Chatbots & building AI/ML capabilities into Marketing

“Alexa, how is the weather outside?” A few years ago, this phrase would have meant a human talking to another, named Alexa and enquiring about the weather.

But today, we all understand that a human (for a few years at least hopefully!) is interacting with a virtual assistant/chatbot – Alexa – about their trivial to quintessential quest for knowledge/ information.

The above example showcase an important change in consumer behavior. Consumers have started trusting AI - to provide them with information, to complete a service request – to basically get the job done.

What this behavioral change means for telecom applications? Can a customer engage with a chatbot to get their service requests/complaint handled? Can a bot offer new promotions/plans to a customer based on his profile? Can AI/ML-based software predict the customer future intent in terms of product purchase? The big question is, can AI/ML technologies change the way telcos touch base with their customers or vice-versa?

Well, the answer to all of the above is ‘Yes’, and this is not just an in-paper paradigm shift but rather an on-ground reality. The technology to enable such interactions is already widely available. What is needed is a well-defined strategy from telcos to incorporate AIML into their application stacks.

Pelatro foresaw the emergence of AI/ML and we have been building AI/ML technology into our product and application layer, running across them. For instance, Pelatro mViva Customer Engagement Hub incorporates native AI/ML technologies?into the application framework. From a customer outreach point of view, what this enables is an easy integration to commercially available chatbots like Alexa & Google Home. Further, there exists capability to integrate to custom/3PP chatbots as well.

Since AI/ML technologies are poised to gain wider acceptance and prevalence, it is prudent to build them into the telecom application stacks. Operators will gain by choosing such application vendors to increase their innovation speed and provide superior experience to their customers.?

Touch base with me to gain more insight on our capabilities. UTPAL RANJAN