The power of Chatbots in Enterprises

Marianne Williamson, the American spiritual teacher and author of several books, once said “Use each interaction to be the best, most powerful version of yourself.” Developers of chatbots are indeed taking this very seriously, with powerful bots that simplify lives and drive stakeholder engagements like never before. Intelligent bots that can self-learn and self-improve ensure that they are able to make sense of past interactions, interpret the nuances of a language and respond far more effectively. Thanks to technologies like machine learning and natural language processing, bots are being trained to learn from linguistic syntax, quirks, mannerisms and speech patterns to respond in the most relevant and engaging manner, figuring out when and if human intervention is required at any stage in the conversation and then instantly transferring the conversation seamlessly to a human.

Chatbots have been in existence for now over fifty plus years., The first chatbot ELIZA was created in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum to simulate conversation. While it is contentious whether it passed the famous Turing test, it is still indeed a very early attempt of machine learning and chatbots. PARRY was constructed in 1972 imitating a patient with schizophrenia. We’ve also seen ALICE, the first NLP based chatbot developed in 1994, SmarterChild, SIRI, Google Now, Cortana and Alexa. However, chatbots have spent several years in wilderness and have after long, now again made a comeback especially in an enterprise context with a myriad of use cases. Enterprises would need a clear cut chatbot strategy based on its own unique set of challenges, that they are able to execute to maximize returns from any chatbot investment.

Customer Service: It is expected that by 2020, over 80% of enterprises would serve customers through chatbots. Most companies are already in process or have planned to include this as a part of their tech adoption plans. According to a survey by Business Insider, chatbots may save businesses $23 billion in customer service representatives and another $15 billion in sales representatives. With chatbots, enterprises no longer need to be overwhelmed with unusually high call volumes. Irrespective of the time in the day or the day in the year, chatbots handle multiple requests and are always available 24/7, throughout the year. Chatbots handle customer queries, respond to complaints by interfacing with various backend applications and log tickets and even provide a query resolution. Along the journey, an intelligent bot would be able to recognize when the customer is getting frustrated with a conversation, and immediately then transfer the call to a contact center live agent who carries the conversation forward from where the bot left. They could also be used to gather customer insight from the numerous conversations and predict user actions.

Bots can bring life to user manuals for products purchased in specific industries such as consumer electronics or automotive segment. Once the customer purchases a product, the bot connects with the customer and provides them information via any communication channel they prefer on a need basis or based on push notifications. This bot could be a ready guide for any queries that the customer may have. The bot could also provide directions for reaching the nearest dealer for repairs or service related issues.

The usage of bots could also be via sensors connected with products / machines that could interact with the bot to send notifications or complaints without the need for human intervention. This would in turn say trigger and schedule repairs or ongoing service related processes.

Sales: Chatbots not only fetch leads and ensuring faster conversions, but they are also improving sales productivity. A sales chatbot can significantly save time and money while bringing in more and more leads. They could be used to automate common tasks such as account search, transaction updates and creation. They could organize appointments with qualified sales leads, or even be used to close sales. They could provide sales prospects with further information about a company’s business and services, thereby ensuring that the prospect already knows about the company before they speak to a sales agent. They could be integrated with a company’s website to then create a new online business model to accelerate sales cycle. Businesses could print a scan code in their visiting cards, that when scanned could fire up a chatbot that can respond to any query. They could also integrate this into their social media pages such as Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter to then direct people to the chatbot.

Other business processes: Chatbots can handle queries for the HR, Procurement and IT department as well as handle processes such as employee or supplier onboarding. It could act as a personal assistant to all employees and help them with a variety of tasks such as sending reminders, scheduling meetings, booking leaves, and other tasks such as arranging for accommodation, travel etc. Chatbots could provide updates at pre-set intervals, inform the internal organization about new policies and procedures or even provide information to the sales teams on new products and services launched. It can act as a go-to-place for frequently asked questions, as employees can have access to information at their fingertips without having the need to log into multiple applications. Chatbots could also provide an interface to an enterprise’s external stakeholders such as vendors who may want information on the status of invoices or to send invoices or download vendor account statements.

The possibilities of advancement and new developments in the field of chatbots is numerous. Texting is the most widely used mode of communications on smartphone. WhatsApp is reportedly handling over 30 billion messages a day. The release of AlphaGo Zero could potentially mean that reliance on data would become less critical as compared to identifying use cases with high volume of iterations for the AI to start learning. Chatbots will learn to do new things by going through a wealth of information. They could spot patterns, detect response in reaction to a stimuli or get more predictive in their learning curve. Voice interfaces will get more powerful enabling superior ease of interaction. Chatbots could also let users leverage applications without really installing it on their smartphone or device.

Enterprises are indeed taking this space very seriously. Bots are increasingly making interactions seamless, while maximizing efficiency and significantly reducing costs. Chatbots will make sifting for information from multiple applications or accessing websites for information obsolete for stakeholders. It can provide scalability in executing processes. Eventually, we will perhaps see a scenario in the future where stakeholders across the company can use their own chatbots to manage all their tasks efficiently. This doesn’t seem like a far reality.

Srividya Kannan
Founder, Director - Avaali Solutions Pvt Ltd