In this guest post, Peter Vasey (pictured below) head of marketing for the Asia Pacific at LogMeIn, answers the most commonly asked AI and chatbot questions, including the big one: will it take my job?
ARE BOTS GOING TO TAKE OVER CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT (I.E. REPLACE HUMANS)?
We don’t see that happening. Instead AI can work with human agents to be more effective and deliver a better experience.
What AI allows organisations to do is to scale their customer engagement, offload basic queries and allow humans to do what they do best: provide more complex, nuanced responses.
We can’t deal away the human, empathetic side. That is needed.
ARE CHATBOTS THE ONLY ROLE FOR AI IN CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT?
Chatbots are one channel and quite possibly the most obvious channel. Other AI-powered solutions like dynamic search bars and FAQs help consumers find the answer before reaching out to a business via another channel. Research has shown consumers almost always try this first before reaching out to customer service. Implementing AI to these self-service processes help businesses scale their customer service organisations by handling the most frequently asked questions and
Are chatbots going to take over the world? B&T sat down with AI workplace implementation guru Peter Vasey, head of marketing, Asia Pacific at LogMeIn to harvest his thoughts
allowing human agents to spend more time with the customers that really need them. Additionally, AI is working on the backend to help customer service agents answer questions quickly, and offer tailored recommendations to customers. It allows new agents to get up to speed more quickly, or existing agents to build their knowledge on new processes or products.
WHAT ARE THE KEYS TO SUCCESSFULLY USING AI IN CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT?
The first is the ability to understand natural language. Humans communicate in various ways to ask the same question. AI-powered customer engagement solutions need to understand these nuances.
The second is that it has to be contextual. It needs to understand not just the words the customer is saying, but the intent behind those words. If I work for a travel site that has a chatbot and I ask “what gate does my flight leave out of?” I expect the bot to not only understand the question I am asking, but also to put together that I booked a flight a few weeks back and the details of that flight so that it can accurately answer me.
Another critical key to success is transparency. Let your customers know that they are talking to a bot. They will probably figure it out anyway. Don’t try to
fool them. A recent report from Capgemini highlighted that two in three consumers want to know if they are interacting with an AI-enabled system or a human. And of those consumers who were aware that they had engaged with AI, 69% were satisfied with their AI interactions. The reason for this is that if customers think they are talking to a human they are going to expect that the bot can do everything a human can do, which can be a recipe for failure.
And finally, don’t expect that bots will replace human agents. The best result is when humans and bots work hand-in-hand. There are some things bots are good at and other tasks that are best suited for a human agent. Having both in the conversation allows for a better experience for the consumer.
I HEARD YOU NEED AN ARMY OF DATA SCIENTISTS TO RUN A CHATBOT. IS THAT TRUE?
Not necessarily. A highly customised solution will require people to build it, from programmers to data scientists, etc. The good news is that AI has made such an impact in the world of customer engagement, there are many solutions that remove that heavy lifting and don’t require the mountains of data or data scientists to get it up and running and add value.
