Artificial Intelligence in Customer Service
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has drawn a huge amount of interest in 2016 and seems to be the future of computing as we know it. But what is Artificial Intelligence? By definition, ‘the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.’ A great example is ‘MySong’, an application which can automatically choose chords to accompany the vocal melody you have inputted by a microphone. IBM’s Watson, which uses Artificial Intelligence to perform its question-answering function, is 2,400% “smarter” today than when it achieved the Jeopardy victory five years ago. AI is an extremely broad subject, but today we will look at how it will revolutionize your online customer experience.
The internet continues to grow consistently year by year, E-commerce is the fastest growing market in Europe and North America with an increase of +18.6% from 2014 to 2015. This consistent growth has increased competition and has made customer service a top priority for businesses in the competition. It is simply too easy now to go to your competitor’s website with an average of 2 clicks, and if you are not willing to help your customers, someone else will take care of them straightaway instead.
For example, with a goal of reducing the amount of calls coming through to its call centres, Swedish retail bank Swedbank has integrated the technology tool Nina into its customer service strategy. Nina, an intelligent virtual assistant, delivers automated customer service via the brand’s website in a conversational manner. This enables self-service capabilities and a quick and easy access to information for Swedbank customers.
“If you as a customer came onto the site and said to Nina that you needed a new card, she would acknowledge the request but also drill down to find out why, asking: ‘Have you lost your old card or has it been damaged?’” says Martin Kedback, the head of channel management at Swedbank. “According to what the customer then says, Nina will come back with a different answer or maybe direct the customer to a different channel.”
Swedbank’s artificial intelligence platform has been operating for more than a year and now deals with up to 80% of its 30,000 monthly enquiries. The brand, which operates globally, has been working with Nuance Communications to develop Nina’s natural language understanding (NLU) technology.
User acceptance has given analyst firms like Gartner the confidence to say that, by 2020, eighty-five percent of interactions with enterprise customer care resources will be self-service. It is also why Opus Research predicts that $1 billion will be spent on Enterprise Intelligent Assistants by 2020, and Transparency Market Research predicts over $5 billion in global will be spent for “Intelligent Virtual Assistants” by 2022.
Common Questions
With a ‘relationship based economy’ and this increase of online customers, businesses will look towards Artificial Intelligence to be there 24/7 to answer customer queries in order to help make the decision. It will allow businesses to answer the common questions which they get on a daily basis without anyone being there to answer, which is great! No having to call a number, wait for 20 minutes just to ask if you can collect an item from a different store.
Rapid Response
Customers are getting more used to real-time responses from businesses and also expect them instantly. AI will be able to understand questions that the customer is asking in real-time and provide the relevant responses without the need of any customer service agent.
The responses can also be maintained consistent throughout the process and helps to keep the business tone familiar between all customers.
Learning
Artificial Intelligence will use deep learning algorithms to understand conversations and learn from them, thus, next time it is quicker and better at responding to customer queries. Initially all past data are extracted and used, the system already has an idea of how to respond from these data. It is continually learning and adapting as it overcomes more scenarios over time. The AI system continues to adapt, evolve and learn as customer questions and trends continue to be updated.
Compliance
There are several industries such as banking, medical service, insurance where legal aspects must be maintained. With AI, businesses can rely on their virtual agent to follow governance rules precisely. There is no tiredness or decreased level of attention and AI can maintain exceptional standards throughout the day.
Getting the balance correct
At Tagove, we believe that there needs to be a balance between Artificial Intelligence and human-to-human interaction. The last experience you want is that the AI system cannot get an accurate enough answer for you or simply does not know how to tackle a specific problem. Artificial Intelligence in customer support must understand when to pass on the issue to a human customer representative, combining both AI and humans to provide a flawless customer experience. Virtual employees will work as an extension to a company’s existing workforce.
How it works in a nutshell
It is probably fair to say AI does not work in one way. It can be computed with various methods for an infinite number of possibilities, taking an online customer service scenario where a customer asks a question. Through past data and natural language processing, the system can understand and analyse the question being asked. Once AI is computed, the system will classify the question into certain categories, e.g., Sales or Returns, and will then lead to a specific section of the AI and reply with an appropriate response.
The Difficulties
The real challenge of AI is to understand how natural intelligence works. Developing AI isn't like building an artificial heart -- scientists don't have a simple, concrete model to work from. We do know that our brain contains billions and billions of neurons, and that we think and learn by establishing electrical connections between different neurons. But we don't know exactly how all of these connections add up to higher reasoning, or even low-level operations. The complex circuitry seems incomprehensible.
That is why we find the idea of artificially intelligent virtual assistants so exciting. Somewhat paradoxically, machines might be able to bring back a touch of humanity! Today, virtual assistants can already recognize you by the sound of your voice, and anticipate whether you’re calling to reschedule a flight or pay a bill, or what kind of pizza you like to order. In the future, they will be much more sophisticated and will be able to predict much more complex behaviors, such as when you’re going to take a trip and where you’d like to go, when you’re ready to upgrade your phone and what features you want, and will even be able to help you save more money by understanding your spending patterns and providing financial advice. At Tagove, we have started a process on how we will incorporate Artificial Intelligence in a scalable method.