Conversational AI: A smarter way to talk to customers
Is artificial intelligence going to be a vital part of our lives? The answer is yes, it already is. When you ask Google or Alexa something, you speak to artificial intelligent assistants or in other words conversational AI. We have moved on from simple text-based conversations to artificially intelligent conversations pretty fast but we will be moving even faster very soon.
Artificial intelligence is the technology that makes work for millions of people easy. When people are able to interact with machines in a humanly way, it changes the world.
When companies will realize that AI is not a system, but an experience, they will find its true potential. And companies are working on it. Some have been successful, like Google and Alexa. Human and machine interaction is a revolutionary discovery in the field of technology.
Conversational AI is something no one ever dreamed of, yet we are using it as frequently as we are using our phones. It has made our lives easier no doubt. It made our interactions easier with the computers, it made work more efficient, and it is so much fun to use!
Conversational AI is a system that works as a bridge between humans and machines. Today, a new form of media is in the making – a space where people and machines collaborate to create new content. It’s a world every company must take part in, or they will left far behind.
How artificial intelligence will change the way we live, and how it already has is amazing. The change is not stopping anytime soon.
The basics of conversational AI are-
Definition
Conversational artificial intelligence is a technology that which users can talk to. Just like chatbots and voice assistants. They use many technologies like data, machine learning. This helps them imitate human interactions and recognize voice inputs.
Conversational AI is not made of just one thing. It is a series of technologies that enables machines to recognize and understand human language.
For example- when you ask Google assistant to translate “how are you?” into French. First Google understands what “how are you” means and then it translates it to French. Now for it to even translate, it needs to understand both English and French.
How does Conversational AI work?
Conversational AI understands and engages in dialogue using texts. Natural Language Processing (NLP) and additional AI algorithms are used.
First, the AI must know the meaning behind the question, what the customer is trying to say. Natural Language Understanding (NLU) works to understand the meaning of the things said by the customer. NLU’s primary task is to understand, no matter how the words are spoken.
It checks for grammatical errors, shortcuts. It understands the text from line to line, remembers what the whole conversation is about. Next, the AI must decide the right response on its understanding using machine learning.
This shows further variants of the same purpose and which answers are the most suitable for each. With each question answered, it becomes smarter and is able to understand the question clearly.
Why conversational AI and how it goes beyond keyboard
Why is conversational AI trending today?
Businesses are understanding the need for creating automated responses for better machine interactions. Through conversational AI they can take one conversation from one platform to another. From websites to mobile phones, to social media to voice assistants. It is present in all touchpoints of the electronics we use.
Apart from the various reasons, the companies are bringing it to the mix for various reasons like-
Saves time-
Conversational AI provides quick access and fast responses. Customers who do not want to go through the boring phase of communicating with customer service would be drawn.
Easy real-time access-
Customers are connected to chatbots or voice assistants instantly. They can choose the channel of their conversation by themselves. And, the conversations are synchronous which reduces the risk of data leaking.
Handles the entire customer cycle-
The customer can complete a sale, get detailed information about their payments. And all of this process, AI will handle it. It will provide the information from seeking product information to you giving feedback.
Increased efficiency-
One of the key benefits of AI is the increase in customer support and efficiency. The high number of calls and emails overwhelmed the staff, which is no problem now. Conversational AI Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is also reduced.
Components of Conversational AI
The main problem conversational artificial intelligence solves is that it makes conversations easy. It bridges the gap between them. It combines natural language processing (NLP) with machine learning.
With constant feedback and artificial intelligence learning, it is constantly improving. The components allow AI to process, understand, generate answers in a natural way.
A part of conversational artificial intelligence is Machine Learning (ML). It consists of a collection of sets of algorithms, characteristics, and data. With practice, they work and constantly strengthen themselves. The AI gets better at identifying patterns as the input increases and uses it to make predictions.
The approach to examining language with machine learning is natural language processing. Earlier, language processing used linguistics and statistical natural language processing.
NLP consists of four-steps-
- Input generation-
The customer provides a set of instructions on a website or through a mobile app. The set of instructions can be given through voice or text.
- Analysis of input-
AI would use natural language understanding (NLU) to decipher the context of the input if the input is in the text. And then deduce its intent. If the information is in the voice, the data will be processed using a combination of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and NLU.
- Dialogue management-
Natural Language Generation (NLG), a part of NLP, works during this process. It formulates a response according to the input.
- Reinforcement learning
Over time, conversational AI algorithms learn and refines responses. This ensures accuracy and improved answers.
It is possible to use conversational AI in several ways. The use of chatbots has exploded since individuals like to communicate in a human-like way with AI. Think about your house with Google, Alexa, and other virtual assistants. That’s why it goes hand in hand with conversational AI and chatbots. Rather than fill out forms or look for answers on our own, we like to communicate with AI.
