No one relishes calling customer service. There are entire message boards dedicated to the trials and tribulations that both consumers and businesses face within the task of providing one-on-one interactions between them.
For businesses, conversing with customers is expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with human error. For consumers, it can be frustrating, with long wait times and poorly trained customer service reps providing them with a reflection of businesses that can damage their relationship.
While text-based chat bots have been around for quite some time, it is with the renaissance of AI that using technology to help ease the burden of consumer interactions for businesses and improve the experience for customers. Enter: the conversational interface.
What is a conversational interface?
A conversational interface is any AI program that mimics human interaction through either voice or text interfaces. From rudimentary chat bots to advanced voice assistants, the purpose of these interfaces is to provide a way for businesses or products to interact with consumers for a variety of tasks, from setting calendar reminders to addressing customer service complaints.
How AI has revolutionized the conversational interface
Conversational interfaces have been around for a number of years, largely in the form of chat bots that can interact with users through a series of pre-programmed responses, usually in conjunction with icon-click prompts to ensure that the consumers are inputting the correct commands, as chat bots are unable to adapt to many of the common errors that humans make in natural speech.
People don’t stick to a perfect, pre-determined script, so something more intelligent is needed for conversational interfaces to properly shoulder the burden of positive, natural consumer interaction
Enter, AI. Natural language processing AI allows conversational interfaces to truly “understand” what people are saying when they speak or type. It can “think” around human errors like misspelling and in many applications understand and respond to audible human speech. It is not a pre-determined set of commands, it is an immersive experience that takes the responsibility away from the consumer to be understood and puts it on the technology to understand.
Why conversational interfaces are the future of customer engagement
The speed at which businesses must move is ever-quickening, and simultaneously, so is the demand for a personalized relationship with their customers. Trying to maintain a consistent brand experience for customers is more important than ever, while still streamlining and maximizing the use of resources for businesses.
Thankfully, with intelligent, natural language processing conversational interfaces being integrated into all sorts of applications, businesses will be able to ensure a consistent brand interaction experience for their customers that feels as natural as picking up a phone and talking to a friend.
Their simpler needs can be met without any human interaction at all (such as answering common questions) or the more complex issues can be flagged and sent to a human moderator who has access to all the previous information gathered, therefor maximizing the use of human resources and preventing the customer from having to repeat information, creating a seamless and expedited experience.
This means more consistent brand image, more efficient use of resources, and a positive, personalized experience for customers, all made possible through AI.