Customer Experience Chatbots Archives - BotCore

23 Experts Share How Chatbots Will Transform Customer Experience in 2022

Gina Shaw — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 11:03:04 +0000

23 Experts Share How Chatbots Will Transform Customer Experience in 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed customer behaviours in an unprecedented way.

In order to adapt to the sudden shift towards interacting with customers on digital channels, organizations across the globe have swiftly implemented chatbots to improve customer self-service, provide information, deliver continuous and cost-effective support and delight customers with personalized experiences.

With the adoption of customer experience chatbots soaring across industries, we reached out to global CX thought leaders and analysts to get their insights on:

“How chatbots will transform transform customer experience in 2022 and beyond”

Here are their responses:

“What will be interesting to see is the expansion of chatbots into the middle and top levels of the marketing funnel”

Particularly in a B2C environment, Chatbots will increasingly come to integrate into every stage of the marketing and sales funnel in 2022 and beyond.

There is no reason why you should not use a chatbot to execute a purchase or facilitate a transaction at the bottom of the funnel. Similarly, automating follow up customer care interactions is perfectly reasonable.

What will be interesting to see is the expansion of chatbots into the Middle and Top levels of the marketing funnel to assist customers with their questions relating to the consideration and decision-making part of the customer journey.

As natural language processing continues to develop, and interactions with customers become increasingly natural, these personalised interactions are going to become more and more prevalent.

Keith Williams

Chatbot Consultant, Founder, KMW3

David Truog

VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

“Smart companies will upskill to the new discipline of conversation design”

Chatbots have a bad reputation, and it’s well deserved: most of them disappoint. Why? Forrester’s research finds that companies often treat conversational AI efforts primarily as IT projects, unfortunately, neglecting UX and human-centered design. Fortunately, a new discipline is emerging for creating chatbots that help users instead of frustrating them: conversation design.

In 2022, smart companies will upskill to the new discipline of conversation design, combining proven principles of human-centric design with deep understanding of how people talk and expect a conversation to flow. Those companies’ chatbots won’t disappoint — they’ll start to delight, instead.

“Chatbots are no more the future. They are the present.”

Brands have started reaping the benefits from their chatbots already. The power of chatbots will increase exponentially in the coming months and years, performing many more tasks, answering many more queries for the ease of the user. From spotting the right products to buying and using the product at ease, chatbots will start personalizing responses by understanding preferences, conditions, etc., and recommending the right products and best places to buy .

Rakesh Reddy

Chairman and CEO of Acuvate Software

Roman V. Yampolskiy

Associate Professor, University of Louisville

“AI will develop beyond chatbots providing a complete social interaction experience”

2022 is basically here, so I don’t anticipate any significant changes from the current situation. Long term, AI will develop beyond chatbots providing a complete social interaction experience, including audio, video and domain intelligence making it possible to fully automate human tech-support and sales jobs. AI will have a detailed profile of each customer and will use that information to customize and target each interaction providing better service, but also exerting unprecedented influence and sales pressure.

“....The technologies that enable (chatbots’ benefits) include sentiment analysis, emotion detection, data-driven question-answering, automatic language translation…”

Chatbots have several benefits that will drive digitally transformed customer experiences. Those benefits include scalability (simultaneously addressing the needs and questions of many customers); 360 view (able to access many different dimensions of customer data for hyper-personalization of the customer experience); security (able to receive, send, and use customer confidential data in a secure conversation, through secure cloud data access); and speed (promptly answering the customer call and delivering just-in-time customer service).

The technologies that enable this include cloud, AI, and multi-modal natural language processing: natural language understanding and generation, sentiment analysis, emotion detection, data-driven question-answering, and automatic language translation. Chatbots are a dream customer engagement and experience solution for organizations of all sizes.

Kirk Borne

Chief Science Officer, DataPrime Inc

Kate Leggett

VP and Principal Analyst for CRM and Customer Service, Forrester Research

“...Make sure they (chatbots) are connected to human-assisted channels to truly transform the customer experience...”

Chatbots have the power to reduce the volume of traditional email, chat or phone traffic; reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction by providing quick answers to questions that are tailored to the customer, or guiding customers through automated processes. Yet customers remain skeptical that chatbots can provide a similar level of engagement as a human agent. Look for ways to continuously improve the experience that chatbots deliver and make sure they are connected to human-assisted channels to truly transform the customer experience in 2022.

“2022 will likely usher in real advances in the convergence of voice and VR with text”

Chatbots need to become more “human”. Even really well designed, smart, AI-driven chatbots can be boring as hell, if they are only text based. And typing on mobile devices isn’t going to get any better any time soon. 2022 will likely usher in real advances in the convergence of voice and VR with text. When customers can have a natural conversation with an assistant with whom they can make ‘eye contact’, chat will really take off.

Barry Dalton

VP of Digital & Analytics Transformation, Genpact

Bernie Borges

Vice President Global Content Marketing, iQor

“While the maturity of the underlying technologies like NLU that makes chatbots function is high, the key goal is to deliver meaningful automation that solves customer problems”

If the predictions are accurate, retail spend on Chatbots is expected to exceed $140 billion by 2024. This investment in AI tech by retail is primarily focused on reducing customer friction, leading to memorable experiences. To deliver that amazing experience requires a level of expertise with Design thinking. While the maturity of the underlying technologies like NLU that makes chatbots function is high, the key goal is to deliver meaningful automation that solves customer problems.

Companies that are successfully delivering world class digital experiences listen to their customers and their customer service agents to find those business processes that could be easily handled by AI while allowing the workforce to have more meaningful engagements with the customers.

“We will witness a noticeable increase in the capacity of chatbots to communicate a ‘personality’...”

In 2022, we will witness a noticeable increase in the capacity of chatbots to communicate a “personality,” enabling the tone and style to match the culture and brand of an organization. The style of luxury hotel chatbots might sound and feel different than ones used by Harley dealerships or funeral homes. Thanks to A.I. and machine learning, chatbots will be able to assume more complex queries thus freeing agents to apply ingenuity and empathy in ways chatbots cannot.

Chip Bell

Senior Partner, The Chip Bell Group | Keynote Speaker

Shep Hyken

Customer Service / Experience expert and New York Times bestselling business author

“The (chatbot) technology has a better ability to understand questions asked in many different ways”

Chatbots continue to improve. The technology has a better ability to understand questions asked in many different ways, the ability to overcome the customer’s mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and give an overall “human-like” experience. Digital has become a go-to first choice for many customers.

That said, for it to be truly successful, even with the great improvements, there will be times when the customer will need to move from a conversation with a chatbot to one with a human/live agent. At that point, there must be a seamless transition that causes, ideally, no friction for the customer. The company/brand that gets this right will win in a world where customer service is more important than ever.

“(Chatbot) reduces a customer’s resolution time and empowers internal agents to have time to serve in H2H engagement”

Customer behaviours and demand for anytime help has increased rapidly, accelerated further by the pandemic and a need to get things done often at odd times of the day. Many organisations are redressing their contact centre model and with increased inbound volumes need to automate in order to deliver a quality customer experience.

Front ended triage of customers using automated AI chatbots enables an organisation to direct a customer to the right information, guide them through help as required or where needed route them to a direct chat or live agent call efficiently. The chatbot done well reduces a customer’s resolution time and empowers internal agents to have time to serve in H2H engagement those that truly need this help

Ian Moyse

Chief Revenue Officer, OneUp Sales

Heverton Anunciacao

Founder and CRM CX Consultant at University of Customer

“Chatbots...should have more kindness and empathy in their scripts”

In my humble view, chatbots will transform customer experience in 2022 in the following ways:

Chatbots and CRM/CX initiatives of digital transformation should calibrate and put more kindness and empathy in their scripts. It is because I noticed many chatbots around the world became rigid in their dialogs with end users and customers. Remember, around the world, there are customers in different generations and levels of education.

Chatbots should prepare their contingency plan in case like we have in 2021 when Whatsapp was out of service and impacted 3 billion people around the world. Chatbots and their companies should ask themselves: what should I do if my backend applications like Faceboook Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, and so on.. are out of service? how to provide a good and continuing experience to my customer?

“It is critical that organisations do not see chatbots as a replacement for human to human interaction”

In 2022 and beyond, advancing digital technology will undoubtedly continue to play an increasingly important role in the lives of business and consumers. Chatbots are one primary example of this. If used in alignment with the customer journey, chatbots can help to automate simple tasks and activities to enable humans to perform more important, value-added tasks directly with customers. It is critical that organisations do not see chatbots as a replacement for human to human interaction, but as a way to improve the customer experience.

Ian Golding

Global Customer Experience Specialist, Customer Experience Consultancy Ltd

Stacy Sherman

Founder, DoingCXRight®‬

“The (chatbot) solution must provide a ‘low level of effort’..”

Chatbots have become a common solution to enhance customer online experiences and will continue to be a popular tactic in 2022. Chatbots are especially valuable for routine questions that can save customer care reps time and cost per call, while also useful to quickly solve simple customer questions, such as finding a nearby retail address, or hours of operation.

As questions get more complex, chatbots can become a source of customer dissatisfaction if not done right. The solution must provide a “low level of effort” and be easy to reach a human being (unlike when calling a company 800# and getting lost in an IVR system).

It’s no secret that people’s patience is dwindling, so the companies that use technology to enhance and solve their needs fast will win in a competitive marketplace. That means that companies must lean on CX-skilled leaders to ensure best practices are applied, such as communication continuity.

What I mean by this is when a customer asks a series of questions of the bot and is then forwarded to a live rep, the details of the conversation must be transferred simultaneously to avoid the customer having to repeat the same questions again.

In sum, chatbots and similar automated technologies will definitely be part of our future. The uncertain part is whether company leaders will focus on the Customer Experiences (CX) and their needs vs solve for internal requirements and processes–resulting in brand advocates turning into detractors over time.

“We’ll see the use of chatbots expand into areas where they can help the company create more value for their customers”

Until now, chatbots have primarily been deployed where companies can save money. Encouraging customers to shoulder routine tasks like Q&A, tech support, product registrations, and appointment scheduling allows employees to focus on higher-value work. This approach is attractive because it promises a permanent reduction in labor costs.

In 2022, I believe we’ll see the use of chatbots expand into areas where they can help the company create more value for their customers. Imagine you’re scheduling a dentist appointment using a chatbot. It might remind you when your kids are due for check-ups and try to find the most convenient time for all of you, including working around local school holidays.

The more value chatbots create for customers, the more valuable they are to a company’s brand.

Mike Wittenstein

Founder & Managing Partner, Storyminers

Jill Raff

CEO & Founder Jill Raff Group, LLC

“No one wants to feel they’re in a digital feedback loop with tech that cannot solve their problem”

Chatbots have become a part of our expected experiences as customers. As we move into 2022 and beyond, AI is progressing at lightning speed. It is crucial that organizations create internal Customer Experience (CX) teams working hand in hand with employee and customer experience experts for an external fresh-eyes perspective to ensure as much of a natural real ‘human conversation’ as possible.

In 2022, customers will demand more, faster, and with more convenience. No one wants to feel they’re in a digital feedback loop with tech that cannot solve their problem. Intelligently programmed chatbots can make ALL the difference in realizing these expectations.

“Thanks to AI, chatbots have, and will increasingly, expedite complex customer queries cost-effectively”

Chatbots offer three key components in customer value – access, information, and efficiency. Thanks to AI, chatbots have, and will increasingly, expedite complex customer queries cost-effectively. These savings ensure companies can hire talented service professionals when customers “opt human.” Chatbots have moved from a less desirable service option to a necessary and invaluable one.

Joseph Michelli

CEO, The Michelli Experience

Alex Jimenez

Chief Strategy Officer, Finalytics.ai

“2022 will see an incremental increase in proof-of-concept tests”

The pandemic has increased the demand for automated and self-service. Consumers expect 24×7 service in all kinds of industries. According to Business Insider “Nearly 40% of internet users worldwide prefer interacting with chatbots than virtual agents, and with major industries including retail and healthcare turning to digital technology, chatbots will likely increase in popularity moving forward.”

While for these reasons, I’m bullish on chatbots in the long-term, I don’t expect chatbots to hit their stride by 2022. The main reasons why I think it is too early are:

A customer’s intent often escapes current chatbots. Human language and variations are complex and even with models like OpenAI’s GPT3, basic requests are easily misinterpreted. Consumers trained by human-powered chat functions find that purely AI-powered chatbots lack the conversational intelligence they associate with digital chats.

Chatbots are trained on data that is biased and often impacts the experience of people of cultures that aren’t reflected in the training data. This is more of a challenge with voice bots, as accents continue to be a problem for the Alexas and Siris of the world. Personally, I experience this nearly every day with my Amazon Echo.

2022 will see an incremental increase in proof-of-concept tests, implementations, and demand but it will not yet be the tipping point.

“Predictive analysis won’t replace humans, but serve them better. Chatbots are at the helm of this! ”

We are in the age of hyper-customisation. Serving segments with the highest degree of diversity would remain distant without AI/ML . Predictive analysis won’t replace humans, but serve them better. Chatbots are at the helm of this! Since 2020 digital use has quadrupled . Hence, data collection on every behaviour to predict the future is scaling new heights. In such a competitive world, Customer Experience would be defined by efficient communication,thereby increasing loyalty!

Nabomita Mazumdar

Founder, Nabomita

Leslie O’Flahavan

Principal & Owner E-WRITE

“If deployed correctly, the convenience and accessibility of chatbots could transform customer experience”

The best chatbots will make great customer experiences better. The worst chatbots will damage customer experience in ways companies cannot recover from. Even simple rule-based chatbots can improve customer experience when they’re built to answer customers’ authentic questions or efficiently guide customers to self-service content.

But many chatbots transform customer experience into customer frustration when they ask for the customer’s patience because they’re “learning,” fail to give the customer an easy exit to a live person, or keep offering information the customer’s indicated they don’t want or need.

If deployed correctly, the convenience and accessibility of chatbots could transform customer experience in 2022 in the most positive ways. It’s more likely, however, that clunky, inadequate chatbots will make customer experience worse.

“use chatbots for simple, transactional interactions to free up agent time that can be focused on more meaningful, emotional experiences”

Chatbots used to help streamline transactional experiences can really make customer journeys easier, quicker and more convenient. But using chatbots to try and cut costs in emotional experiences will cause frustration, resentment and will damage the relationship between customer and company.

So my advice is to use chatbots for simple, transactional interactions to free up agent time that can be focused on more meaningful, emotional experiences.

James Dodkins

CS Ambassador, Pega Systems

deBBie akwara

Founder & Principal Consultant

“(Chatbots) can help improve (CX) with a focus on response time, personalization and staff utilization”

With a focus on customer service experiences in West Africa, I don’t predict that chatbots will transform CX because it is an enabler. However, it can help improve it with a focus on response time, personalization and staff utilization.

Chatbots do not have the power to transform CX because humans determine the outcome. From CX projects I executed in 2021, it’s clear that companies that have adopted it don’t understand how it works, haven’t optimized it or innovated with it. Chatbots can’t solve CX problems automatically. In my opinion, they are designed to provide technical support that impacts CX.

“Chatbots will increasingly become mainstream”

Chatbots will increasingly become mainstream and part of the customer’s expectation as an option to choose to interact with your brand. The fact that every customer won’t choose this option does not mean that you can ignore it!

Peter Lavers

Director, Customer Attuned

The post 23 Experts Share How Chatbots Will Transform Customer Experience in 2022 appeared first on BotCore.

How can AI and chatbots improve support agent experience & productivity

Abhishek Shanbhag — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 06:31:00 +0000

How can AI and chatbots improve support agent experience & productivity

According to a survey, post-covid, 59% of customers will care even more about customer experience than they did in the “before times” when deciding which companies to support or buy from.

With the increased expectation for a speedy resolution and more interactive engagement, customer service representatives (CSR) alone cannot handle the rapidly evolving needs of customer support. An American Express survey found that 78% of consumers have bailed on a transaction because of a lousy service interaction.

As the pressure to scale up processes and deliver quality customer engagements mounts, contact centers witness higher attrition and agent turnover. Hence, to be truly successful in providing exceptional customer experiences, an organization needs to view agent experience, meaning how efficient, empowered, and effective its agents are, as an integral part of its overall customer support strategy.

To augment agent effort, chatbots and other AI-driven technologies are making their way into contact centers. Let’s discuss how a hybrid, co-existential human and AI model improves support agent experience and productivity.

The Different Ways AI improves Agent Experience and Productivity

1. Cognitive Search

As agents routinely deal with tons of product information, they may have to put customers on hold while they skim through heaps of FAQs, blogs, documents, spreadsheets, and other internal sources of information in search of the right answers.

Moreover, traditional keyword-based searches lack context and often generate less relevant results that are not in sync with what the customer actually wants. This leads to a longer average handle time (AHT), a key performance metric for any support agent.

In such a scenario, AI-powered tools that understand the context and deliver highly meaningful search results come in handy. Such tools lead agents to the most relevant content within the vast array of structured and unstructured data that the organization holds.

Mesh 3.0 – A Modern SharePoint Intranet solution for enterprises, connects all your external and internal apps and offers a unified, AI-enabled cognitive search engine that reduces the time you spend locating the relevant information.

2. Smart AI Advisor

Today’s customers demand instant answers and expect the agent at the other end of the line to provide the best resolutions. However, on encountering a new query, agents may need time to review the customer’s account and evaluate potential solutions.

Advanced AI tools, including chatbots, can look into a customer’s history, including transactions, usage, preferences, and other information, and quickly provide a list of customized resolutions to assist the agents.

So, armed with contextual information and the right recommendations, agents can deliver more focussed, engaging, and meaningful interactions.

3. Reduce agent effort by understanding customer intent

Another critical metric involved in evaluating a support agent’s performance is the number of tickets closed.

Every time a customer emails an agent, even thanking them for their support, the service ticket gets reopened. Consequently, the support agent must manually update and close the ticket, leading to duplication of effort and an adverse impact on his KPIs.

With the help of AI, systems can detect the intent behind customer responses before deciding whether or not to reopen a ticket.

4. Act as an AI assistant

Traditionally, customer-facing chatbots and virtual assistants were used for simple FAQs. However, a chatbot’s applications need not be limited to just customer-facing interactions.

Today’s sophisticated agents can handle more complex work – understand where to look for the right information, recommend verbiage that agents can use with customers, and automate routine queries to free up the agent for more complex tasks.

Moreover, bots can assist agents in delivering superior and more efficient customer service –

Supporting agents during live calls or chats by providing the needed information and immediate contextual suggestions
Connecting to backend knowledge bases and CRM systems and extracting relevant articles and documents to help with the customer’s query
Escalating customer interactions to a live agent, when needed, and providing the entire chat history, including sentiment analysis scores and other contextual information, to the CSR
Automating time-consuming and tedious tasks, such as recording customer information, post-interaction form filling, surveys, etc.
Mining audio calls and textual conversations to capture significant details and insights
Act as a chat AI co-pilot by studying customer profile, mining prior conversations with higher CSAT scores, and recommending responses

5. Assist in quality control through active listening

For training and quality assurance purposes, call center managers listen in to agent conversations, but they are limited to only one agent at a time. With the advent of text-to-speech technologies and machine learning, AI systems can listen in on thousands of live conversations, understand customer intent and context, and present insights on the agent’s screen in real-time.

Additionally, by conducting sentiment analysis on every customer utterance and agent response, systems can alert managers about conversations that require a handover to or assistance from a supervisor.

Get Started

Businesses are built on the experiences they provide to their customers. And agent experience is fundamental to delivering an excellent customer experience. AI-powered solutions enhance support agent productivity and deliver next-generation, synergistic customer experiences.

The best results occur when AI and humans work shoulder-to-shoulder. By acting as smart virtual assistants for agents, handling mundane tasks, and providing scalable, 24X7 service, AI tools are paving the way for seamless outcomes for both support agents and customers.

At Acuvate, we help clients build and deploy smart, AI-enabled chatbots with our enterprise no-code, bot-building platform called BotCore.

Functioning as a handy source of on-demand information, providing intuitive and proactive assistance to agents, and handling routine queries, BotCore’s AI bots help improve support agent experience and productivity and reduce agent turnover.

To know more about BotCore, please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.

Using AR and chatbots to increase customer engagement

Abhishek Shanbhag — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 07:15:00 +0000

Using AR and chatbots to increase customer engagement

Customers seek personalization while shopping for products. With most of the purchasing happening online, businesses are turning to advanced technologies to facilitate more interactive and engaging buying experiences for their customers.

An upcoming trend is the use of augmented reality (AR) in customer-facing chatbots. Since customers today have grown habitual to communicating with chatbots for queries and product purchases, adding AR to the spectrum opens a whole new world of immersive shopping experiences.

Estée Lauder’s Lip Artist chatbot allows you to upload a photo or click a selfie to try on lipstick shades and immediately see the results. Moreover, the bot acts as a personalized beauty consultant – suggests shades based on your skin type, asks questions about your color preferences and the occasions you are planning to wear the lipstick, and makes recommendations or gives surprise suggestions.
Based on what you like, you can click on “Shop Now” to purchase the lipstick from Estée’s website.

The Lip Artist is one among many examples of how AR is increasing customer engagement in customer-facing bots. So, let’s understand what AR is.

What is Augmented Reality (AR)?

As defined by Gartner, Augmented reality is the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio, and other enhancements integrated with real-world objects.

In other words, augmented reality is a live view of the physical, real-world environment.

Research shows, 10X marketers that employ AR see a 10x increase in engagement time, increasing retention and effectiveness. As such, 7 out of 10 media planners want to use AR to boost advertising and customer engagement.

When combined with chatbots, augmented reality allows brands the unlimited opportunity to interact three-dimensionally with customers and transform the entire customer journey into a personalized, interactive, and immersive experience.

Let’s look at some real-life examples and success stories of companies, which used AR to boost customer engagement in chatbots.

#1 POND’S

Skincare brand POND’S launched an AI-enabled skin-diagnostic chatbot called SAL, available in Indonesia via messaging app, LINE and Argentina, Columbia, UAE, and South Africa via Facebook Messenger.

SAL leverages a combination of advanced AI, AR, and skin diagnostic technologies to help consumers solve skincare problems across four significant areas – uneven skin tone, spots, pimples, and wrinkles.

Recognizing how confusing it can be for customers to pick the right skincare products, SAL provides them a more in-depth insight into their skin type and recommends the most effective products. Customers need to upload a selfie and complete a short quiz on SAL to receive a personalized skin diagnosis and product recommendations within a minute.

#2 Sephora

Beauty brand Sephora’s chatbot for Messenger helps customers make purchasing decisions on their own with its new offering, “Sephora Color Match.”

In partnership with a company that allows consumers to pick out and match colors using augmented reality, Sephora Color Match gives users the facility to hold up their camera to any face or image. Subsequently, the algorithm automatically detects and presents the identified lip color and other matching products from Sephora’s makeup line.

Additionally, customers can hold up their phones to ads and Instagram photos of personalities they admire, and the chatbot will assist them in finding suitable products to recreate the look. However, the feature is not just limited to faces. If users are looking

for matching palettes and products to complement a dress, they may hold up their camera to the outfit to locate the right products.

#3 Madison Reed

Madison Reed, a company that produces hair colors for an at-home hair treatment, talks to its customers via its Facebook Messenger chatbot, Madi. For customers, it’s like having a professional personal hair colorist right at their fingertips.

Customers need to upload a selfie, and using image recognition and hair localization, Madi identifies the primary hair color and secondary hair tones. She then asks questions about the desired outcome and suggests the perfect hair color, which can be purchased at Madison-Reed.com.

#4 IKEA

With IKEA’s Place app, customers can get a dynamic and immersive experience while shopping for furniture, keeping them engaged and convincing them about the utility of the purchase.

A chatbot built into the app assists customers in navigating the technology. The bot helps them point the camera at their surroundings, wherever they want to place the item in their living space. Customers can adjust the piece of furniture according to where they want to put it and test the shape, size, and functionality before purchasing it. In the AR environment created, they can walk around to look at the item from various angles.

Moreover, the bot comes up with suggestions and asks questions to guide the customer during the process.

The benefits of integrating augmented reality and chatbots

1. Unique selling point

A brand leveraging augmented reality in its chatbot stands out from the competition because it offers something no one else does. In such a case, a mere word of mouth is enough to make the brand “the talk of the town” and attract customers.

2. Increase engagement with personalized experiences

By showing customers how a particular product looks on them, augmented reality adds a touch of personalization to the shopping experience. Retailers can showcase their items more effectively, and the client can see the products more clearly and realistically. This leads to customized and immersive shopping experiences for customers and higher engagement rates for companies.

3. Higher revenue

Customers want to make informed purchase decisions. Chatbots that run on artificial intelligence understand customer needs better. Combine it with AR, and the customer has a memorable experience in shuffling through the various suggestions, trying out the different items, and selecting the right products. Since the customer’s decision is informative and smooth, the possibility of return orders declines, leading to increased revenues.

Final Thoughts

As seen above, using augmented reality in chatbots is the way to go for any industry where buyers require visual inspection and a look-test of the product.

The AR-chatbot customer experience model allows users to take a closer look at a new range of shoes, try out a lipstick or eyeshadow, check how a dress looks on them, and get tailored product recommendations before the actual purchase, all of this while sitting in the comfort of their homes.

Such unique and immersive experiences go a long way in generating buzz around the brand and increasing customer engagement.

To know more about AR in Chatbots, please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.

7 Advanced Chatbot Features To Consider in 2021

Abhishek Shanbhag — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 05:23:00 +0000

7 Advanced Chatbot Features To Consider in 2021

80% of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot automation by 2021.
Business Insider

The year 2020 has seen an unprecedented rise in the use of chatbots. Amidst the uncertainties caused by the pandemic and changing expectations about how brands should communicate with their customers, businesses have quickly adopted AI-powered bots to reduce the burden of their support staff and deliver easy, interactive, and more meaningful engagement to their customers.

No wonder chatbot technology has evolved to incorporate some powerful functionalities that will define the future of customer experience.

Research by Business Insider says, The global chatbot market is anticipated to reach $9.4 billion by 2024.

So, let’s have a look at the seven advanced chatbot features to consider in 2021.

Advanced Chatbot Features to consider in 2021

1. Augmented reality and chatbots

Augmented reality (AR) in chatbots opens a world of immersive, personalized, and engaging shopping experiences for customers.

Gartner defines augmented reality as the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio, and other enhancements integrated with real-world objects.

POND’S, a popular skincare brand, launched a skin-diagnostic chatbot called SAL to assist consumers in dealing with common skincare problems across four areas – uneven skin tone, pimples, wrinkles, and spots. The bot leverages AI and AR to get an in-depth insight into the skin type and recommend suitable products. Customers need to simply upload a selfie, fill in a short survey, and the bot delivers a personalized skin diagnosis and product recommendations in less than a minute.

Such unique experiences generate buzz around the brand, boosting customer engagement and driving revenue in the process. Therefore, augmented reality will be a significant chatbot feature to consider in 2021, primarily for industries where buyers prefer a look-test or visual inspection of the product.

2. Sentiment analysis and emotional intelligence

As the COVID-19 pandemic brought a wave of anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty, organizations recognized the increasing importance of responding to customers with empathy.

Sentiment analysis, therefore, becomes one of the most critical capabilities in a chatbot. Since tone and emotion significantly alter what a customer wants to convey, sentiment analysis allows bots to identify and understand the type and intensity of a customer’s sentiment, including anger, joy, fear, and frustration.

By deciphering words and sentence structures and extracting emotion, the bot can steer conversations, change the tone, or bring in a human agent for support. Hence, emotional intelligence will be a significant feature to look out for in bots in 2021.

3. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text

Another advanced feature that is fast-changing the world of bots is text-to-speech technology. This technology allows brands to develop a voice of their own by enabling bots to speak in a fluid, natural-sounding, human-like voice.

With text-to-speech bots, organizations can provide more engaging, accurate, and quick conversational IVR support.

So, the next time a customer wants to book a hotel room, he/she just needs to call up the contact center and say, “I want to book a hotel room,” instead of going through multiple IVR options. The bot will ask for other details in a human-like voice, book the hotel room or directly route the customer to the next available agent.

Additionally, bots may leverage speech-to-text technology to transcribe audio to text in different languages and variants accurately. In fact, research by Gartner suggests, “by 2023, 25% of customer interactions will be via voice.”

Many organizations have started leveraging Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services to convert text to life-like speech or convert spoken audio to text in more than 100 languages and variants.

4. Agent assistant capabilities

Despite chatbot technology growing at a rapid pace, in some situations, bots aren’t capable of handling customer needs entirely, and the conversation may require an agent handover. A customer may be angry or irritated, the issue may be complicated, or the conversation may involve high-value transactions with a customer at the risk of churning.

A few key chatbot capabilities that will ensure a smooth handover include –

Handing over chat transcripts, including details about context and sentiment analysis scores
Seamless integration with existing live agent software, including Salesforce, LiveChat, etc.
Translating queries for the human agents while routing the communication, in case of multilingual support
Agent observation, wherein agents merely monitor bot conversations instead of completely taking charge. In such cases, a bot privately takes agent authorization before recommending the solution to the customer.

5. Human-in-the-loop feedback system

Training, calibrating and explaining AI-enabled systems requires human-in-the-loop architecture.
– Gartner

Chatbots will come with a human-in-the-loop system to continually learn and become more intelligent. Small customer feedback, such as “click here if you are satisfied with the service,” can improve the machine learning algorithms and train the bot.

In addition to customer feedback, agent training plays a crucial role in enhancing bot performance. Contact center agents can classify outliers and exceptions, modify training data, and influence bot behavior.

6. Integration with RPA for end-to-end automation

Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, uses AI and machine learning to perform a variety of repeatable tasks, such as calculations, data entry, handling queries, etc.

RPA-chatbot integration is a powerful combination that can solve significant operational and workflow related issues for organizations. The automation capabilities of RPA combined with the cognitive abilities of chatbots can help enterprises automate processes end-to-end and reduce costs.

An RPA-enabled chatbot can integrate with multiple siloed and legacy back-end enterprise systems. RPA enables bots to retrieve information from such systems and handle more complex requests at scale.

Thereby, chatbots will not only handle queries and find information but also perform transactions on the user’s behalf, going from mere conversation to action.

7. Conversational maturity

Finally, the natural language processing capabilities that empower chatbots to understand the conversation context in multiple languages is an essential feature to consider.

Bots will be able to identify the intent of a query to provide a quick response and proactively seek information, ask clarifying questions, and confirm intent, even if the interaction isn’t linear.

Final Thoughts!

Chatbots have gained traction owing to their ability to provide real-time, on-demand resolutions that consumers are increasingly seeking out.

In light of their growing popularity, organizations must look out for specific features that enhance chatbot capabilities and enable them to deliver engaging, personalized, and more human-like conversations to users.

Top 6 Customer Experience Trends For 2021

Rakesh Reddy — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 10:12:00 +0000

Top 6 Customer Experience Trends For 2021

2020 has changed Customer Experience (CX) in an unprecedented way for both customers and brands. The previous “nice to have” experience improvements became “must to have” to ensure customers stay engaged. As the world changed dramatically overnight, customer service and experience leaders had to figure out how to shift to new operating models to serve customers.

Companies once used to differentiate themselves by their product, service or efficiency. Today, however, being distinct and competitive lies in creating a seamless customer experience across all platforms. Business leaders recognize the competitive edge gained by ensuring superior customer experience and the perseverance required to achieve such standards.

Reports show that post-COVID, for 59% of consumers, a brand’s customer experience is a key deciding factor while making a purchase. Only 38% felt the same pre-COVID.

In a nutshell, customer experience directly influences purchasing decisions and a brand’s revenue in 2021. With that in mind, here are some trends to consider, to deliver powerful customer experiences in 2021.

6 Major Customer Experience Trends For 2021

1. Showing empathy: Building Relationships over transactions

The pandemic has disrupted the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and compelled everyone towards social isolation. Customers are seeking empathy and care from brand interactions and evaluating businesses on a human scale. Salesforce research shows that 71% of consumers cite companies who show sensitivity to the current climate are more likely to earn their loyalty.

This means throughout the pandemic and 2021, organizations need to think beyond just solving customer issues but also consider providing emotional support. Contact center agents need to be provided with fresh guidelines on handling sensitive customer issues and showing empathy.

This also means that customer service leaders should focus more on metrics like CSAT and NPS instead of just AHT.

In addition, customer service chatbots need to be trained with sentiment analysis capabilities. This enables bots to understand customer sentiments and moods and deliver the appropriate response.

2. Providing personalized diagnosis and recommendations

In 2021 and beyond, brands will be focusing more on providing personalized customer diagnosis and recommendations to improve the overall customer experience. Consider Ponds’ (a Unilever brand) AI Skin Advisor chatbot. Considering the skin problems people face amid COVID-19 due to prolonged mask wearing and continued all-day exposure to screens, Ponds deployed a chatbot on Shopee, an e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia.

Based on an individual’s headshot photo, the bot identifies key skin concerns like wrinkles or acne etc and recommends the right skincare product. The bot received appreciation from over 98% of customers who interacted with it.

This type of personalized recommendations and engagement goes a long way in improving the overall customer experience.

3. Providing Quick Information

Throughout the pandemic, we have seen a huge influx in customer requests. But a majority of these requests and queries are basic and simple in nature and take a lot of time to answer. Customers who need minor information like “What’s the status of my flight” or “What are the new operating timings of the nearby retail store” or “Does my insurance policy cover COVID-19 costs” etc. are made to wait in long queues before getting their questions answered.

This not only frustrates customers and affects brand loyalty but also decreases the agent productivity. In 2020, we have seen many companies deploy FAQ chatbots to address this issue and this trend is likely to continue in 2021. Chatbots are available 24*7, handle numerous requests at a time, provide instant answers and can be deployed in multiple channels seamlessly.

4. Capturing Customer Feedback and Suggestions

Now more than ever, businesses are looking to increase agility in their operations, product development processes and business models. As a result, customer feedback becomes an invaluable guiding source to make quick adjustments, improve product quality and adapt to changing conditions. While there are many ways to capture customer feedback, companies are now leveraging customer service chatbots. Chatbots can go beyond the usual 1-5 rating and ask the customer to send the specificities of the feedback. With a chatbot, customers can also upload media like photos and videos to provide suggestions in detail.

Based on the feedback, chatbots can also be trained to take follow-up actions. For example, if a customer expresses dissatisfaction for delayed order delivery, the chatbot can apologize to the customer and offer a discount coupon or cashback.

5. Proactive updates on new products and offers

Keeping customers proactively informed and engaged is a crucial part of improving customer experience in 2021 and beyond. Brands should anticipate the needs of customers in advance and deliver the relevant information and solutions without being prompted. This can include notifying customers about new products, latest offers, status of their ticket/order, potential errors and glitches, providing tailored advice, and offering personalized solutions, recommendations etc.

A report by Enkata shows that proactive customer service reduces call volumes by 30% and increases customer retention by 3-5%.

For instance, consider the example of a shopping chatbot deployed by a retail or CPG company. When a customer interacts with the chatbot and shows interest in making a product purchase, the chatbot can send a notification about a potential sale or offer about a similar product.

6. Providing Product Usage Help

Another important customer experience trend in 2021, is helping customers understand the different ways they use a product or service. For instance, Knorr, a global CPG company and manufacturer of dehydrated soup and meal mixes, recently deployed a chatbot that provides different soup recipes, tips and tricks for preparation, and personalized ingredient recommendations.

Such customer experience initiatives help companies not only improve the customer engagement and satisfaction but also drive sales and revenue.

Need further insights?

If you’d like to learn more about the top customer experience trends to watch for in 2021, please feel free to get in touch with one of our customer experience experts for a personalized consultation. You might also be interested in exploring our chatbot builder platform (BotCore) and learn how it helps you build low-code customer service chatbots within a few weeks.

The post Top 6 Customer Experience Trends For 2021 appeared first on BotCore.

Why Voice Bots Are The Future Of Contact Center Customer Service

Abhishek Shanbhag — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 11:31:00 +0000

Why Voice Bots Are The Future Of Contact Center Customer Service

2020 is the year of customer service transformation. The unique challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic caused a wave of uncertainty and panic among consumers.

Customers’ natural tendency to prefer voice call support over other self-service channels in times of crisis led to unprecedented call volumes and put tremendous pressure on traditional IVR systems, support agents, and their ability to respond and address all queries. This led to longer than usual wait-times, with calls dropping automatically after a few minutes, thus increasing customers’ frustration levels. Moreover, most customers were unwilling to go through extensive IVR menus and frequent agent transfers or repeatedly ask the same query to get the right support.

Additionally, voice-based channels are not only difficult to scale but are costly too, as traditional voice interaction, on average, costs $15 per exchange. Yet, voice as a medium to provide customer support isn’t going anywhere but is undergoing a massive change with the emergence of AI-powered voice bots.

In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2023, 25% of customer interactions will be via voice.

So, let’s explore what voice bots are and why they are the future of contact center customer service.

What are voice bots?

A voice bot is a computer program that understands spoken natural language and uses synthesised voice to converse with people. AI-powered speech recognition technology enables voice bots to recognize users’ spoken queries and respond to inquiries using text or voice.

In other words, voice bots are computers that can speak with people.

These bots are a scalable way to provide engaging, personalized, and interactive human-like support and ensure speedy resolution for your customers. Moreover, they ease the burden of human agents, allowing them to focus on more productive, higher-value work and pressing customer issues.

For example, you want to book a flight. Now, instead of going through the myriad of traditional IVR options, simply call up the contact center and say, “I want to book a flight to New York.” The bot will ask you for other details, including the date of the journey, preferred departure time, and book for you the flight of your choice, or directly route you to the right agent, saving you the long and tiresome drill of a legacy IVR system.

Hence, voice bots shall pave the way for interactive and wholesome conversational IVR in the contact centers.

Essential capabilities of a voice bot

Here, we list down the core capabilities that a voice bot should have to deliver better conversational experiences.

1. Understand the ‘intent’

Voice bots leverage natural language processing (NLP) to comprehend the semantics of the human language, including grammar, synonyms, canonical word forms, and slang.

Customers aren’t always literal in what they utter. NLP helps extract the intent behind user utterance and helps voice bots understand the meaning behind the words. For example, when a customer says phrases like “sure” or “why not,” the bot must be able to understand that they are most probably saying “yes.”

Hence, intent analysis is one of the most significant capabilities of a voice bot.

2. Allow a barge-in

The ability to pause, listen, and speak accordingly, whenever a customer interrupts an ongoing interaction saying, “Sorry, but that’s not what I’m looking for” or “no, I am not interested in this product,” is one of the best features of a smart AI-enabled voice bot.

3. Streaming recognition

Speedy and efficient resolution is essential for every business. Therefore, a bot must be able to interpret and act at the same pace at which the customer speaks. Slow responses and lags may hamper the reputation of a business.

4. Personalization

When a customer calls a business, they are looking for a fast response. For instance, after reaching a contact center, if customers need to identify themselves through details like account number, id, address, etc., it can really add to their frustration levels.

Therefore, optimal integration with the support desk database is vital for the bot to greet the caller by name, know caller history, identify the likely reason for the call based on past interactions and customer persona, and tailor suggestions based on the customer knowledge.

5. Handover to a live agent

At any point during the conversation, if the bot is unable to answer the user issue or if the customer asks for an agent handover, the bot must be capable of transferring the call to the right human agent or subject matter expert.

6. Keep Learning

An AI-powered voice bot must never stop learning. It should leverage its machine learning capabilities to improve accuracy and continuously learn from past interactions.

Advantages of voice bots

With voice bots, you can reap the following benefits –

1. Provide fast resolution to customers

Research by Harvard Business Review has concluded Customers who have a complaint handled in less than five minutes go on to spend more on future purchases.

Therefore, a customer complaint handled quickly can turn into a potential opportunity for earning more profit. Traditional IVRs force customers to go through multiple options and menus, wait for the next available agent, or try again during regular business hours. However, voice bots offer instant resolution with 24X7 support, even scheduling agent call-backs if needed.

2. Scale up your voice operations and reduce costs

A single voice bot can engage with thousands of customers at the same time and provide personalized support to each user. Moreover, by offloading mundane, repetitive tasks from human agents, contact centers can manage many more support issues than otherwise possible and dramatically reduce costs.

3. Reduce transaction times

When it comes to speed, voice is any day faster and more customer-friendly than typing. Moreover, specific tasks, such as purchases, bookings, and cancellations, can be performed more quickly by bots than humans, hence reducing the overall transaction times.

4. Humanize support staff

Repetitive tasks, the mundane nature of everyday operations, and the pressure to close as many tickets as possible often sap the humanity out of support center agents. With bots taking over most of the repetitive tasks and easing the workload of contact center staff, your support staff can take out the time to deliver human connection whenever needed.

5. Create sales opportunities

Voice bots continuously learn from past interactions and are equipped with natural language understanding (NLU) and synthesis; they can deduce what the customer really means and deliver more contextual, meaningful, and human-like conversations and provide personalized product recommendations. Such interactive voice engagements create opportunities for new sales.

Voice bots - The future of contact center customer service

Voice bots are indeed the future of contact center customer engagement. They lead to an enormous reduction in cost by taking over the resolution of common and repetitive queries at scale.

Moreover, they make personalized recommendations based on the customers’ preferences and previous purchases and enhance revenue through cross-selling and upselling.

The speed, accuracy, and 24X7 availability of voice bots improve first call resolution rates and positively impact customer experience.

At Acuvate, we help clients develop a voice of their own with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore, supporting them in delivering exceptional customer support by converting text to lifelike speech using Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services.

The post Why Voice Bots Are The Future Of Contact Center Customer Service appeared first on BotCore.

Transforming Omnichannel Customer Service With Chatbots

Abhishek Shanbhag — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 09:31:00 +0000

Transforming omnichannel customer service with chatbots

With the onset of COVID-19, consumer buying worldwide shifted to digital platforms. Digital platforms are increasingly being used to interact with brands, view products, get information, check prices, and make purchases. Moreover, with the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, they expected a super quick and highly efficient customer service to resolve their queries. They no longer tolerated traditional service approaches like frustrating IVRs, frequent agent transfers, or having to repeat their questions again and again to get the support they required.

Today’s customers desire convenient services through a variety of channels. For example, they may check a product’s features on Facebook, send an email to request more information, make purchases through a website, and seek technical assistance through IVR.

Therefore, an omnichannel customer strategy that integrates all communication channels has become the foremost priority for organizations. It is not only crucial for companies to be present on a particular channel; rather, it is also imperative to adapt to the unique formatting of each customer touchpoint and coordinate communication across channels to create a personalized and holistic brand experience.

A study by the Aberdeen Group revealed that organizations with a sustained omnichannel engagement strategy retain an average of 89% of their customers. In comparison, those without one retain an average of 33% only. Moreover, companies with omnichannel strategies experience 23 times higher rates of customer satisfaction.

An effective way to deliver fast yet personalized omnichannel experiences is through AI chatbots. So, let’s find out how organizations are transforming omnichannel customer service with chatbots.

Omnichannel Chatbots: Build Once, Deploy Anywhere

Customers expect their demands and needs to be met, even when they use different channels to communicate, and that’s where omnichannel chatbots come into the picture.

An omnichannel chatbot needs to be built just once and can then be deployed across multiple channels, including email, customer-facing websites, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, mobile apps, and even voice assistants, such as Alexa and Google Home, and works seamlessly across all channels.

Enterprises today are using low-code chatbot builder platforms to build and deploy omnichannel chatbots. This means business teams can implement chatbots within a matter of a few weeks and little reliance on IT teams.

Omnichannel chatbots leverage technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and natural language understanding (NLU) to comprehend customer queries, learn from past interactions, and store information from each user in a centralized database.

Once the data is collected, the bots access this information in real-time to deliver personalized conversational experiences to customers. Since bots retain the context of the original conversation, customers can easily switch from one channel to the next without the need to start over.

Omnichannel bots make customer interactions smoother and more consistent by –

Functioning seamlessly across virtually all channels in the digital landscape
Engaging in personalized conversations by understanding each customer’s individual needs and situation
Accessing real-time data and ensuring information consistency across all channels
Solving simple to more complex queries
Adjusting to new information and customer preferences over time
Escalating queries to human agents when needed.

Benefits of omnichannel chatbots

1. Improved customer satisfaction

Omnichannel chatbots help organizations increase CSAT levels in more ways than one. Keeping up with the increased use of messaging applications and social media platforms, bots can now be integrated with channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, etc. Bots can then assist customers in locating the products that suit their needs, answer questions regarding payment, delivery status, etc., carry out simple transactions on the customer’s behalf, or solve other queries. Or they may transfer the request to a human agent or schedule an agent call-back if needed.

Moreover, bots can handle multiple requests at once to provide customer support at scale, 24X7, and at lower costs.

In addition to delivering passive customer interaction, wherein bots only engage with customers when contacted, organizations can stay a step ahead by proactively reaching out to customers regarding new products or issues they might be facing and improve brand perception in the long run.

2. Fast response

An omnichannel bot can provide an immediate response, within seconds, on any channel it is deployed. According to an Inside sales research, there is a 10x reduction in the odds of retaining a customer, even if you wait 5 mins after the lead makes contact. Given these stats, it becomes prudent for all organizations to provide swift and accurate responses to customers, both current and potential.

By leveraging its machine learning capabilities and drawing insights from already stored data, an omnichannel bot can provide quick, personalized, and consistent answers to customer queries in real-time.

3. Increased revenue

If customers receive exceptional service, they remain satisfied and loyal to your brand and buy more. According to a Harvard Business Review report, a 5% increase in customer retention amounts to an increase of up to 95% in the company’s annual earnings.

The wholesome, interactive, and engaging experience offered by omnichannel chatbots can thus accelerate business growth.

4. Data collection

Omnichannel bots collect customer information from various channels and store all of the data in a centralized database. Such data provides insights into customer buying behavior, past interactions, requirements, etc., allowing companies to plan more focussed and strategic marketing and sales initiatives.

Go Omnichannel Today!

Consumer behavior is evolving, and establishing new ways to connect with them has become more critical than before.

By adopting an omnichannel strategy with the help of chatbots, companies empower customers to engage with them on the channel of their choice and create more meaningful, effortless, and successful user experiences. Establishing consistent support across all channels leads to enhanced customer satisfaction, higher brand loyalty, and greater revenue.

On top of that, the data you collect can help you establish more targeted and improved outreach and sales practices.

At Acuvate, we help clients build and deploy omnichannel bots with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore. BotCore’s core capabilities and features include –

With minimum coding requirements and pre-built connectors, it is easy to deploy chatbots, and also differentiate responses across channels by using channel-specific interface elements. A single configuration is enough for deployment across multiple channels.
BotCore’s chatbots support multiple languages, like French, German, Italian, etc. so you can reach and engage a wider consumer base.
Through automatic handling of API requirements, BotCore’s chatbots can connect to various channels, such as Facebook, SMS, email, etc. You need to simply click on the required checkboxes, and the deployment is done.
BotCore’s machine learning (ML) capabilities help chatbots retain the context of the conversation, allowing users to switch channels without the need to begin the conversation from scratch.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our enterprise chatbot consultants for a personalized consultation. You may also be interested in exploring our chatbot builder platform (BotCore).

The post Transforming Omnichannel Customer Service With Chatbots appeared first on BotCore.

How Different CPG Companies Are Using Chatbots To Drive Customer Experience

Rakesh Reddy — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 09:14:52 +0000

How Different CPG Companies Are Using Chatbots To Drive Customer Experience

The importance of personalized customer experience in the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry cannot be overstated. However, this is easier said than done. The sheer scale of engaging personally with a humongous customer base, which may number to tens and hundreds of thousands, is not only next to impossible but also very expensive.

In the fast-moving world of CPG, it’s also critical to know the intent, preferences and behaviour of customers. It helps companies to make better recommendations, enhance product quality, provide superior support, personalize experiences – resulting in stronger customer loyalty, predictable market share and thus better financial results and an improved market position.

Several CPG companies today are adopting chatbots to address these challenges. Bots are becoming an essential part of CPG marketing and customer experience strategies. Some popular use cases include:

Product recommendations after understanding customer needs
Collecting customer feedback and reviews
Sending personalized tips and advice (Ex: recipes, hair/skin care tips etc.)
Pushing alerts and notifications about new products
Sending product information
Online shopping

Let’s look at a few cases where CPG companies have utilized chatbots to enhance their customer experience.

How Are CPG Companies Using Chatbots

1. Quaker Oats Company

In 2019, the Quaker Oats Company, one of the subsidiaries of PepsiCo., launched a Facebook chatbot named Otis, to improve customer engagement. It was built to automatically send recipes, and reminders for overnight oats, provide quick consultation for any concern, and assist in online shopping through the entire customer journey.

Quaker Oats has experienced considerable success in this initiative. The chatbot’s functionality and ability to assist customers one-on-one has enhanced the company’s marketing and customer Service efforts. As of mid 2019, the chatbot has had 6000+ customer interactions with a 13% YoY increase without any dedicated media or marketing support, drawing customers who don’t just want to purchase oats but also want to cook it differently. According to Elena Parlatore, Senior Director at Pepsico. who spearheaded this initiative, Otis has allowed them to successfully evolve their messaging, learn about the customer’s preferences, and test out automation.

2. Madison Reed

Hair color brand Madison Reed created the color-recognition chatbot – Mady, to help users just like a human colorist in a salon. It starts off by asking the user for a selfie of their face and hair, after which Mady will analyze the photo, ask the user some questions, and, depending on the user’s preferences, will recommend the right color and product accordingly. Mady has a highly informal tone, and even uses x’s and o’s and witty, funny, and flattering comments to better connect with the customer.

According to Madison Reed, it has a success rate of a whopping 85%. In fact, it has been so successful that it has boosted engagement by 400% and raised the click-through rate of the company website by 21%.

3. Acuvate Helps A Fortune 100 CPG Organization Improve Customer Experience With AI chatbot

We have recently helped one of our customers, a Fortune 100 CPG organization, deploy a Facebook Messenger chatbot for their hair care brand. The bot acts as a virtual hair and beauty consultant and provides recommendations on hair styling and the right products to use. Here’s how it works:

First, it requests customers to upload a selfie of themselves
It diagnoses the face and hair in the photo sent
Asks some quick questions about the nature of their hair and preferences
Uses Augmented Reality (AR) to create different hairstyles appropriate for the customer and recommends them
Finally it recommends the products which can help the customer achieve that look

4. PG Tips

For Red Nose Day 2017, PG Tips, a UK based Unilever tea brand, entered the chatbot realm by transforming its mascot – Monkey, into a chatbot. It answered user questions with a very degree of accuracy, provided information on PG Tips’ products, and shared light-hearted GIFS, and jokes during the conversation, generating 1 million laughs. This innovative use of chatbots enabled PG Tips to bring its brand persona to life, bringing a smile on people’s faces and encouraging them to donate to charity.

5. Perfect Fit

In 2018, Perfect Fit, a pet care subsidiary of Mars, launched a Facebook Messenger chatbot to provide customized pet care advice. The chatbot uses natural, conversational language to gather information from the users to create tailored nutrition and exercise programs and provide lifestyle enhancement tips for the benefit of the pets. Moreover, it has been designed to conduct routine follow-ups and measure the progress. In fact, users may ask direct questions to the chatbot regarding the health, habits or happiness of their pet, and it will either provide an answer or send a link to an external web page with more information.

6. Sephora

Sephora, a retail company that also manufactures beauty products, uses a chatbot to assist customers in shopping more effectively, booking appointments with a Sephora beauty specialist, handling questions, and locating brick-and-mortar stores quickly and on-the-go. Its goal is to drive sales and improve branding whilst providing a fun, social experience similar to that of shopping with a friend. It starts by asking questions to better understand the customer’s age and preferences and shares relevant content, tips, and tutorials, utilizing emojis, and providing relevant recommendations to enhance the buying experience.

The chatbot initiative has resulted in Sephora recording 600,000+ interactions, which have led to an 11% increase in bookings for the Sephora specialists and an average rise in purchasing worth $50 after reserving an in-store service.

Conclusion

CPG companies looking to improve their customer experience and marketing efforts are increasingly deploying chatbots on Facebook Messenger, websites, Virtual Assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant, etc. Chatbots deliver personalization at scale and engage customers with a conversational interface. The customer data captured from chatbots is also invaluable to build better products and improve product quality. If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our CPG chatbot experts for a personalized consultation.

You may also be interested in exploring our chatbot builder platform (BotCore) which is currently being leveraged by numerous large CPG companies across the globe.

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The post How Different CPG Companies Are Using Chatbots To Drive Customer Experience appeared first on BotCore.

Customer Experience Chatbots Archives - BotCore

23 Experts Share How Chatbots Will Transform Customer Experience in 2022

23 Experts Share How Chatbots Will Transform Customer Experience in 2022

“What will be interesting to see is the expansion of chatbots into the middle and top levels of the marketing funnel”

Keith Williams

David Truog

“Smart companies will upskill to the new discipline of conversation design”

“Chatbots are no more the future. They are the present.”

Rakesh Reddy

Roman V. Yampolskiy

“AI will develop beyond chatbots providing a complete social interaction experience”

“....The technologies that enable (chatbots’ benefits) include sentiment analysis, emotion detection, data-driven question-answering, automatic language translation…”

Kirk Borne

Kate Leggett

“...Make sure they (chatbots) are connected to human-assisted channels to truly transform the customer experience...”

“2022 will likely usher in real advances in the convergence of voice and VR with text”

Barry Dalton

Bernie Borges

“While the maturity of the underlying technologies like NLU that makes chatbots function is high, the key goal is to deliver meaningful automation that solves customer problems”

“We will witness a noticeable increase in the capacity of chatbots to communicate a ‘personality’...”

Chip Bell

Shep Hyken

“The (chatbot) technology has a better ability to understand questions asked in many different ways”

“(Chatbot) reduces a customer’s resolution time and empowers internal agents to have time to serve in H2H engagement”

Ian Moyse

Heverton Anunciacao

“Chatbots...should have more kindness and empathy in their scripts”

“It is critical that organisations do not see chatbots as a replacement for human to human interaction”

Ian Golding

Stacy Sherman

“The (chatbot) solution must provide a ‘low level of effort’..”

“We’ll see the use of chatbots expand into areas where they can help the company create more value for their customers”

Mike Wittenstein

Jill Raff

“No one wants to feel they’re in a digital feedback loop with tech that cannot solve their problem”

“Thanks to AI, chatbots have, and will increasingly, expedite complex customer queries cost-effectively”

Joseph Michelli

Alex Jimenez

“2022 will see an incremental increase in proof-of-concept tests”

“Predictive analysis won’t replace humans, but serve them better. Chatbots are at the helm of this! ”

Nabomita Mazumdar

Leslie O’Flahavan

“If deployed correctly, the convenience and accessibility of chatbots could transform customer experience”

“use chatbots for simple, transactional interactions to free up agent time that can be focused on more meaningful, emotional experiences”

James Dodkins

deBBie akwara

“(Chatbots) can help improve (CX) with a focus on response time, personalization and staff utilization”

“Chatbots will increasingly become mainstream”

Peter Lavers

How can AI and chatbots improve support agent experience & productivity

How can AI and chatbots improve support agent experience & productivity

The Different Ways AI improves Agent Experience and Productivity

1. Cognitive Search

2. Smart AI Advisor

3. Reduce agent effort by understanding customer intent

4. Act as an AI assistant

5. Assist in quality control through active listening

Get Started

Further Reading:

Using AR and chatbots to increase customer engagement

Using AR and chatbots to increase customer engagement

What is Augmented Reality (AR)?

#1 POND’S

#2 Sephora

#3 Madison Reed

#4 IKEA

The benefits of integrating augmented reality and chatbots

1. Unique selling point

2. Increase engagement with personalized experiences

3. Higher revenue

Final Thoughts

Further Reading:

7 Advanced Chatbot Features To Consider in 2021

7 Advanced Chatbot Features To Consider in 2021

Advanced Chatbot Features to consider in 2021

1. Augmented reality and chatbots

2. Sentiment analysis and emotional intelligence

3. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text

4. Agent assistant capabilities

5. Human-in-the-loop feedback system