Conversational artificial intelligence platforms are changing the game when it comes to creating an enhanced customer experience.
According to recent research, the global conversational AI market size was estimated to be $7.61 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to reach $47.6 billion by 2033. This signals that businesses across all industries are clearly embracing conversational AI technology as part of their sales and marketing strategies.
However, identifying the best conversational AI platform for your customer service operations and marketing strategies requires a detailed eye to find a comprehensive solution.
The Rise of Conversational Artificial Intelligence Platforms
When you perform an online search for conversational AI platforms, you’ll be flooded with several options. While there are many virtual assistants, conversational AI chatbots, and other conversational AI solutions to choose from, pinpointing the distinctive top conversational AI tool for your business processes isn’t easy.
You need to examine all aspects of how a conversational AI platform works, from seamless integration with your human agents to the conversational AI platform’s performance in speech recognition or user intent. Additionally, this process isn’t completed in just a few days.
An expert in the latest generative AI technology, generative AI capabilities, conversational AI software, and conversational data can help you filter your endless options to find the best conversational AI platform. In the meantime, when it comes to enlisting a conversational AI platform to enhance customer support and customer engagement, it’s helpful to have a foundational understanding of what sets these varying AI tools apart.
Table of Contents
Conversational AI vs Chatbots
Advantages of Using Conversational AI Solutions
How to Pick the Best Conversational AI Platform
Navigating Conversational AI Solutions with Expert Guidance
Enhance Your Business with the Best Conversational Platform with C1M
How conversational AI works
A conversational artificial intelligence platform is powered by natural language processing and natural language understanding, and the process typically unfolds as follows:
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) – Natural language processing allows the conversational AI platform to extract user intent from user input via text or audio, translating this into structured data.
- Natural Language Understanding (NLU) – The natural language understanding platform processes this data based on grammar, meaning, and contextual understanding to comprehend customer inquiries. Natural Language Understanding effectively acts as a dialog management tool to create appropriate responses and conversational flows, based on customer behavior and customer interactions.
- AI Model and Natural Language Generation (NLG) –An AI model predicts the best and most accurate responses based on user intent and conversational analytics and data. This allows for context-aware conversations that create personalized customer experiences.
- Note: Often, the user -friendly interface, Natural Language Processing backbone, and AI model all come from the same AI platform provider, but this is not always the case. For specified and custom solutions, a business may benefit from using different AI tools or AI platforms for a comprehensive conversational AI solution.
Conversational AI versus chatbots
Conversational AI platforms and chatbots are often used interchangeably. While chatbots are a subset of conversational AI, there are some key differences between advanced conversational AI solutions and their older chatbot predecessors.
- Chatbots rely on predefined rules or responses, similar to how phone trees work in voice calls. However, an AI platform uses machine learning and advanced algorithms to understand human conversations better.
- Chatbots are an excellent fit to automate tasks that are usually – and frequently – handled by your human agents and contact center personnel. These include common contact center questions like hours of operation, location, and basic FAQs. However, conversational AI platforms are better suited for more in-depth questions and better customer experiences, which can also lead to enhanced sales.
- Chatbots do not continuously operate with machine learning, while conversational AI platforms depend solely on advanced machine learning algorithms.
Conversational AI allows for natural conversations via speech recognition and cognitive response systems, and conversational interfaces can integrate seamlessly across various communication channels. While chatbots may only have a lone messaging platform, like Facebook Messenger, a conversational AI platform can handle voice calls, digital channels, and other multiple channels, and still simulate human conversation.
Advantages of using conversational AI solutions
According to a 2022 report, 77% of human agents believe that automation tools like conversational AI platforms will enable them to focus on more complicated tasks, and this percentage is continually growing.
There are multiple benefits across all aspects of your operations when it comes to launching a conversational AI solution, and a sample of these benefits is as follows.
Useful operational efficiency
According to a Deloitte report, 81% of contact center executives are investing in artificial intelligence solutions to improve operations. These solutions allow contact center personnel to focus on more complex tasks and conversations.
Better customer support
With a solid AI platform, customer conversations can occur 24/7 on your customers’ schedules instead of during regular business hours and/or when your human agents are available. This improves customer support from the start, as customer engagement can occur at any time, not just when your contact center is fully staffed.
Enhanced employee experiences
When first considering conversational AI solutions, many businesses are concerned that an AI platform will effectively replace their current human agents or contact center personnel, which could lead to multiple valuable team members losing their jobs.
This is most definitely not the case. Instead, an AI platform is designed to take on the more repetitive tasks that naturally pop up in the customer support realm, acting as virtual agents that can handle customer conversations. As a result, your human agents can orchestrate more advanced and challenging customer conversations and embrace new initiatives and tasks that provide a better customer experience across the board.
Improved data collection
Some AI platforms don’t just act as virtual assistants that can only field customer service inquiries. The best AI platforms also utilize all these conversations to create valuable insight into your customer journey. By analyzing these customer conversations, marketing teams will have valuable insights into customer preferences and trends and can enhance their sales and marketing strategies accordingly.
Better personalization
The best AI platforms are effective because they can provide personalized customer interactions; so much so that a customer is often unable to tell if they are chatting with human or virtual assistants. A personalized customer experience leads to better customer satisfaction, as the AI platform can tailor suggestions, recommendations, and even upsells that match each distinctive user’s intent.
Useful self-service solutions
Modern customers prefer to have access to self-service options, whether it’s chatting with virtual agents 24/7, or effortlessly being guided to knowledge bases, FAQs, and tutorials that align with their distinctive queries. A conversational AI platform is at the front of self-service solutions and options, giving customers more freedom to find the exact answers and information they are searching for.
How to pick the best conversational AI platform for your business
The perfect conversational AI platform for your organization is highly personalized, and you need a conversational and generative AI expert like C1M to help you sort through the countless options. Furthermore, it’s essential to look for the following qualities in the best enterprise conversational AI platforms to ensure seamless integration and the best customer experience possible.
Technical considerations
Integration
Seamless integration is key to launching a conversational AI platform, so be sure to take your existing technology stack into account when weighing your options. Does the preferred conversational AI platform integrate easily with your customer relationship management infrastructure, website, data analytics, and other crucial business tools? Make sure the AI platform aligns with your existing technology and operations so that you’re not investing in costly upgrades for your own systems.
Security
Ensure that your AI platform prioritizes data security, especially if you are in an industry with rigid standards and regulations, like the healthcare or financial industries.
Ability to scale – If your company grows in the future, can your AI platform keep up? You want to ensure that your conversational AI solution can continually provide an exceptional customer experience, even if your traffic and customer base grow exponentially in the months and/or years to come.
Communication channel considerations
- Customer preferences – How do your customers generally connect with your organization? Is it through your website, voice calls, and/or social media? Make sure your AI platform can handle human conversation in various forms and channels for optimal results.
- Ability to work with human agents – Sometimes, customer inquiries are simply too complex for an AI platform, and the best AI solutions can hand off a virtual agent inquiry to a human agent when the situation calls for an actual human conversation.
Adaptability and customization
Branding considerations
Conversational and generative AI solutions can certainly mimic human language, but the best conversational AI solutions can conduct a human conversation in your organization’s unique branding voice. For example, a financial institution will likely have more formal conversations versus a toy store or local watering hole, so ensure your AI platform can align with your distinctive brand voice and style.
Self-learning capabilities
One of the best aspects of conversational AI platforms is that they adapt and continue to learn with every human conversation. As natural language conversations are facilitated and increase, your AI platform should continually improve its conversation quality and ability to identify user intent.
An expert in generative AI and conversational AI will help you identify the most advanced conversational AI platforms available so that you’ll have peace of mind that your customer service and customer experience will constantly improve over time.
Language and communication
When it comes to automatic speech recognition, can your preferred conversational AI solution recognize multiple languages besides English? What about slang terms or heavy accents? Do your research to ensure that your conversational AI platform of choice can adapt to all types of queries and answer all questions, even if the user’s intent is a little muddled or hard to understand.
Training and support
- Ease of use – Does your preferred conversational AI platform have an intuitive user interface? Can customers easily connect with your AI platform, and quickly? Make sure that your AI platform has features that allow for an easy and seamless customer experience, regardless of how they connect with your organization, (like via a mobile device, desktop, or over the phone.)
- Ease of training – You’ll also want to ensure that you are able to effectively train your human agents and personnel on your new AI platform, and that the launch of your conversational AI solution is a seamless venture that does not interrupt operations. Your personnel need to understand the new role of the AI platform and have an in-depth understanding of the inner workings of your conversational AI tool and how it correlates with their own workload.
- Marketing features – Conversational marketing is a realm of marketing that is arguably in its infancy, but the sheer amount of data that a great conversational AI platform can provide can be an invaluable resource for plotting out future sales and marketing campaigns. Look at your preferred conversational AI solution’s data and conversational AI analytics features. With in-depth insight into your customer behavior, customer journey, and ongoing trends, your marketing initiatives will surely benefit.
Navigating Conversational AI Solutions with Expert Guidance
At C1M, we are experts at all generative AI and conversational AI advancements. We can serve as your resource for navigating through the seemingly limitless options for conversational AI solutions.
There are different considerations to keep in mind when selecting a conversational AI platform. The best conversational AI platform for a financial institution or healthcare provider may not be the right fit for a sales-driven retail store and identifying the right tool (or tools) is not a simple venture that can be conducted with a scant amount of research or a few online searches.
Enhance your business with the best conversational AI platform with C1M
Reach out to our expert team today to take a deeper dive into the many conversational AI solutions available. Together, we can start plotting your path to implementing conversational AI into your business.
With the right conversational AI platform behind the scenes and an expert hand guiding the way when it comes to implementation and maintenance, you’ll be amazed at how much you can save on costs and time while improving your customer’s experience in every way.
