Conversational Artificial Intelligence

There is nothing much more annoying to anyone trying to get through to a company, either to make a sale, an enquiry or for after-sales assistance, only to be confronted with a whole series of “touch 1 for this or touch 2 for that….” And then another set of options and then another.?Finally you have got through to the right department to be told that “all our agents are busy.?Your call is very important to us…..”?Need I go on?

Yes, gone are the days of calling a company to be greeted by the agent who will ask you to whom you would like to speak or can they help you.?One wonders why, in this day of high technology when most people now have access to the internet via their mobile technology or on a computer, that technology has not yet sorted out this dreadful lack of service.?Readers of my many articles posted here on the demise of Customer Service, will already know that this particular irritant is just another example of the death of real customer service.

Surely technology can be developed and deployed, not only to counter this “semi-automatic telephone routing” system, but to provide tools to help both staff and customers, as well as back-office staff become more efficient thus improving both customer service and revenue as well as profitability.?Such technology is now becoming a reality and I do not mean self-checkouts that actually results in staff redundancies and the further demise in personal service, but what is known as Conversational Intelligence.?It is exactly what is in the title with this “intelligence” being developed by “machine learning” providing the “artificial intelligence” (AI) of such systems.

Chatbots amongst the best examples of Conversational AI in retail.?Virtual Shopping assistants are driven by Conversational AI as are the automated chats on many help options on shopping sites.?In a digital society people are connected 24/7 and expect to do what they want, when they want and wherever they may be. Companies' I.T scaling capabilities and resources to meet these increasing demands for frictionless and personalised experiences requires innovation and also direct support by senior management particularly once the culture of a “Must Do" exercise becomes a “Must Have” profitability driver.

The deployment of increasingly smarter chatbots that are AI-powered virtual assistants, together with conversational AI technology, will enable retailers to increase their personal contact with customers.? It could certainly save resources by efficiently scaling down some of their customer-facing operations that will ultimately make their customers and end users more satisfied.?All of this will undoubtedly result in lowering costs thus raising profits.

It is really important to apply intelligent automation and conversational design in order to help create a seamless user experience with highly automated ecosystems that deliver transformational business benefits.?They key is to ensure that these intelligent “front end” systems are not the only investment.?The systems linking these front end systems to the back-end systems must be developed in tandem.?Failure to do so will, inevitably, result in increasing manual intervention, time lapse, increased costs and failure to deliver the customer or the administrative benefits.

Conversational AI technology that can understand the context of a conversation and generate language that is not distinguishable from human-produced language will enable businesses to deploy virtual assistants in a whole new range of applications. AI virtual agents could even take on advisory roles, such as which payment plan for a purchase or how to look after furniture. These voice-enabled interfaces will allow retail enterprises to develop a broader range of applications, both for the customer for the store employee.?Such an example could be simply to more fully understand the customer’s requirement, check the stock level and arrange the sale and delivery.

Retailers have always heavily relied upon information whether it be sales, stock, store performance, complaints or staffing levels, to name a few.?However, the sheer volume of such data, now combined with social media data and online shopping with comparative retailers and other online sites, make fast decision-making even more onerous.?However, ?ever-smarter and more context-aware chatbots, advancements in fields such as predictive analytics and speech recognition and the integration of these technologies into end-users’ devices, will all enable these processes to move up to the next level and beyond.

It is important not to lose sight of?the objective that is ultimately make profit.?Of course, in doing so the customer has to always be satisfied and sometimes delighted, all employees, whether on the shop floor, in a warehouse or in the office, need to be well rewarded and be happy in their roles.?Job satisfaction is a key part of employee retention and in a hybrid human-machine team, human employees will be able to focus on the things at which they excel and the entire team must have the power of AI at its disposal in order to address the more tedious and time-consuming parts of the work.

Companies will, ultimately, be able to reduce costs of many of their business functions, such as customer service and sales that represents an opportunity to invest in re-training and re-focusing employees on key activities where people can really make a difference. Customers are at the heart of any retail business and the only reason that a retailer can survive.?Therefore any retailer that adopts conversational AI for their customers as well as for internal use, will become faster and more efficient, thereby reducing costs and ultimately, profitability.?As processes are captured into a more robust system, the retailer will also be able to constantly improve such processes.?In addition, retailers that follow this trend may well be able to reduce costs of departmental coordination overhead, particularly in relation to manual processes, thereby developing stronger relationships with their customers.

Retailers need to engage with potential online customers, whilst they are browsing, by the use of contextually-relevant suggestions in order to convert browsers into buyers.?The use of this natural language processing (NLP) and recognition used for this example, is far from perfect at present.?However, machine learning algorithms are getting increasingly better to a point where it will be harder to tell whether we are talking to a person or to a computer. Business has capitalised on this, with increasing numbers of chatbots being deployed, usually in customer service functions but increasingly in internal processes and to assist in training.

During my research on conversational intelligence, specifically for my retail clients, I have identified that?CGI is one of very few consultancies that are committed to investing in new and emerging technologies as demonstrated by their recent partnership with Artificial Solutions, a leading specialist in Conversational AI (CAI).?This partnership will enable CGI to use Artificial Solutions′ SaaS platform in order to develop and deploy conversational solutions for public and private sector organisations throughout Europe including the retail sector.?It was interesting to learn that Artificial Solutions uses their “Teneo” solution as a flexible and fast way to deliver Conversational AI solutions that incorporates the disparate channels and backend systems in use with clients.?Teneo is a SaaS platform that allows conversational design teams to create automated text or voice responses in order to support and communicate with users.?

As mentioned earlier in this article, all retailers are faced with increasing volumes of data, particularly since the advent of online shopping and social media.?As Teneo currently has 86 languages and a diverse range of integrations, this will allow users of the platform to work with a wide variety of social media sites such as WhatsApp, Slack, Facebook Messenger, SMS, Telegram and a variety of existing CAI platforms.?Turning this data into useable information on which to base decisions, is now critical for retailers in this increasingly competitive environment especially now with all the income constraints and increased costs of goods and services across the world.

In summary,?let us not forget that all of the above is to bring benefits to the entire retail lifecycle of both the retailer and the customer.?Here are summarised just some of the key benefits.

Customers will be able to place orders via the chatbox and take advantage of personalised promotional offers.?One key area for retailers should be to maximise the retail shop as a window for the customer in conjunction with online shopping. Using “bots” to drive traffic to stores, perhaps also providing a route for the customer and advising of special offers, will all support the online experience. This could include special sales or promotions highlighted during the chatbox conversation.?In addition, real-time updates on products could be sent to the customer in a conversational manner rather than the standard email as now.?An important issue for customers is that of being able to shop whenever, wherever and on any device, so being able to answer customer enquiries at any time, within that integrated platform, will be of great benefit to the customer and to the retailer.?In addition, retailers will be able to utilise chatbots in order to update shipment details for the customer and all this via the conversational intelligence driven by the way in which machine learning develops this intelligence.

I just hope that all this new and developing technology will both improve profitability but also, very importantly, make the?customer’s buying experience a satisfying one as well as any after-sales experience.?As retailers, we must always strive to remember that the customer is the reason for our being in business.?I have written this statement many times in the past but, with no apology, will do so again.?It takes a lots of time, effort and investment to win a customer but virtually no effort to lose one.?