Intelligent Virtual Assistants – The Next-Gen of Chatbots

There exists no doubt surrounding the fact that chatbots have gained massive popularity and market over the decade. They are at the helm of extensively used AI technology, present in almost every industry in the world today. But with the advent of a new decade, industries must prepare for a paradigm shift in this prevalent technology called Intelligent Virtual Assistants.

Chatbots are primarily programmed pieces of software that deliver scripted responses. These conversational interfaces depend on hard-coded flows and rules that the end-user must navigate. Such chatbots have often been referred to as rule-based bots. While these bots have proven to be successful in performing simple tasks involving predetermined rules like an FAQ bot, industries are now looking at the next-gen of Conversational AI.

The focus of the entire market has shifted from process-centric conversational AI to customer-centric experience. These can effectively communicate and deliver a natural conversational experience that goes beyond robotic conversations. This next generation of chatbots is called the Intelligent Virtual Assistants. Intelligent Virtual Assistant’s are paving the way for brands to have smarter and customer-focused conversations. They go beyond traditional chatbots in terms of complexity and scope and are more adaptable due to the integration of advanced Natural Language Understanding and Machine Learning capabilities.

Benefits of Intelligent Virtual Assistants:

It’s time to move towards this advancement in traditional technology that presents some obvious benefits over their counterparts –

• Understand free-flowing and natural human conversation better

The advanced NLU and NLP capabilities of these conversational agents enable them to understand user input and accordingly tailor their user journey resulting in improved customer experience. Independent of a fixed flow, IVA’s understand user input and directly present them with an optimum solution to their queries. It improves first contact resolutions significantly, affecting conversion rates to a great extent.

• Contextualize information and utilize it

One of the key benefits of deploying these intelligent agents as your brand representatives is that they retain and remember each customer’s context. They use this context to generate personalized responses without users having to keep repeating themselves. They can make recommendations based on user profile and maintain user context across multiple channels.

• Improve through persistent learning

The ML algorithms that power the backend of these bots enable them to improve over time through the conversations that they have. This is the one piece of technology that actually increases productivity as it matures. Improving your return on investment significantly. With a higher volume of conversations, it learns to adapt to various user inputs and requirements, learning in the process. This is what makes IVA’s truly intelligent.

• Improve productivity and perform a wide range of tasks

IVA’s utility is not limited to addressing user queries. They can perform a wide range of automation tasks that require complex implementation as well. Also, they seamlessly communicate with multiple bots to improve overall productivity while reducing operational costs involved in performing mundane tasks on a daily basis. It can truly emulate intelligence to improve multiple aspects of your organizational challenges.

• ROI lies at the heart of this technology

These virtual agents are proactive in opposition to rule-based chatbots that only respond to specific user input. It works with dynamic dialogue to cater to unique users and improve user experience manifold. This is significant in building your brand loyalty and improving conversion rates for first-time interactions.

• Customer-centric technology

IVA’s are built with the customer in mind. They are designed to have personalized conversations with each user that interacts with it, addressing their specific requirements. It presents your brand’s image and tone to the user, strengthening the overall image of your brand. It goes beyond simple chatbots to truly engage the customer with intelligent insight that it constantly collects and learns from it.

• Omnichannel scalability

These conversational interfaces have the ability to work across multiple messaging channels with both voice and text understanding. They enable customers to sift through multiple channels and still continue their conversation where they left off. An omnichannel integration supported by context knowledge helps them deliver a seamless user experience across multi-channel communication. Make your customers comfortable and profitability becomes a by-product.

• Designed with domain expertise

With the advancement in NLU and ML techniques, chatbots have evolved into agents that cater to domain-specific customers with ease. Trained on domain expertise through a variety of collections of data, these intelligent pieces of software become expert representatives of your industry. Save operational costs and a large volume of training time then, and rather deploy virtual agents, allowing your employees to undertake other higher-value tasks.

The rapid pace at which the conversational AI technology is advancing, brands must keep up with the evolving demands of their customers. Customers today expect a customer experience that is engaging, easy and online. With customer convenience at the centre of development, it’s time to move to the next generation of text and voice-powered virtual assistants to escalate return on investment for your customer service.

At Kevit.io we believe in helping you leverage the latest conversational AI technology for enhancing your customer service. You can Contact us or mail us to know more at coffee@kevit.io or visit us at Kevit.io to learn more.