The chatbots journey: how they conquer the market

The digitalization of businesses has had, and continues to have, profound impacts on their operation processes. Tasks that, just a few years ago, demanded printing dozens of reports and many hours of analysis are now carried out in a few minutes – thanks to the support of innovative technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

Chatbots are another great example of a tool that is gaining acceptance and scale during this Digital Transformation. The focus of chatbots as a solution is very specific, as well as important: automating and optimizing service tasks, enabling a leaner and more efficient operation, while providing an excellent experience to customers using them. The proliferation of chatbots is not only due to their usefulness for businesses: they have become much more proficient in conversing with the users in a natural way, understanding the users’ requests and providing useful services to the public.

A Salesforce study, published in 2018, found that 53% of corporations expected to deploy chatbots within 18 months. And in fact, usage of chatbots is skyrocketing. It is estimated that 1.4 Billion people are using chatbots on a regular basis now, and by the end of 2021, 85% of chat-based user interactions will be handled without the intervention of a human agent. The investment in new chatbots in 2021 will be $5B.

PhoneMyBot: what is the technology and how it works

Currently most chatbots only understand text and cannot be used with voice.

PhoneMyBot provides an instant enhancement to the new generation of corporate chatbots. The solution is hosted in the cloud and efficiently expands the reach of chatbot to include voice channels. This includes the telephone channel which, according to surveys, is still the most used channel for consumers who need to solve problems, but it also encompasses channels – such as WhatsApp, that can send recorded voice as messages.

Livio Pugliese, CEO for North America at Interactive Media, points out that the solution integrates different services: it receives calls from the telephone network, transcribes speech into text, sends the text to the chatbot, receives the response from the system and transforms it into speech, transmitting it to the user. The process sounds natural: the whole flow – from voice to text and from text to voice, with the support of Artificial Intelligence – feels like a common conversation over the phone, for the comfort and good customer experience of those on the other end of the line.

 “PhoneMyBot can be used by companies that have already implemented a chatbot or by software vendors that offer chatbot platforms to their customers”, adds the executive. Most organizations that have a chatbot in operation continue to receive voice calls and answer them with human agents. Most of these calls would be manageable with the existing self-service operation as delivered by the chatbot: not doing so burdens the process and hinders the speed of service.

Interactive Media’s solution is therefore the best alternative for these organization to expand their self-service capabilities to the voice channel, while ensuring customer satisfaction. “PhoneMyBot derives from a unique combination of skills: we are experts in conversational AI but we also have a strong background in telephony and in speech technologies,” says Pugliese.

PhoneMyBot advantages

PhoneMyBot can greatly contribute to resource optimization – whether physical, financial or human. In the financial sector, for example, it is estimated that the deployment of chatbots and voicebots will generate savings of US $ 7.3 billion by 2023, channeling investments to other equally strategic areas of the companies.

In addition to the high potential for return – in the short, medium and long term – one of the biggest differentiations of the Interactive Media solution concerns usability: from the technological infrastructure to the management and monitoring portal to the commercial functions, everything works in order to provide a smooth integration with the existing applications and operation of the system. Text and voice complement each other to generate an incredible experience from end to end.

“Technically, the API to connect to the chatbot is very simple and easy to integrate. Commercially, Interactive Media offers a free trial version and a pay-as-you-go model, so businesses can start small and grow organically, as they see the value in the service. In technology and cost-benefit, there is no similar offer available on the market today “, reinforces the CEO for North America.

Conclusion

In the highly volatile technology sector, change is the only certainty – and chatbots are an engine of change. With the popularization of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, robots are gaining ever more space in the corporate world; now bots have also gained a voice.

The use of conversation AI for customer service has democratized the advantages of technology: while companies accelerate their processes and reduces operating costs, customers are gaining excellent contact experiences. The old IVRs (Interactive Voice Response), which required user to listen to a long menu of options, have finally become obsolete.

“Based on the Interactive Media’s experience, virtual agents are able to solve up to 80% of the problems, which ends up releasing human agents from a considerable number of telephone contacts, and especially the most repetitive, dull ones” explains Pugliese. “For the remaining 20%, those responsible receive information that allows for a shorter, more empathic calls, in line with customer expectations. The net result: everyone wins. And with PhoneMyBot, companies can use the chatbot they have already deployed to provide a phone-enabled virtual agent service” concludes the CEO. The initiative could not be better suited to a world that values ​​the disruptive and demands competitiveness – without neglecting the experience.

Was the content useful and helped you to rethink the service strategy – by text and voice – of your business? Excellent! Remember that it is essential to have modern, reliable, and efficient tools. Get in touch with us and find out how Interactive Media and PhoneMyBot can help you face new market challenges.