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Conversational AI could be the answer to your company’s customer service issues. With it, customers have the ability to communicate with AI as they would with humans, either through text or speech, bringing plenty of benefits to your organization. Shifting to conversational AI cuts costs, in addition to simplifying and streamlining the process for customers. Businesses will spend 1.3 trillion dollars on 265 billion customer service calls annually. These costs can be drastically reduced by investing in conversational AI that can answer as many as 80% of your customer’s everyday questions. As the industry continues to rapidly evolve, it’s important to discuss where the future is headed. Below, we take a look at the top 3 trends currently impacting the conversational AI industry.  

1. Expansion of Customer Service Capabilities

As conversational AI becomes more and more mainstream, it is often the first point of contact for customers before engaging with a live agent, if at all necessary.  The technology can be deployed on several different channels, either through chat on the web, in app, through social media, or through voice with smart devices or phone systems to aid with call centre deflection.  

The reasons for deploying Conversational AI are quite compelling – it enables 24/7 customer service availability, immediate responses and answers to common questions, and scalability that ensures coverage should there be an increased demand for customer support. These benefits, among many others, are causing the demand and use cases for conversational AI to grow in a variety of industries, including telecom, banking, automotive, entertainment and retail. Gartner Research predicts that by 2020, 25% percent of customer service and support operations will incorporate virtual customer assistance across various channels, up 23% from 2015. In addition to that, they predict that by 2020, 85% of interactions between customers and companies will be done with AI. 

2. Completing Transactions

As many companies make the wise decision of implementing conversational AI services, improvements continue to be made. AI is beginning to see a shift from simply providing information and guidance, to completing tasks and transactions on behalf of its users. This is being actively used in industries already, especially in the banking and retail world, and will continue to accelerate as conversational AI becomes more sophisticated. In these industries, AI is being used to guide customers through transactional journeys that include ordering products and making purchases all within a chat window or voice-enabled device.The use cases for the banking industry are also quite impressive. Conversational AI is being used to securely change pins, transfer money between accounts and perform other banking operations, all without the need of live agents.

3. Personification of Bots

Another growing trend to watch in the conversational AI industry is the personification of bots. This allows for all of the customer service benefits already expected by AI, but without losing the personal feeling of being helped by a live person. Organizations are giving their conversational bots a face, a name, a personality, and in the case of speech assistance, even a distinct voice. Examples of this are Amazon’s Alexa, Siri, and Rogers’ virtual assistant Anna. This personalizes interactions and helps to ease the minds of those who may be skeptical of interacting with an AI over a human employee, and makes the experience much more personal and enjoyable.

As the world of conversational AI matures, bots continue to expand their human-like capabilities and can handle more complex questions and tasks. Organizations are uncovering more and more use cases for the technology and are successfully integrating it into their ecosystem. As an experienced provider, we are pleased with the progress the industry is making and will continue to monitor trends as the concept of conversational AI evolves. If you are looking for help with your very own conversational AI, feel free to contact us.

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