Build Conversational AI Agents to Transform Customer Experience: Ruben Harris x Timur Meyster

Gupshup Converse helps businesses build rich two-way conversational journeys across the customer lifecycle. Business users can leverage advanced no-code tools to configure customer journeys, bot flows, and auto-trigger contextual messages. Interactions across the customer funnel leverage Gupshup Customer360’s unified profiles based on customer attributes and real-time conversational events. Creating the most optimized customer experiences takes walking the fine line between the automation that enables convenience and the human touch that builds relationships.

So they really have to understand what they’re looking for as a goal first before they can make sure whatever they purchase or build or partner with is a success. I think that’s where we’re seeing those gains in conversational AI being able to be even more flexible and adaptable to create that new content that is endlessly adaptable to the situation at hand. “We know that consumers and employees today want to have more tools to get the answers that they need, get things done more effectively, more efficiently on their own terms,” says Elizabeth Tobey, head of marketing, digital & AI at NICE.

IBM watsonx Assistant is a market-leading, AI enhanced conversational marketing platform that helps businesses deliver exceptional experiences to prospects, customers and employees. Conversational AI chatbots are transforming customer service by providing instant assistance to customers, enhancing customer satisfaction, and reducing operational costs for businesses. The tools are powered by advanced machine learning algorithms that enable them to handle a wide range of customer queries and offer personalized solutions, thus improving the overall customer experience.

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Additionally, automated quality management streamlines the evaluation process, reducing manual effort and increasing efficiency. Kate Park is a reporter at TechCrunch, with a focus on technology, startups and venture capital in Asia. She previously was a financial journalist at Mergermarket covering M&A, private equity and venture capital. Chatbots ranked amongst the top two areas for integrating GenAI in APAC businesses, according to IDC’s Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending Survey Wave 1 January.

“Nearly two-thirds of business owners represented in that survey indicated that AI will continue to enhance customer relationships over the life of their business. So, I think it is imperative for business owners to stay abreast of the latest advancement,” she urged.cA key motivation for businesses to stay updated is AI’s significant enhancements in customer satisfaction compared to the previous generation of CRM bots. Understanding how to recommend the next product or appointment reminders and anticipating the customer’s needs is the new playing field. The backstop of customer support for the last 40 years has been the phone call to the call center, with the script, with the disjointed conversation, with the repetition, with the friction.

IVA Speech Enabled Payments eases the payment process with usability and accessibility via voice input. Its global reach for outbound SMS covers 180 countries, ensuring cost-effective and hassle-free outbound communication. In doing so, it is updated its Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA), released a new Broadcast SMS solution, and unveiled fresh number management tools, amongst other moves. Founded in 1976 in France, Decathlon is a family-owned sporting goods company which has over 2,000 bricks-and-mortar stores and 100,000 employees worldwide. We already see several telcos operating in Asia, particularly those with a digital-first approach, like Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone, tapping into the potential of RCS. If you’re not sure if this solution is right for your business, reach out to our retail department for a consultation.

The Conversational Insights product, formerly known as Contact Center AI Insights, analyzes real-time data from across customer operations to provide key performance indicators, inquiry topic categories to prioritize, and areas of improvement. AI-based analytics are applied to customer interactions and the Quality AI feature auto-scores customer conversations. Freshworks’ conversational AI is designed to make the customer service agent’s job easier through agent-assist tools that provide real-time response recommendations and next best actions. Features like Freshworks’ Smart Reply supporting agents aim to drive productivity by letting agents balance multiple conversations simultaneously in live chat and messaging channels. Without capitalizing on available technologies to deliver optimal experiences, companies run the risk of losing out on business.

For instance, in China, 37% of organisations face challenges in this regard, a figure that rises to 40% in Malaysia, 60% in Indonesia, and 60% in India. This shift accelerates response times and cultivates a sense of appreciation amongst customers. The Conversation Cloud consists of three key modules, Converse, Advertise, and Communicate, that enable conversational relationship management across the full customer lifecycle. At Netguru we specialize in designing, building, shipping and scaling beautiful, usable products with blazing-fast efficiency. After you express interest in one of the suggested jeans, the chatbot takes the opportunity to cross-sell by recommending a matching belt or a pair of shoes that would complement the jeans. The chatbot may also offer an upsell by suggesting a premium version of the jeans with additional features or a higher-end brand.

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And at its core that is how artificial intelligence is interfacing with our data to actually facilitate these better and more optimal and effective outcomes. Implementing chat-based assisted journeys, known as conversational journeys, on platforms with high user engagement (e.g., social media and messaging) can be key for businesses to engage and facilitate online transactions. This is already in motion—most consumers are informally engaging with both small and large businesses (e.g., messaging carpenters, doctors, bank representatives, and direct-to-consumer brands) on social media and messaging platforms. The first feature, omnichannel engagement, orchestrates customer experience across web, mobile, voice, email, and apps.

They will have to compete on ease of installation and speed to results, in addition to price. According to Gartner, not only will it better help serve customers, it will reduce agent labor ChatGPT costs by $80 billion by 2026. By striving towards this goal, Zendesk designs each of its solutions – new and existing – to ensure ease of use for developers and employees alike.

Enhanced team productivity and performance

So I think that’s what we’re driving for.And even though I gave a use case there as a consumer, you can see how that applies in the employee experience as well. Because the employee is dealing with multiple interactions, maybe voice, maybe text, maybe both. They have many technologies at their fingertips that may or conversational customer engagement may not be making things more complicated while they’re supposed to make things simpler. And so being able to interface with AI in this way to help them get answers, get solutions, get troubleshooting to support their work and make their customer’s lives easier is a huge game changer for the employee experience.

A ‘handover’ solution to allow customers to switch seamlessly to interacting with a live customer service agent for more complicated or sensitive issues was built-in from the start. One way the team says has proved highly effective to cope with more inquiries without impairing customer experience is an AI-powered customer messaging platform. This has enabled better personalized customer experiences through one-on-one conversations on social and messaging apps, says its UK customer loyalty Team Lead Charles Guth. As conversational AI grows in popularity, there will be a need for standardization across different platforms and chatbots. This will make it easier for businesses to switch between various chatbot providers and ensure a consistent customer experience.

In a customer service context, the two main types of chatbots you can use are rule-based chatbots and conversational AI-powered chatbots. Both types use conversational interfaces to handle customer interactions, like asking and answering questions. Both types of chatbots also function as virtual support agents, which helps businesses extend the capacity of their customer service teams. The potential for CI to create new opportunities for personalized customer engagement is immense. As CI technologies become more advanced, they will be capable of understanding not just the content of customer conversations, but also the context and preferences underlying these interactions. This deep level of understanding will enable businesses to offer highly personalized recommendations, advice, and support, transforming the customer experience into something truly unique to each individual.

The startup courts sales and marketing teams and is used by companies ranging from small teams to large businesses across the insurance, healthcare, telecom, and retail sectors. Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), Delonghi, online furniture company Cellini, and Malaysia’s home consumer electrical appliance maker Khind are among its customers. SleekFlow, a Singapore- and Hong Kong-headquartered social commerce platform that has built a conversational AI suite for customer engagement targeted to Asian markets, said Wednesday it had secured an additional $7 million in funding. The money will be used to continue developing its AI, as well as to penetrate deeper into Southeast Asia and the Middle East and make inroads into Europe. Now that we have a better understanding of rule-based chatbots and conversational AI-powered chatbots, let’s take a look at a few product examples to further clarify the nuances between these types of technology. Conversational AI refers to any communication technology that uses natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, and machine learning to understand human language.

Matt Voda, CEO of OptiMine Software, a marketing attribution company, refers to this concept as guided selling. “In the case of guided selling, some products and services have more complexity or configurations where the consumer may need education and on-the-fly support as they evaluate many complex alternatives and choices,” Voda said. ChatGPT App For Stosic, conversational analytics provide a great source of data about customer experiences, behaviours, and sentiment. The founders of Tampa-based Satisfi Labs believe a strategic acquisition will further their vision of changing the future of customer engagement through conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

IDC’s 2020 report predicts that conversational AI chatbots will handle over half of all consumer interactions. This number will only grow as businesses realize the importance of providing a great customer experience. Let’s now look at how conversational AI is changing customer experience for the better, along with some of the possible challenges companies might face as they progress down this road. Conversational commerce can benefit businesses in many ways, such as improved customer engagement, increased sales and conversion rates, and better customer retention.

To maintain trust and compliance, it’s important to test tools for accuracy before deployment. “When human beings make mistakes, we can forgive that; when machines make a mistake, we cannot forget that,” Rahman said. “We are piloting a lot of these things right now, but we will not let it go out without being 100% certain.” Ensuring the reliability and compliance of conversational AI is paramount, especially in interactions with HCPs and patients. AI has the potential to enhance the commercialization of new products and the ability to engage with HCPs, pharmacists, payers and patients. Consequently, customers experienced poor support, and Altshuler Shaham lost existing and potential customers due to missed leads. With advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), these use cases can understand and respond to natural language with information and knowledge that is custom or specific to an industry or domain.

47% of Gen Z and 46% of Millennials want to receive personalized product recommendations, and 40% of both groups want personalized service in e-commerce. The machine learning models used by chatbots may not always be accurate, which leads to chatbots not being able to understand the customer’s needs. Essentially a broad category of AI algorithms that can create new content based on the data that’s been used to train them, it includes text-driven algorithms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot, as well as image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney. See why chatbots are a great solution for enterprises to naturally and efficiently help their customers find what they’re looking for.

And our newest community, VKTR, is home for AI practitioners and forward thinking leaders focused on the business of enterprise AI. Praveen Gujar has 15+ years’ experience launching enterprise products in digital advertising and AI/ML. But actually this is just really new technology that is opening up an entirely new world of possibility for us about how to interact with data. And so again, I say this isn’t eliminating any data scientists or engineers or analysts out there.

A user might ask an AI chatbot to explain the difference between two products or to recommend a product based on specific parameters—such as a green swimsuit that costs less than $50 and is good for athletic activities. In response, the chatbot can provide recommendations, answer questions about the recommended products, and assist with placing the order. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Breaking down silos and reducing friction for both customers and employees is key to facilitating more seamless experiences. Just as much as customers loathe an unhelpful automated chatbot directing them to the same links or FAQ page, employees similarly want their digital solutions to direct them to the best knowledge bases without excessive alt-tabbing or listless searching. AI can create seamless customer and employee experiences but it’s important to balance automation and human touch, says head of marketing, digital & AI at NICE, Elizabeth Tobey. According to a survey by the Saudi Centre for Public Opinion Polling, 92% of Saudis use WhatsApp, making it an ideal channel for business communications.

However, scaling these humanlike conversational journeys has been challenging for both large and small enterprises. While larger enterprises have automated simple use cases through artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots (e.g., raising service requests and order tracking), handling complex or urgent interactions still requires human involvement. Consequently, crafting and scaling end-to-end journeys cost effectively across all key use cases remains a challenge for large enterprises. Conversely, small businesses, constrained by resources and expertise, are cautious about investing in automation until they achieve scale, relying on manual approaches. Thus, a democratized, affordable, and intelligent AI solution is imperative for the seamless implementation of end-to-end journeys. Most existing and upcoming apps across products and services are targeted toward the 200 million savvy digital users.

It can also provide real-time updates on the order status and location by integrating with the business’s order tracking system. “Data from these tools, such as customer sentiment, behavior or previous interactions with an organization, can inform how a company should interact with current and potential customers,’’ Crowley said. Blue Nile uses Freshworks products, including Freshdesk and Freshchat, to resolve approximately 90% of its customer queries during the first touchpoint. This is especially critical during the busy holiday season, according to Michael Hopkins, senior vice president of sales and service at Blue Nile. As the busy holiday season ramps up, jewelry company Blue Nile is giving its customer service extra sparkle, thanks to new conversational AI features from software company Freshworks.

Looking to the future, Tobey points to knowledge management—the process of storing and disseminating information within an enterprise—as the secret behind what will push AI in customer experience from novel to new wave. To streamline online communication, the most effective method was to automate responses to frequently asked questions. The organization required a chatbot that could easily integrate with Messenger and help volunteers save time by handling repetitive queries, allowing them to focus on answering more unique or specific questions. First, they may be susceptible to phishing attacks, where attackers try to trick users into revealing sensitive information such as login credentials or financial information. This can occur through the chatbot conversational interfaces itself or through links and attachments sent within the conversation.

Mosaicx is integrating both species of AI with a pronounced responsible, ethical approach to their adoption. The Gartner AI study cited earlier might be a bit outdated, although Jones noted that it is still relevant to today’s AI advances with conversational CX. In fact, a recent Forbes advisor survey talks about businesses adopting AI across wide ranges of their business, both internal and external, added Jones.

• Oliver highlighted that AI-enabled analysis of Teams call recordings has been particularly in demand, allowing businesses to assess the effectiveness of their people, processes and workflows quickly without needing to listen to calls manually.
• The GSMA and MEF RCS initiatives bring together some of the mobile industry’s leading operators, vendors, and service providers to help shape the RCS specification as well as implementation.
• This shift has ushered in the age of conversational intelligence, offering businesses the tools to create more nuanced, context-aware dialogues with their customers.

Strong conversational marketing strategies help enterprises improve their marketing campaigns and overall user experiences by anticipating customer needs and expectations as soon as the customer has made contact. With the rise of artificial intelligence or AI, chatbots equipped with it have become a popular conversational marketing tool because of their ability to conduct real-time conversations with customers and prospects in a natural tone. Emerging technologies and innovations in CI are set to push the boundaries of what’s possible in customer engagement. For instance, advancements in sentiment analysis, emotion AI or affective computing could enable conversational systems to detect and respond to subtle cues in a customer’s tone or mood, making interactions more empathetic and personalized. Additionally, the integration of CI with other technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) could create immersive customer service experiences, allowing customers to solve problems or explore products in entirely new ways. “One of the most useful ways we’ve used CI is in analyzing customer interactions to identify frustration points,” said Grant.

We hear a lot about AI co-pilots helping out agents, that by your side assistant that is prompting you with the next best action, that is helping you with answers. I think those are really great applications for generative AI, and I really want to highlight how that can take a lot of cognitive load off those employees that right now, as I said, are overworked. So that they can focus on the next step that is more complex, that needs a human mind and a human touch. And until we get to the root of rethinking all of those, and in some cases this means adding empathy into our processes, in some it means breaking down those walls between those silos and rethinking how we do the work at large. I think all of these things are necessary to really build up a new paradigm and a new way of approaching customer experience to really suit the needs of where we are right now in 2024. And I think that’s one of the big blockers and one of the things that AI can help us with.

Consider using chatbots or messaging apps to answer customer questions and provide recommendations. You can also use voice assistants, such as Alexa or Siri, to help customers who prefer voice communication. Talkmap offers a leading generative AI platform for contact center conversational intelligence and is used by some of the largest mobile operators and financial services providers. Talkmap uses generative AI and LLMs to transform customer conversations into game-changing visibility and actionable business intelligence, securely, continuously, and at scale. Enterprises automatically and dynamically discover new call reasons as they occur (no need to pre-define them) and understand the customer’s reason/intent.