is Conversational AI? And how can you use this technology for your company? We will answer all these questions, and many more, in this blog.
Conversational AI: what is it?
To keep it as simple as possible: Conversational AI is a form of artificial intelligence in which the computer (chatbot in this case) has an appropriate and thoughtful answer to several questions. This allows the chatbot to have normal and organic social interaction with your customers. In turn, this will give the customers the feeling that they are not talking to a robot or computer, but instead to a human or real customer service representative.
But how does such a chatbot ensure that it has answers to all kinds of questions? Well, initially a chatbot has to be trained and gain knowledge. This is the process before the chatbot goes live. During this process you’ll type in questions for the chatbot yourself, while you also answer them. This makes sure that the chatbot knows exactly what to answer when the same question is asked. But it may be that a customer asks a question differently than you submit it. Or maybe that the spelling is off. Since there are probably hundreds of variations that can be used for the same type of question, submitting all these variations yourself would be a very time-consuming process. And luckily you don't have to!
This is because a chatbot with Conversational AI uses a technology with (yet) another difficult-sounding word: Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP basically ensures that your chatbot has self-learning ability. So if a question is asked in a different way than you’ve entered, the chatbot will recognize the question and answer it rightfully. It will also make sure it saves it. The chatbot can learn from these interactions and gain knowledge with all these types of interactions. These learning capabilities will ensure that a chatbot becomes a bit more human and can see through spelling, style and writing errors. Just like a real customer service representative would!
Why Conversational AI is the future of customer service
Now that you understand what terms like Conversational AI and NLP are, it probably becomes a lot more clear why these tools can be so important. Because the difference between a "normal" chatbot and a chatbot that uses Conversational AI is very big. A chatbot without AI will always feel like a computer. This means that the distance between customer and company remains big, and will never turn into a real conversation. This causes a lot of frustrations for customers when they’re interacting with a chatbot. Most chatbots without Conversational AI don't understand customers very well. As a result, the chatbot can not answer the customers correctly. This is why Conversational AI offers the perfect solution to ensure that your customers will not be frustrated and that they receive help in the right way.
But it's not just customer service where Conversational AI could help your business. You can also use the technology for marketing, sales (conversational commerce) and even with HR ! A good implementation of an AI chatbot (this means a chatbot with Conversational AI) make sure that the workload in your company will be drastically reduced. In addition, you also save (a lot) of costs. With all these advantages, we can say with confidence that a chatbot with Conversational AI is an important addition to any kind of company.
Success stories from practice
Theory is, of course, just theory. Fortunately for this theory, it translates well into practice with Conversational AI. Many of our customers who use AI chatbots are not only satisfied themselves, but their customers are too!
So, have you become curious about what a chatbot can mean for your business? There are probably more possibilities than you can think of right now. That is why we are happy to help you. By offering you a completely free demo, we can give you advice about the use cases of a chatbot for your company, and show you how easy and fast your new digital assistant can be live. Click here to schedule a demo, and discover how a chatbot can help your business.
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