Poonam Chug, Author at BotCore

12 Experts Share The Biggest Chatbot Trends For 2020!

Poonam Chug — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:16:00 +0000

12 Experts Share The Biggest Chatbot Trends For 2020!

In the past decade, we have seen the emergence of several AI technologies. And one of the most significant one among them are chatbots. In the last few years, we have not only seen the emergence of AI chatbots but also their exponential growth and rapid adoption among enterprises.

While enterprises are already using chatbots for different use cases, we believe this is just the beginning of a long journey of this sophisticated technology. As someone who helped several medium and large organizations deploy enterprise chatbots, we’ve asked 11 experts the following question.

According to you, what is the biggest chatbot trend to watch for in 2020?

Here’s what they said…

#1 “…Facebook will integrate the messaging infrastructure of Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp greatly extending the reach of chatbots…”

Chatbots haven’t yet taken off with businesses today with only approximately 1% of companies actively using them. But In 2020, Facebook will integrate the messaging infrastructure of Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, greatly extending the reach of chatbots to over 3 billion daily active users on a single platform. We believe this will make chatbots a must-have for businesses wanting to connect with users on those popular platforms.

– Larry Kim,
CEO, MobileMonkey.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#2 “…Chatbots should become generically more efficient at identifying the intent of a user…”

“The largest technical trend I see in 2020 is that Chatbots should become generically more efficient at identifying the intent of a user. As the work done on BERT at Google starts to be incorporated into offerings, the context of words (like prepositions) within an utterance will be given weight to enable more accurate understanding.

However, Chatbots are at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence in 2019, but the potential return is not inconsiderable. Consequently, within business we should see an increase in Chatbot Education allowing expectation to more closely match Reality and an increase in the meaningful adoption of chatbots.”

– Keith Williams,
Chatbot Consultant, Founder, KMW3.com,
Ex-HR Services Director – Technology, Unilever.
LinkedIn

#3 “…Conversational assistants will remain an extension of the brand and a sidekick for customer care…”

“Consumers are increasingly demanding real-time engagement, including self-service tools that allow for instant Q&A and problem resolution. As technology continues to improve and evolve, conversational assistants will remain an extension of the brand and a sidekick for customer care, providing not only contextual, personalized on-demand support, but critical insights on the customer journey back to the organization. Such tools are no longer nice-to-have, but critical elements for differentiation and success in the digital economy.”

– Theodora Lau,
Founder, Unconventional Ventures, Speaker, Writer, and Startup Advisor.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#4 “…we are going to see a huge surge in chatbots deployed to understand, retain & serve customers better…”

With about little over 2 years of enterprises trying out and experimenting with chatbots for internal employee-facing use cases, many are now confident about the technology and the usefulness. And now, many businesses are switching to the next level to use chatbots to engage their customers, which was the primary goal in the first place.

From bots on webpages, portals, WhatsApp and even Facebook messenger, we are going to see a huge surge in chatbots deployed to understand, retain & serve customers better. This will reduce the time to feedback leading to quicker innovation of products by businesses.

Last but not the least, chatbots will provide the half-life extension to social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. These platforms will change from knowledge and communication mediums to self-service platforms – One of the rare things B2C will be adopting from B2B. Overall 2020 will be the year of chatbot rising to help humans.

– Rakesh Reddy,
CEO, Acuvate Software.
LinkedIn

#5 “…Expect structure to come from the enterprise…”

Expect structure to come from the enterprise – more specifically, expect to see key advances in 2020 coming through more extensive AI integration for bot services of all kinds. The enterprise arena is an obvious spawning ground for innovation, as businesses of every kind are crying out for intelligent and highly scalable bot solutions to connect customers with product in a timely and efficient manner.

Given the mission critical nature of any technology investment for commercial purposes, it is extremely likely that the enterprise will offer the most effective ‘test-bed’ for a rapid evolution of more adaptive and verbose solutions, thus finally delivering on the promise of a ‘near-human’ chatbot interface.

– Andy Clayton-Smith,
Executive Editor, The Record, Tudor Rose.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#6 “…It (voice technology) has reached a tipping point where you can hardly differentiate between a human and machine…”

Gartner predicts that “chatbots will power 85 percent of all customer service interactions by the year 2020 and by then the average person will have more conversations with chatbots than with their spouse.” Voice technology has developed so much that it has reached a tipping point where you can hardly differentiate between a human and machine, Google Duplex is one brilliant example. An AI-powered chatbot will supercharge businesses improving customer care by connecting them to a whole array of personalized services in real-time.

– Alvin Foo,
MD, Reprise Digital.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#7 “…using chatbots to support the productivity of work teams..”

One of the trends is using chatbots to support the productivity of work teams. They start off as simple signposts to point people in the direction of useful learning resources, insights and practical skills. We will then start to see them move up the value chain, and offer simple coaching. Over the longer-term with data analysis, we might start to see improved engagement, better decision-making, and improved psychological safety.

– Andrew Spence,
HR Transformation Director,
Glass Bead Consulting.
Twitter | LinkedIn

#8 “…we would be able to start seeing early versions of a chatbot as your sidekick at work…”

“At the business level, I believe we would be able to start seeing early versions of a chatbot as your sidekick at work. Not as advanced as JARVIS in Ironman but at the minimal, chatbot that is able to make better suggestions based on your personal preferences, parameters as well as the vast amount of data it collects of you every single minute. For instance, if my day is packed with back-to-back meetings, it could suggest blocking one hour of reflection time to process those meetings. This is on top of more accurate voice processing which enables users to communicate with the chatbot faster than typing.”

– Adrian Tan,
HR Tech Solutions Architect at PeopleStrong.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#9 “..As the quality and accuracy of chatbots improve, the number of use cases will increase…”

The two biggest chatbot trends to watch will be the increase in the number of use cases, along with improvement in usability. Frankly, when it comes to chatbots, the user experience isn’t living up to the hype, but this will change over time. Chatbots are continually learning and need to get data fed in order to understand the words and phrases used for each vertical and each particular business or organization. As chatbots keep learning, they will improve their accuracy and the ability to respond to customer inquiries.

As the quality and accuracy of chatbots improve, the number of use cases will increase. While currently used for very basic inquiries and interactions, they’ll increasingly be used to better assist customers and agents and drive more complex interactions and transactions.

– Blair Pleasant,
Co-founder, UCStrategies.
Twitter | LinkedIn

#10 “…Sentiment analysis will be increasingly applied in the development of chatbots…”

Sentiment analysis will be increasingly applied in the development of chatbots — because at the moment, let’s face it — most bots still act rather like bots.

The race to properly react to human sentiment is on! (And we’ve already seen how it can go badly wrong, in the case of Microsoft’s Tay.)

As conversational AI bots continue to improve in 2020 onwards, it should become almost impossible for a customer to realize they are speaking with a machine.

Amazon Comprehend is one example of chatbot software paving the way.

– Sam Hurley,
Managing Director, OPTIM-EYEZ.
LinkedIn | Twitter

#11 “…We are starting to see them (chatbots) being used to automating certain aspects of commerce…”

Chatbots have been through their initial experimental phase, and we are starting to see them being used to automating certain aspects of commerce. The bad news is that they are starting to be used to spam us as the other channels of interruption marketing (advertising, cold calling, unsolicited emails) dry up. If Chatbots are to be taken seriously, people need to try and start using them, not to spam, but to create real-valued business processes. What do I mean? One of the spin-offs of the new technology of the iPhone, was social media. Social Media has changed how we work and changed society. Let’s hope Chatbot energy is channeled in the same way?

– Tim Hughes,
CEO and Co-Founder, DLA Ignite.
Twitter | LinkedIn

#12 “…Voice bots will not be limited to just asking weather or playing music…”

Voice chatbots will be more powerful for 2020 as we predict it with data backed by Botanalytics. The penetration of Google Home and Amazon Alexa is increasing dramatically and usage of voice bots will not be limited to just asking weather or playing music. Banks, Insurance and Travel companies will be more in the game by providing voice chatbots with specific skill sets. Maybe not providing lots of capabilities, but focusing on some skill sets. That will be the key to get success in 2020.

– Ilker Koksal,
CEO, Botanalytics.
Twitter | LinkedIn

How Acuvate Helps Enterprises Deploy AI Chatbots

We leverage our enterprise chatbot builder platform – BotCore to help various Fortune 500 companies, SMBs, and start ups to build, deploy, manage and train AI chatbots. Our chatbots are used to improve customer service, productivity, efficiency and coordination at workplaces.

MeshBOT: World’s premier chatbot for SharePoint intranet that can solve your intranet adoption challenges.
IT Helpdesk Bot: IT Helpdesk Bot uses machine learning to learn answers to repetitive support requests and improves the speed and work productivity of your helpdesk.
SIA Bot: An intelligent sales assistant which helps your sales team in making informed decisions and improves top line revenue.
Business Intelligence Bot: A chatbot which simplifies your data consumption and interaction.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

FREE EBOOK

a guide to choosing an enterprise bot builder platform

The post 12 Experts Share The Biggest Chatbot Trends For 2020! appeared first on BotCore.

Human Hand-off in Service Desk Bots

Poonam Chug — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 20:10:00 +0000

Human Hand-Off In Service Desk Bots

Have you ever wondered if your Bot is “intelligent” enough to handle all possible conversations with the end user? What if the Bot needs to transition the conversation to a live human agent to ensure maximum end user satisfaction? The Bot should be smart enough to recognize when it needs to hand-off the conversation to a human agent and ensure that the end user experiences a smooth transition from the Bot to the human agent.

WHEN SHOULD BOT INITIATE THE HUMAN-HANDOFF?

The following are some of the possible scenarios that would need Human intervention:

Complex Issues

The Service desk Bot may be trained to help the end user with troubleshooting most of their mundane issues. But what if the end-user’s issue is complex and the Bot is not able to provide anymore troubleshooting? Then the Bot will need to involve a human agent to help the end user with the complex issue. The Bot must be smart enough to suggest if the end user would like to “Talk to a Human Agent” to resolve the issue at hand.

User’s Preference

Sometimes, the end user may be in a rush and may not want to wait for the Bot to help with his issue. The user should be given a choice to directly talk to a human agent instead to conversing with the Bot first. This can be provisioned with the help of menu options.

One of the menu options of the Service Desk Bot should be “Talk to a human agent”. This would allow the user to directly connect with a live agent in case he prefers the human agent over the Bot for assistance.

User’s Sentiment

There can be scenarios where the user may be frustrated/unhappy with the assistance provided by the chatbot. Thanks to technologies like natural language understanding and sentiment analysis, the Bot can be trained to infer the “mood” of the user by analyzing the content of the conversation.

If the Bot “senses” frustration, the Bot can suggest “Chat with human agent” as an option to the end user to let the user decide if he would like to continue the conversation with the Bot or rather speak with a live agent

Criticality of the conversation

Based on the business jargon, the Bot can be trained to identify “critical” situations. For example, in case of an insurance company, if the end user is looking for some critical information regarding the policy claims for a deceased family member, the Bot can be trained to directly involve a human agent to handle such conversations. This ensures maximum end user satisfaction.

Agent observation

In some scenarios, the live agent may want to “observe” the performance of the chatbot. They keep a close watch on the conversation of the Bot with the end user and in case, the Bot needs to suggest a critical operation to the end user, the bot can confirm the action with the agent before suggesting it to the end user.

HOW SHOULD THE BOT HANDLE THE HUMAN HANDOFF?

Now that we have looked at some of the possible scenarios for a human hand-off, how exactly should the Bot handle the transition?

Do you remember the frustration when you are on a customer service call and you have already shared all the information with an automated virtual voice agent and then you are asked to repeat the entire information when the live agent connects? We need to ensure that we provision a seamless transition to ensure the best user experience for our end users.

Once the Bot needs to transition the conversation to a live agent, it needs to ensure the following:

Smooth transition to live agent
Conversation history to be shared with the agent
Smooth disconnect from the agent

Smooth transition to the agent

First and foremost, the Bot will need to “acknowledge” to the user that the conversation will now be transitioned to a live agent. Then the Bot moves the end user’s conversation to a “wait” state and check for an available human agent. The Bot can also provide the end user an option to confirm if they would like to “wait” for an available agent or try again later. This would help the end user disconnect, in case the “waiting” time seems long.

In case the end user decides to “wait” for an agent and then types in a query while “waiting” for the agent, the Bot will respond “Please wait while we connect you with the next available agent.” The Bot will not handle any incoming queries from the end user while the conversation is in “wait” state.

The Bot design will define how the waiting queue will be handled. Typically, Bots are programmed to handle the “waiting” requests in “first in first out” manner. Once a live agent is available, the Bot will intimate the agent that an end user is waiting for assistance. In case the agent accepts, the end user will be notified that he is now connected to the agent.

Conversation history to be shared with agent

Once the agent and end-user are “connected”, the Bot will share the entire conversation history of the current chat with the end user either in the form of text messages in the agent’s chat window or the chat script can be send as an attachment via email to the agent. This will avoid the agent from asking any repetitive information that the Bot has already collected from the end user.

The Bot will continue to act as a “behind the scenes facilitator” and route the messages between the agent and the end user, thus creating the illusion that the end user is communicating directly with the agent and vice versa. However, all the queries from the end user are routed by the bot to the agent and all the responses from the agent are routed to the end user via the Bot.

Smooth disconnect from the agent

On completing the assistance to the end-user, the live agent will have the provision to “disconnect” from the end user. The end user will be notified that he is no longer connected to the live agent.

Any query from the end user will now be handled by the chatbot and the agent will no longer be able to “view” any conversation with the end user.

REACH OUT TO YOUR END-USERS ACROSS GEOGRAPHIES

Since the Bot “facilitates” the conversation between the agent and end user, the Bot can provision a richer user experience to the end user by providing multilingual support.

Imagine the scenario, wherein your service desk agents can communicate only in “English”, but your end users are spread across geographies and would prefer to communicate in their native language.

By leveraging the language translation services, the Bot can “translate” the message while routing it between the end user and the agent.

For example, if the end user asked a query in “Dutch” language, the Bot will translate the message to “English” before it is routed to the live agent. The agent would then respond to the query in “English”, which would be translated to “Dutch” by the Bot and then routed to the end user.

Thus the “human handoff” functionality with multilingual support will help you assist your end users across geographies and enhance their satisfaction levels with human intervention when needed.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

FREE EBOOK

a guide to choosing an enterprise bot builder platform

The post Human Hand-off in Service Desk Bots appeared first on BotCore.