Conversational Interfaces Help Drive Greater Customer Satisfaction

access_time February 20, 2019
by   TechmavenitAdmin
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With the propensity of consumers to patronize service providers that offer the best user experience, companies of all hues vie to offer the best customer satisfaction across multiple touch points.Brand loyalty is becoming rather obsolete as customers switch allegiance at the drop of a hat. Gone also are the days when customers would patiently wait for their turn in a call queue; they prefer instant answers. When there is little to differentiate between various products, customer service emerges as the key value addition. Consumers want an on- demand service that is contextual, personalized and relevant. With the vast technology advances taking place in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning and NLP technologies, consumers are provided with such specific products. The best and the most promising conversational interfaces that exist today are the chatbots built on NLP (Natural Language Processing) and ML (Machine Learning) process. The use of chatbots have become widespread and most major international banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase etc are actively working towards refining their bots to provide intelligent, proactive recommendations to their clients so as to provide them with greater satisfaction. During the 2016 “Microsoft Build Conference” Satya Nadella had said that the future of the company was “conversation as platform”. This would suggest that there would be more of Cortana and Tay- conversational interfaces that can understand the natural language of human users and less of Windows and Office. Technology majors such as Apple, Facebook , Slack are embracing conversational interfaces in a major way. Gartner has predicted that by the year 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships with an enterprise without interacting with a human. Banks are leading the change with third party services like Slack, facebook, Twitter etc actively bridging the communication gap that existed between banks and customers. In addition, with the help of artificial intelligence powered chatbots, banks are able to provide better customer satisfaction resulting in higher customer acquisitions, retention and are able to generate greater business. Conversational interface in short, is a voice recognition and natural language interface that mimics chatting with a human. Virtual assistants such as Siri, Google Now, Cortana and Amazon Echo feature conversational interfaces, meaning that these can reply to an input as a personal assistant would. Why do companies opt for conversational interfaces? More and more companies opt for conversational interfaces due to the immense benefits that companies accrue as a result of its adaptation. Conversational interfaces are, besides, cross – platform and work with smart phones, desktops, smart watches etc. They offer authenticity, ubiquity, a feeling of connection and provide for immediate answers. They can integrate with twitter, Facebook etc and have the potential to eliminate the underlying friction that makes it hard for every person to get things done on a computer. Conversational interfaces have attained such importance that Google, the world’s largest search engine company has pivoted its entire company to focus on conversational interfaces as it allows for interaction on a more personal level. “We are evolving search to be more assistive and want users to have a two-way ongoing dialogue with Google to help get things done in the real world. We think of this as building each user their own individual Google” said Sundar Pichai at the MIT Technology Review. If any business then seeks to attract, retain and grow their customer base, one of the best options would be to provide them with a rich customer – satisfaction – experience. The provision of a conversational interface would go a long way in achieving this.

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