Conversational artificial intelligence in the contact centre, through chatbots, voicebots and digital assistants, is revolutionising the way companies interact with customers in pursuit of efficiency and continuous improvement in the Customer Experience. MST carries in its DNA advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning; allowing these innovations to generate more natural and effective interactions between humans and machines, thus significantly improving the customer experience (CX).
What is Conversational AI?
Conversational AI refers to technologies that enable systems to understand and respond to human language in a natural way. Unlike traditional bots, which follow pre-set scripts, conversational AI can understand context, interpret intent and generate appropriate responses autonomously. This not only facilitates the automation of routine tasks, but also enables more personalised and efficient interaction with customers.
Key Components of Conversational AI for MST
1. **Artificial Intelligence (AI)**: We incorporate systems capable of performing tasks that normally require human (agent) intelligence, for appropriate decision making and pattern recognition in order to provide feedback to our client. MST’s AI, in this context, uses learning algorithms to continuously improve its capabilities with the help of the internal development team that ensures continuous improvement.
2. **Natural Language Processing (NLP)**: This technology allows machines to understand, comprehend and generate human language in context. It includes techniques such as natural language understanding (NLU) to interpret the meaning of words and natural language generation (NLG) to create coherent and natural responses.
3. **Machine Learning (ML)**: Enables MST AI to learn from the data collected and improve as we accumulate interactions over time, which is crucial for adapting and refining responses to improve accuracy in customer interactions.
Benefits of Conversational AI for MST customers
– Task Automation: MST’s conversational AI can handle repetitive tasks with customers, autonomously answer frequently asked questions or escalate queries to the appropriate departments, reducing agent busyness so they can spend their time on more complex tasks with customers. In other words, it improves service productivity, reduces the TMO of interactions, reduces the SLA of attention as well as the SLA of abandonments, among others.
– Improved Customer Satisfaction: CSAT is increased because you can provide 24/7 service coverage, allowing customers to get fast and accurate answers at any time. And in terms of efficiency impacting CSAT, FCR (first contact resolution) improves. So if you improve CSAT, you improve the overall customer experience.
– Knowledge Acquisition: Our clients can analyse large volumes of data generated from interactions with their customers to identify patterns, trends and areas for improvement. This facilitates informed decision making and product and service optimisation. That’s why our consulting team is available to address these issues and provide control, propositions and agility to our customers with their customer service.
– Natural Interactions: MST’s conversational AI enables more fluid and natural communication, reducing the frustration often caused by traditional bots. By better understanding language and context, this technology provides more accurate and appropriate responses.
– Accessibility and Inclusion: It can be considered an invaluable tool for people with disabilities or for those who prefer not to interact directly with agents because of the simplicity of the resolution.
Ethical Challenges and Considerations
While conversational AI is an accelerator in service that offers numerous benefits, it also presents challenges and challenges that need to be considered in service:
– Accuracy and Naturalness in Responses: Ensuring that responses are accurate and natural is fundamental to maintaining customer confidence. This requires continuous development and permanent accompaniment in the service.
– Linguistic problems: The diversity of accents, dialects and slang complicates accurate understanding of the language, requiring resources for recurrent training.
– User Apprehension: Some customers may be reluctant to interact with bots. Understanding this situation and helping the customer overcome this barrier requires continually improving the quality of interactions and demonstrating the usefulness of conversational AI.
– Bias and Discrimination: It is crucial to develop these technologies in an inclusive way and thus to avoid reinforcing prejudice or discriminating against certain groups.
– Security and Privacy: Data protection is a priority for MST. We secure interactions and data collected by protecting against unauthorised access.
– Impact on Employment: At MST we believe that the automation of tasks through this technology redefines the role of the agent, giving them a greater role in tasks of greater added value and reducing their psycho-emotional stress. In fact, this technology also opens up a range of new jobs in the sector that will have to be taken into account in the coming months and years. This technology requires professionals to develop it, train it and keep it effective.
Conclusion
Conversational AI represents a significant advance in the way companies can interact with their customers. Having a partner (contact centre) that has technologies such as this ensures that your company has more satisfying customer experiences and services become more efficient. However, the technical and ethical challenges associated with it must not be forgotten and must be addressed to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks. The key is a partner, such as MST, who cares and takes care of a careful, tailored implementation and is always focused on continuous improvement, ensuring that this technology complements the human experience, but does not replace it.
Author: Alberto Expósito – Technology Area Manager