7 things you need to know about voice and chatbots

Bots are currently the hot topic in customer communication. They meet us on all customer service channels and never seem embarrassed about an answer. Even more, because the artificially intelligent helpers are preparing to revolutionize the dialogue between companies and customers from the ground up. But what exactly can bots actually do and what opportunities arise from automating customer communication? We've summarized seven things you should definitely know about voice and chatbots.

1. Bots are harmless

Technical progress triggers vague fears for many people. Among other things, because there are often uncertainties about how the new technology works and how it can be used. In view of today's almost omnipresent voice and chatbots, customer service employees fear for their jobs, for example. In fact, however, the technology behind the bots is miles away from making humans redundant. And apart from that, it doesn't even aim to completely replace him. Instead, human colleagues should be relieved by bots in order to be able to work more efficiently. This relief is achieved by intelligently allocating and shifting upcoming tasks. For example, voice bots are not usually used to avoid, but to prepare employee interviews in the best possible way. As soon as the bot hands over a contact to a person, it provides them with the previously requested information directly via an interface. In practice, it has been shown that chatbots only have their full effect in customer dialogue when interacting with human agents. Ideally, humans and machines go hand in hand thanks to a sensible division of tasks.

2. Bots are popular colleagues

Once fears and reservations have disappeared, voice and chatbots are very popular with their human colleagues. No wonder, after all, the machine assistants in the service center take on a large part of the annoying and monotonous routine tasks. For example, time-consuming work steps, such as identifying concerns or authenticating callers, can be assigned to them. In addition, bots support their human colleagues by providing them with valuable information or documents before talking to the customer. And they even answer some of the frequently recurring inquiries completely independently. For example, by referring to suitable self-service offers. This gives employees time in which they can concentrate on consultation-intensive discussions and value-adding tasks. In addition, automated request recognition optimizes the routing of incoming requests. Customers are referred directly to a suitable contact person. This reduces the in-house referral rate and with it the stress level of all colleagues in the service center.

3. Bots increase customer satisfaction

Bots are always in a good mood, greet all customers in an equally friendly way and patiently answer their concerns. They speak several languages, handle dialects confidently on the phone and read past typos in the chat. With the help of courteous bots, contacting the service center is a positive experience for customers. Since customers also end up directly with the right contact person, they do not have to present their concerns several times. This increases overall satisfaction as well as the significant reduction in waiting times achieved with the integration of voice and chatbots. Access to information that is as direct as possible is of paramount importance, especially for the young, online-savvy target group. Questions should be asked at any time and answered as quickly as possible. Bots respond to these expectations; they are ready to talk around the clock and offer low-threshold access to standardized information.

4. Bots save money

While employee and customer satisfaction is increasing, spending on the corporate side is falling. Once implemented, bots perform their service reliably and do not incur high costs during operation. What's more, they save their operators money every day. On the part of an insurance company, for example, a bot can record claims reports. Assuming that such an interaction costs an agent in the telephone service an average of ten minutes of working time and the price per minute for inquiries of this quality is around €1.50, the costs amount to around €15 per contact. This does not yet include the opportunity costs for the customer's potentially frustrating wait time on hold. With the help of a bot, the costs of working time alone, which in this example would be required to record the claim in the system, can be significantly reduced.

5. Bots are flexible

Voice and chatbots implement what they've been taught. This allows them to be configured exactly according to the specific requirements of a company. For this purpose, typical questions, concerns and conversation processes are analysed and translated into the grammar of the voice or chatbot. It should be noted that the entire range of formulations with which customers usually describe their concerns is covered. Ideally, the machine assistants will therefore be able to understand the customer vocabulary and transfer it into the current terminology of the respective company. If the operator's requirements change — for example by opening up a new business area — bots can be dynamically adapted. Your grammar is adjusted and extended at will and with little effort during operation. Bots based on self-learning AI, on the other hand, are inherently flexible. They don't shimmer along predefined dialog paths, but play out appropriate answers by intelligently linking incoming inquiries with the database available to them. The parameters by which such bots work can also be adjusted quite quickly and easily if required.

6. Bots are getting better

The longer voice or chatbots are in use, the more reliable they work. The grammars of bots that work linearly, i.e. based on ready-made dialogue paths, are continuously optimized on the basis of specific experience. Administrators specify questions, add application scenarios and define new key terms. In this way, such bots are manually trained to respond appropriately to an increasing range of customer inquiries. Bots based on self-directing AI Even take over part of this training yourself without further ado. They use a growing database, which results, among other things, from all inquiries received so far, to improve and refine future editions. Ideally, such a “learning effect” leads to continuous self-improvement. Self-learning bots therefore get better the more meaningful data they process. In the future, AI-based machines should even learn to learn and be able to access new content on their own.

7. Bots are quick to set up

Artificial intelligence in customer dialogue — that sounds terribly complicated, incredibly expensive and like a lot of work. And in fact, it is best to set up a voice or chatbot with the help of experienced experts, because setting up grammars in particular involves some challenges. A big A wealth of experience from comparable projects helps to elegantly avoid potential stumbling blocks. In this way, the integration of a bot can be implemented within a manageable period of time with the help of a qualified partner. Depending on the operator's requirements, a precisely configured bot can be put into operation after just three to six months. In addition, bots are infinitely scalable. They grow with the requirements of their company, for example by being easily transferred to other use cases and areas of the company.