AI Archives - BotCore

Top 5 Ways Intelligent Virtual Assistants Augment Customer Contact Centers in Europe

Roopesh Poojala — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 06:39:25 +0000

Top 5 Ways Intelligent Virtual Assistants Augment Customer Contact Centers in Europe

In today’s fast-paced, digital-first world, customer needs and expectations continue to rise, raising the demand for customer contact centers all over the globe.

In Europe, particularly, the change in customer demographics and the growing popularity of e-commerce has led to increasing pressure on contact centers for customer support. Here, companies, small, medium, and large, believe in focusing on their core operations; hence, Europe is one of the biggest markets that is outsourcing contact center operations.

The call center outsourcing market share in Europe is expected to increase by USD 3.73 billion from 2021 to 2026, and the market’s growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 3.53%. The retail, IT, and telecom sectors will be the most significant drivers of contact center outsourcing in Europe from 2022-2024.

High agent volume and the need for diversity, scalability, and multilingual capabilities are the most significant reasons why most European enterprises are turning to automation and AI to scale their contact center operations.

That’s where intelligent virtual assistants, including chat and voice bots, come into the picture. Virtual assistants, also known as virtual agents, use intelligent conversational interfaces powered by AI, machine learning, and natural language processing technologies to understand and respond to customer inquiries in a human-like manner.

Let’s know the five ways virtual assistants are well-placed to support European contact centers.

Five Ways Customer Support Chatbots Augment Contact Centers in Europe

1. Deliver exceptional customer support across geographies and time zones.

European companies prefer to focus on their core revenue-generating activities and prefer to outsource their contact center operations. However, they mostly outsource to nearby regions and time zones to account for language and cultural similarities.

This strategy suffers from a major drawback. Rapidly changing customer demographics have necessitated quick, 24X7 customer support. Thus, organizations may want to set up contact centers in distant countries to cover customer support beyond their usual business hours, demanding additional resources in terms of staffing and equipment.

AI-powered customer support chatbots transcend locational boundaries, especially in a continent like Europe that has multiple time zones, and provide instant answers to all customer queries at all times.

2. Make omnichannel chatbots the new gold standard in customer support in Europe.

Customers in different parts of Europe prefer different ways and channels of contacting contact center support. For example, the Netherlands has the highest number of non-telephone channel users, with email and web chat being the most popular.

On the flip side, people in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden prefer social media and web chat over email. The bottom line is that people prefer to communicate with brands on the channel of their choice and may even want to switch channels in the middle of an ongoing support case.

That’s where omnichannel chatbots play a crucial role. Virtual assistants can offer omnichannel experiences so customers can experience consistent and personalized brand engagement on their preferred channels. Moreover, customers can seamlessly transition from one channel to another without losing the context of the original conversation.

3. Address inquiries and grievances in customers’ native tongue in the land of many languages.

In a continent like Europe, where people speak multiple languages, it is challenging to personalize customer support for the entire customer base. After all, customers prefer being engaged in their native language. Moreover, it makes them feel comfortable, valued and heard.

Hiring contact center agents who speak multiple languages or training existing ones to speak in different tongues is costly in terms of time and money. That’s where virtual assistants play a crucial role.

AI virtual assistants support contact centers by detecting the user’s language and switching the conversation flow to the native tongue. What’s more, the customer support chatbot can remember the customer’s language preferences and then reach out to them in the same language in case of a proactive outbound engagement.

4. Providing scalable self-service options and data-enriched proactive engagement.

In recent times, Europe has seen steady growth in using self-service solutions like websites, social networking channels (Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, whatsapp etc.), and IVR. These are easily accessible and take a considerable load off contact centers. To work productively and provide seamless, more meaningful customer engagement, organizations in Europe are embedding customer support bots on these channels.

70% of contact center agents say there are fewer calls when chatbots are available. Customer support bots and virtual assistants can shorten waiting times and collect relevant customer data before the call is passed on to the human agent. In cases where the requests are simple and repetitive, virtual assistants can solve them faster than the contact center agent.

Voice bot platforms have paved the way for conversational IVR in contact centers. Voice bots embedded within traditional IVR systems leverage natural language processing and speech recognition technologies to respond to users’ verbal commands using voice or text, enabling faster, more accessible, and more interactive user support.

Moreover, predictive data analytics maps out the entire customer journey to personalize interactions, reduce mean time to resolve (MTTR), and increase overall customer satisfaction (CSAT).

5. Cost is always a significant factor!

Using virtual assistants — chat and voice bots, leads to major cost reductions for all enterprises.

For starters, outsourced customer service agents cost as much as €22,200 per agent annually in countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Even for employees hired in Central and Eastern Europe, where contact center jobs are amongst the better-paid ones, the cost of hiring a contact center agent can come out to be around €6,436 per year.

In short, hiring more contact center agents will always prove heavier on the organization’s pockets. On the other hand, intelligent virtual assistants can solve thousands of problems at a few pennies per transaction, making them highly viable, almost a mandate for countries in Europe where labor costs are very high.

How can Acuvate help?

Acuvate helps clients build and deploy virtual assistants – customer support & engagement chatbots and voice bots with its enterprise bot-building platform, BotCore.

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we have the opportunity of leveraging the best of Microsoft’s AI, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) frameworks, including the Microsoft Bot Framework, Azure Cognitive Services, and LUIS.

Besides supporting languages like German, French, English, Latin, and many more (multilingual functionality), our bots work on popular enterprise channels (Teams, Slack, ProofHub, etc.) and social channels (Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, whatsapp etc.), thus helping organizations engage a geographically-dispersed workforce and customer base.

To know more about our bots and virtual assistants, please schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.

The post Top 5 Ways Intelligent Virtual Assistants Augment Customer Contact Centers in Europe appeared first on BotCore.

Creating Intelligent Chatbots Using Power Virtual Agents & Dataverse

Satheesh Kothakapu — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 08:54:52 +0000

Creating Intelligent Chatbots Using Power Virtual Agents & Dataverse

Over the past two years, the shift in how businesses operate worldwide has been palpable. Dynamics have transformed, ushering in an era of rapidly changing customer and employee expectations.

One of the most significant trends witnessed over the past two years has been the unprecedented and unparalleled rise in the use of conversational AI — chatbots and virtual agents — toagents—to provide quick, meaningful, and more personalized service to customers while enhancing employee efficiency levels by minimizing repetitive and redundant tasks.

A well-developed chatbot has the potential to shape a company’s brand image, playing an integral role in attracting and retaining the right market for your product and keeping employees active, engaged, and motivated throughout their journey with your organization.

Agile, resilient, and future-proof — these are three words that best describe today’s business environment. It is not enough to implement chatbots; deploying them at the right time to hasten business operations and build a competitive edge in the market is paramount.

That’s where Microsoft’s Power Virtual Agents (PVA), a low-code SaaS platform that helps build and deploy bots quickly with minimum coding experience required, comes into the scene.

This blog will explore creating intelligent chatbots using Power Virtual Agents and the Dataverse.

An integral part of Microsoft’s suite of services, Power Virtual Agents helps organizations develop and implement virtual agents and chatbots leveraging the low-code approach. This means both pro and citizen developers alike can build chatbots in a short period with little or no coding knowledge needed.

Moreover, being hosted on the Microsoft Azure Cloud environment offers the added advantage of pre-existing infrastructure. Hence, organizations needn’t invest more resources in maintaining the chatbots and can enjoy seamless integration with other services.

In short, Power Virtual Agents capitalizes on its graphical interface and minimalistic coding requirements to make bot building a breeze for all.

PVA takes entire responsibility for the functional aspect of the chatbot, so all the user has to do is provide the logic and set the virtual agent up.

Below, we describe in brief the process of creating your first chatbot using Power Virtual Agents and the Dataverse environment —

Install Power Virtual Agents in Teams by selecting and adding it from the left navigation bar.
After installing, launch the app and choose the “Start Now” button.
Choose which team would own and manage your chatbot and then “Continue.”
Choose a name and language for your virtual assistant.
Select “Create” to complete the process of creation.
Define the topic nodes. Topics define chatbot conversations and how they take place. Types of topics include “trigger” phrases (phrases and keywords that indicate the user has asked a question) and “conversation nodes” (define how the bot responds to the user’s request).

How to create a topic?

Select + New topic. Name and Save the Topic.
Enter trigger phrases for the topic, “for example, “Who can I contact for a loan query?”
In the Message node, enter information for the trigger nodes. For example, “The contact details for a loan query are Steve Robbins, sr@xyz.com.” You can add multiple conversation nodes.
Select Redirect to another topic > End of conversation to define the end of the conversation.

Click here to know more.

7. Add inputs, variables, and conditions.

Instead of defining all trigger phrase information in the message node, you can add inputs, variables, and conditions to vary the chatbot’s response based on the user’s input.

Inputs define the user’s response when the chatbot asks a question. While variables store the inputs to be used later, conditions set forth the branching logic.

To add a node between the trigger phrases and end conversation node, select the Add node plus sign and then select the “ask a question” option.
Select “Multiple choice options” and define the options for the user to select from.
Select the variable name that will be triggered when the user configures the branching logic.
To define the next appropriate response for each of the multiple choice options, create a new condition node and add a new message node for each probable response that the user may give.

8. Pull in data from Dataverse for Teams

Dataverse for Microsoft Teams is a low-code service that offers relational data storage, editable data tables, rich data types, robust governance, and one-click deployment to Teams.

You can create a Dataverse for teams table in the same team as the chatbot using Microsoft PowerApps.
In PowerApps for Teams, select Build -> See all -> New -> Table.
Create a new table, add new rows, and columns.
Add a “call an action.”
Use Power Automate flows to pull in data from the Dataverse for Teams table, Lists, or any other data source.

To know more, click here

9. Publish the Chatbot

In the Power Virtual Agents app, open the chatbot for editing.
Choose the Publish bot menu item or button.
Choose the Publish option. Select Publish to confirm in the Publish latest content confirmation window.

10. Publish the Chatbot

Once the chatbot is complete, it must be published so that users can interact with it. You can send a link to team members or add the chatbot to the Built by your colleagues section in Teams or if the chatbot is for the organization, you’ll send it to your Teams admin for approval.

If the chatbot is only for your team members, you must instruct them on how to use and share the bot by choosing one of the following:

Copy link – Provide users with a link to the chatbot.
Add to the team – Add the bot to a specific team. With this option enabled, anyone in your team will be able to find the bot in the Teams app store in the Built by your colleagues section.
Show in Teams app store – Make your bot visible in the Teams app store, with the option of showing only to teammates and shared users or to everyone in your organization.

Click here to learn about how to publish the chatbot for the entire organization.

Subscription And Licensing:

Microsoft 365 offers two editions of PVA:

PVA for Teams: A free app that only permits the creation of internal bots.
Power Virtual Agents: Requires additional subscription & supports the development of both web-based external client bots and internal Microsoft Teams bots.

How can Acuvate help?

As a Microsoft Gold Partner and provider of next-generation AI and consulting services, Acuvate leverages Microsoft’s robust suite of services, including PowerApps, Power Virtual Agents, and Power Automate, to create custom apps, AI bots, and workflows that enhance employee efficiency and support the delivery of exceptional customer experiences.

We have assisted clients from different industries and geographies in creating intelligent chatbots using PVA and Microsoft Dataverse.

To learn more about our chatbots, please schedule a personalized consultation with one of our experts.

The post Creating Intelligent Chatbots Using Power Virtual Agents & Dataverse appeared first on BotCore.

Top use cases of Chatbots in the Banking and Finance Industry

Pradeep Tigulla — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 08:11:20 +0000

Top Use Cases of Chatbots in the Banking and Finance Industry

Chatbots have come a long way since the first time they were used by a banking application in 2015. With advancements in AI, NLP, and new communication channels like Google Home, Alexa, and social media platforms, they are now widely being used by almost all popular banks and financial institutions.

These ChatBots perform various repetitive tasks easily and accurately. Further, they can be personalized for each of the customers.

The conversational bots can be text-based or voice-based. They can be accessed from a mobile app, a banking website, social media messaging platforms, or voice-based personal digital assistants.

Generally, ChatBots used by banks are more popular in the finance and banking industry. However, chatbots are used for more complicated and personalized tasks beyond conventional uses.

Though as bank customers using digital services we all experience ChatBots, they are also used by employees working in financial institutions to retrieve information easily. When we go to a bank to learn more about a policy the employee retrieves information not from big bundles of paper on their desks, but rather from the organization’s memory using a ChatBot.

In 2017, Acuvate published a blog on top use cases of chatbots in the banking and finance industry. A lot has changed in these five years. They can guess the information we seek, suggest policies and initiatives, and are more convenient to use.

Here are 5 ways banks and financial institutions are using chatbots

1. Addressing Customer’s concerns

Unlike banking personnel, digital tools like websites are available for customers 24×7. To make it further easy for users, chatbots integrated into websites and mobile apps can answer the most common questions faster and with fewer clicks.

For example, reporting a hacking attempt, locking your account to stop a hacking attempt, or finding out more information about an unidentified debit would previously require the customer to log in to the website, search for the option, and take action. These are the most common tasks that a banking chatbot in the banking website or social media app can answer in just a few seconds. Since the app is on your mobile phone, verifying your credentials is easy. Here’s an example

The ambit of the operations a chatbot can perform has greatly widened these days with advancements in security systems and technologies. ChatBot interactions are now more personalized and natural.

2. Retaining old customers and expanding customer base

Customer engagement is beyond human interactions between customers and employees at the office. With more customers using digital tools like websites, apps embedded in mobile phones, and other personal digital assistants like Google Home or Alexa, each of these tools have ChatBots to answer customers and cater to their needs in time.

These tools simplify various processes and save time and effort. ChatBots are integral to all digital tools to engage with a large number of customers and provide personalized services. They define the quality of service and ease of operations a financial institution provides its customers.

For example, ChatBots identify new customers and present them with options of information they are more likely to seek. For older customers, ChatBots identify them, address them by their name, and with knowledge of their account details, they present a different set of actions for each of them. With advanced ChatBots, customers can’t say if they’re talking to a human or a digital assistant.

When embedded in IoT digital assistants like Alexa or Google Home, the latest advancements in NLP ( Natural Language Processing) technologies help the audio-based Chatbots provide a pleasant conversational experience to customers along with information they asked for and may be interested in.

3. Generating useful Marketing Leads

Modern ChatBots backed with Artificial Intelligence can build interest in a financial institution’s products and services. Chatbots are the perfect tools to implement digitalized marketing techniques to find new customers and sustain old ones. They are effective in keeping customers active by providing the convenience of being there for them always.

The ChatBots collect information from customers and provide them with information on various initiatives that are likely to interest them. This helps in identifying potential customers and in growing the customer base.

4. Recommendations and upselling

As the services of banking and financial institutions grew wider, it is important to let the right customers know about the right policies and initiatives. Intelligent digital systems like chatbots can more accurately identify interested customers. Chatbots make it easier to maintain customer profiles, identify who wants to buy other products, and get feedback on existing products and services.

Moreover, these Chatbots learn and adapt to situations. Hence they learn more about customers and get better and more accurate over time.

5. Personal Financial Assistant

Chatbots help users track their spending and receive a timely reminder of impending payments. Payments can be automated to avoid late fees. They do help customers refrain from overspending and provide regular reports of their expenses.

The information collected by chatbots can be used to profile customers based on their financial needs, status, and expenses. They especially make loan approvals and investment decisions easier and more manageable.

How to build the most reliable chatbots?

Chatbots reduce costs, no doubt, but that’s not the main advantage. They provide a better customer experience and make essential processes simpler. Every bank and the financial institution needs a chatbot.

However, these simple solutions are not so easy to build. As with any other financial system, since they involve sensitive information and must be error-free, they should be built with care and by trustable experts. Moreover, unlike physical assets, digital infrastructure like chatbots need to be updated continuously to address changing needs of customers and to stay relevant and competitive in the market.

BotCore - the powerful enterprise bot builder platform from Acuvate

Over the past few years, we have helped several enterprises build & launch bots to meet the needs of their employees, customers, and vendors. After observing several enterprise scenarios large landscape of user intents, and common pain points across various departments, we spent more than 15 person-years of research, design & development on building a highly flexible and powerful enterprise bot builder platform – “BotCore”.

BotCore is the perfect accelerator that enables banks and financial institutions to train, build, and launch customized conversational bots powered by artificial intelligence. Using “Cognitive Abstraction” it can leverage an AI service available today and are scalable for future services.

BotCore today powers chatbots at several Fortune 100 & large enterprises. To learn more about how Botcare can help your business in providing superior customer engagement, please mail us at

The post Top use cases of Chatbots in the Banking and Finance Industry appeared first on BotCore.

Transforming The Retail Experience with Metaverse and Virtual assistants

Abhishek Shanbhag — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 13:30:00 +0000

Transforming The Retail Experience with Metaverse and Virtual assistants

Metaverse is the next big thing for retail! Everyone is talking about it. And why not? The global pandemic has brought us closer to the digital world like never before, throwing us into the exciting new world of augmented and virtual reality.

While metaverse is the new buzzword globally, few understand it and its unlimited opportunity to help brands create unique experiences for their customers. So, what is metaverse?

According to Gartner, “Metaverse is a collective virtual open space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. It is physically persistent and provides enhanced immersive experiences.”

While still in its nascent stages, the concept of metaverse has caught the eye of tech giants, including the likes of Facebook and Microsoft. It’s the next big technology platform, with technology leaders, social networks, online game makers, and most importantly, big fashion brands vying to capture a piece of what experts predict to be an $800 billion market opportunity.

By 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse for shopping, education, social media, work, and entertainment.

Here’s looking at how popular retail brands are leveraging the metaverse to drive more engaging and immersive experiences for their customers.

Dyson came with its virtual store to allow users to try out its products on a variety of hair types. After logging into Dyson’s virtual store, customers can use its VR demo to style their hair in the metaverse or look deeply inside the products to understand their technology.

Popular sportswear brand Nike built Nikeland, its own metaverse studio, to turn sport and play into a lifestyle. Nikeland’s surroundings match the buildings and fields inside Nike’s real-life headquarters.

What’s more, you can dress up your Nikeland digital avatar in classic Nike apparel and staple footwear like the Air Force 1, Nike Blazer, ACG, Nike Tech Pack, and Air Force 1.

Visitors can play games such as dodgeball, the floor is lava, and tag inside the virtual world. Creators can also develop their own mini-games using interactive sports materials.

Since Metaverse is the sum of all virtual worlds, including augmented reality, the internet, and other technologies, it undoubtedly encompasses tons of data generated by artificial intelligence (AI) that needs to be collected, analyzed, and leveraged for accelerated innovation.

In this blog, we’ll talk about online retail, one of the most upcoming and potentially game-changing use cases of AI-enabled virtual assistants in the metaverse of tomorrow.

Personalized Shopping Experiences with Virtual Assistants in Metaverse

The ability to shop in the metaverse is the next big retail trend. And leading retail brands are jumping on this bandwagon. With the integration of conversational AI technologies such as virtual assistants and voice bots, brands are now looking to offer interactive, real-time, and more immersive digital shopping experiences.

Imagine living in New York and trying on that pretty red dress from a Paris-based clothing brand virtually through a 3D fitting room or taking a thrilling test drive to buy your next car in virtual reality. Or try out the latest accessories, the coolest new sunglasses, or the trending makeup products. While it’s your virtual avatar doing that for you, you wouldn’t mind it considering your newfound ability to access global retail brands while sitting in the comfort of your living room.

That’s where the metaverse has the potential to take the world of retail. The integration of AI-powered virtual assistants and conversational AI bots allows brands to track customer activity, purchase behavior, and demographic profiles, learn from prior patterns, and leverage this data to provide more personalized product recommendations and encourage purchase.

Here’s how metaverse is making all this possible.

1. Shop beyond space and time with your virtual AI avatar

To tap into the unlimited potential of the metaverse, many brands are investing millions to make this vision a reality. Or should we say “virtual reality?” Pun intended. The virtual shopping experience involves 3D digital avatars that would help users interact with other 3D digital objects and digital humans in the virtual world. These digital humans are virtual sales assistants, who assist users (or, to put it in better words, their virtual avatars) with online shopping, guide them through the brand’s online store, provide advice, and hand-hold them throughout the sales process.

Customers (i.e., their virtual avatars) can try out products, check out discounts and offers, and pick out items for purchase.

Naturally, these digital humans are voice bots designed to ease the process of searching and buying products and ensure virtual shopping feels natural and frictionless, screaming out convenience for users.

These virtual assistants have conversational AI capability that helps them understand an intent, carry on human-like conversations with users, and provide truly immersive and engaging human-like experiences in the virtual world.

What’s more, you can customize your virtual/ 3D digital avatars to render them human-like features and make them look like you, be it hair, makeup, or clothing. In fact, some brands solely design clothes to be worn only by avatars in the metaverse.

2. Generate personalized product recommendations in virtual reality

AI-powered virtual assistants can analyze, understand, and learn the users’ preferences and shopping habits and generate unique product recommendations and buying tips based on such data.

Let’s take a quick example. Outfit generator apps will be the next breakthrough in the metaverse, providing unparalleled shopping experiences in the virtual world. Advanced AI technologies will help create virtual wardrobes, wherein users can put their existing clothes and get personalized outfit recommendations, exposing them to completely new and unique shopping experiences.

How Can Acuvate Help?

We are a global player in next-gen digital services and consulting, Acuvate leverages next-gen technologies to build chatbots, voice bots, custom apps, and workflows that increase business efficiencies and support collaboration, information orchestration, and intelligent analysis.

If your company is new to the metaverse, it would be wise to understand the vast opportunities the technology is prospected to offer. We, at Acuvate, can help you take baby steps into the metaverse and help you explore retail experiences and environments from different industries in the virtual world.

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

The post Transforming The Retail Experience with Metaverse and Virtual assistants appeared first on BotCore.

5 Advanced Capabilities to look for in an IT Helpdesk Bot

Abhishek Shanbhag — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 10:08:00 +0000

5 Advanced Capabilities to look for in an IT Helpdesk Bot

The past year has witnessed the rapid adoption of IT helpdesk chatbots as remote work increased and companies received an influx of IT service requests. With employees trying to access different applications simultaneously and remotely, incidents and issues surged, ranging from simple ones like setting up VPN and authentication to complex troubleshooting.

IT helpdesk bots enable self-service by addressing simple, repetitive requests instantly. Being available 24X7, they can handle multiple requests at once at lower costs to the organization, allowing IT support agents to focus on other higher priority issues.

Since they were first launched, IT helpdesk bots have matured and now possess a host of powerful capabilities.

Let’s look at some of the advanced functionalities to look for in an IT Helpdesk bot.

Capabilities to look for in an IT Helpdesk Bot

1. One-stop solution for all your IT needs

The foremost purpose of an IT chatbot is to act as a virtual IT assistant, ensuring employees receive timely support on all their IT issues, whether it’s resetting passwords, updating software, resolving network outages, or creating and tracking IT tickets.

Common IT use cases in various areas include the following –

Fulfillment of common IT requests
Login to the VPN, install hardware/software, reset passwords, renew software licenses.
Management of IT Assets
Submit requests for hardware/software, check approval status, return devices, report a stolen device, wipe or disable a stolen device.
Automate incident management
Unlock accounts, report network outages, create and escalate major incidents, assist in troubleshooting IT issues (For example, WiFi connectivity problems), provide real-time IT alerts and notifications.
Answer network and configuration related FAQs
Configure connections with a network printer, tutorials on virus scanning and anti-virus software updates, troubleshooting guides based on various Windows versions, installing Microsoft 365, recovering deleted M365 accounts.

Learn More: Create Ticket/Incident Use Case

2. Understand the user’s intention

The IT bot must use powerful technologies, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and Machine Learning (ML), to understand the user’s intent and recommend suitable solutions.

Often, similar questions may confuse IT bots, and users may not receive the solutions they are looking for at the moment. In such a scenario, IT bots must reaffirm the user’s intention before providing answers.

3. Agent Handover capabilities

In certain scenarios, IT bots cannot handle employee queries, and the conversation may require a handover to a human agent. The issue may be complicated, or the employee may be anxious or frustrated. The IT bot must present the user with a “chat with an agent” option in such a case.

Capabilities that ensure a seamless handover include –

Handing over chat transcripts such as details about context and sentiment analysis scores.
Seamless integration with existing IT helpdesk software, including Service Now, JIRA, Service Desk Plus, etc., and live agent software, including Salesforce, LiveChat, etc.
Translating queries for the human agents while escalating the chat in cases where multilingual support is provided.
Agent observation, that is, agents merely supervise and monitor bot conversations instead of completely taking charge. In such cases, the IT bot privately takes agent authorization before recommending solutions to employees.

Learn More: Handover to Live Agent Use Case

4. Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to perform repetitive tasks like data entry, calculations, handling routine queries, etc.

The combination of RPA and IT helpdesk chatbots is powerful as it can solve significant operational and workflow-related issues for organizations. The automation abilities of RPA integrated with the cognitive capabilities of chatbots help IT teams automate processes end-to-end, perform transactions on the user’s behalf, and reduce costs.

The RPA-powered bot integrates with multiple disparate backend systems, retrieves information from such systems, and handles complex requests and queries at scale.

When the IT bot receives a request, it will ask a few questions to confirm the user’s intention and trigger the RPA bot to perform specific tasks without routing them to an agent.

5. Additional advanced capabilities

Other advanced capabilities you should look out for in your IT Helpdesk bot include –

Multilingual support
Even though English is one of the most popular languages globally, merely 7.5% of the world’s population are native speakers of the language. Organizations need to provide IT assistance to their employees in the language of their choice so that they feel included and supported. An IT bot must possess multilingual capabilities and answer employee queries in multiple languages, including German, Italian, Spanish, French, etc.
Search beyond the internal knowledge base
When needed, the IT bot must be capable of fetching relevant information from the internet when the answer to the employee’s query isn’t available in the company’s knowledge database.
Ability to create or update bot responses
The IT chatbot’s admin portal must allow users to add FAQs, create conversational flows, and modify bot responses whenever needed.
Take chat backup
Another interesting capability to look out for is the bot’s capability to take backups of employee chatbots and share them via email when requested.

How can Acuvate help?

At Acuvate, we help clients deploy IT Helpdesk bots with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.

Key capabilities of our BotCore include –

An intuitive, low-code, graphical interface that allows the quick implementation of AI chatbots
Seamless integration with existing ITSM systems (ServiceNow, ServiceDesk Plus, JIRA, etc.) and AI services.
Our chatbots can be designed to simulate highly complex employee conversations.
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we leverage the best of Microsoft’s AI, machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) technologies.
Our bots are deployable on almost all popular enterprise messaging channels and support multiple languages, including English, German, French, Italian, etc.
Users can create/update responses using rich media such as Buttons, Carousel, Images, Videos, etc., by dragging and dropping the required elements.
If the bot does not completely comprehend the user’s query, it will surface the top seven Bing search results.

To know more about our IT Helpdesk bots, click here, or please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.

The post 5 Advanced Capabilities to look for in an IT Helpdesk Bot appeared first on BotCore.

5 Reasons For Enterprise Chatbot Failure and How to avoid them

Abhishek Shanbhag — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 12:08:00 +0000

5 Reasons For Enterprise Chatbot Failure and How to avoid them

A Forrester Report declared that “the majority of chatbots were poorly- implemented, systematically ruining customer experiences and – in the case of the worst incarnations – nothing more than “virtual idiots.”

Cut to today – and chatbots have become a key element of the digital transformation initiatives that businesses have undertaken globally. While the pandemic has undoubtedly had a disruptive impact on many social, economic, and financial aspects, it has been a significant catalyst in the chatbot’s “return to life.”

As consumers were forced to move to online modes of shopping, their digital footprint increased exponentially, with a huge rise in the use of digital channels, including social media messaging, email, and chatbots. Chatbots help customers solve queries faster, at scale, anytime, and anywhere.

Moreover, remote and distributed workforces are here to stay, and by implementing chatbots, organizations can simplify knowledge management, automate repetitive tasks, and free employees to focus on strategic, revenue-generating activities or on customers that demand more attention.

However, even now, achieving full-scale implementation and adoption is difficult, with many chatbot projects stuck in the pilot mode or hesitant to move to large-scale deployment.

So, why do chatbots fail? Most importantly, what can enterprises do to avoid such failures?

5 Reasons for Enterprise Chatbot Failure

1. Trying to achieve too much at the onset

Organizations often try to do much with chatbots right at the beginning, which leads to failure at the pilot stage. At the end of the day, it’s all about the value that the chatbot provides. Therefore, it’s best to limit the bot to a narrow set of use cases that serve customers and employees well on the get-go, and then gain momentum, as needed.

2. Lack of alignment on success metrics

There could also be a misalignment on the success metrics for a chatbot. That is, organizations may not be able to define the right set of KPIs that decide how effective the bot is. For example, an organization builds a chatbot mainly for the purpose of answering customers’ FAQs.

In such a scenario, measuring the success of the pilot run by “how funny and natural sounding” the bot is doesn’t serve the purpose of the business.

Moreover, organizations must approach chatbots as a long-term investment that requires a dedicated team to continuously monitor trial results and improve performance over time.

3. Lack of involvement from business users

Failure to manage change effectively is another reason why chatbots don’t move past the pilot stage. As humans, it’s harder to alter habits and adapt to new tools.

While the end-users may be drawn in by the hype of a chatbot release, they may soon revert to their old methods of communication. Moreover, technology teams in-charge of the chatbot may move on to another project without investing the time and effort required in improving the bot’s content.

4. Lack of specificity

Customers and employees are looking for quick and specific answers when they get in touch with a chatbot. Sometimes, chatbots bombard the user with web pages and FAQ documents, instead of providing the exact resolution.

When chatbots aren’t designed well to solve the user’s queries, it lowers their success rate in the pilot stage, deterring organizations from implementing them on a large-scale in the future.

4. Lack of specificity

Based on customer mood, transaction value, or its inability to solve the user’s issues, the chatbot must be capable of transferring the conversation to a human agent with the full contextual elements.

Moreover, queries requiring multi-step resolutions must be resolved seamlessly without the customer having to repeat information or steps already completed.

However, chatbots that fail to do so provide little utility to the user and may be shelved in the pilot stage.

Tips to avoid chatbot failure

Scaling a chatbot is less about AI or conversational design than it is about information architecture, knowledge management (KM), and organizational alignment. Firms must radically simplify how they deploy and support bots instead of overengineering them.

So, here are a few tips to avoid enterprise chatbot failure –

Think about the goal of the chatbot from the user’s perspective and the objectives of the business. For example, do you only want your bot to respond quickly? Or, is the quality of response and user satisfaction more important?
Put the right people in charge of deployment, with the right budget, and the right chatbot KPIs in mind.
Ensure the quantity and quality of data that feeds the bot is optimum. Keep collecting more data, but don’t over-complicate the process with an overabundance of data from siloed systems.
Pick the right vendors to ensure the chatbots are well-designed to understand user intent and the context of the conversation, respond accurately, and escalate the chat to human agents when needed.
Demonstrate the benefits of the chatbot to help employees embrace the change. For example, let them know that by automating a certain percentage of customer interactions, they can spend “X” amount of time on the more challenging tasks.

How can Acuvate help?

At Acuvate, we help clients build and deploy AI-enabled chatbots with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.

With its low-code, graphical interface and visual tools, organizations can deploy omnichannel, multilingual chatbots within a few weeks.

As Microsoft Gold Partners, we use the best of Microsoft Technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing (for example, Microsoft Bot Framework, LUIS, Azure Cognitive Services, etc.). We also help clients implement chatbots using the Microsoft Power Virtual Agents platform.

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

The post 5 Reasons For Enterprise Chatbot Failure and How to avoid them appeared first on BotCore.

The Future of Chatbots: Top statistics to look for in 2021 and beyond

Abhishek Shanbhag — Tue, 18 May 2021 12:47:00 +0000

The Future of Chatbots: Top statistics to look for in 2021 and beyond

According to a study by Allied Market Research, the global intelligent virtual assistant market was pegged at $3.44 billion in 2019 and is expected to hit $44.25 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 37.7% from 2020 to 2027.

Owing to the rapid digitization of business, the rise in the penetration of smart devices, the high demand for automation in customer services coupled with the evolving employee expectations, chatbots and voice-enabled assistants are being used in a wide range of industries and use cases.

From searching for information, finding hotels and restaurants, listening to music, and shopping for products to solving customer queries, carrying out routine HR and IT tasks, and getting personalized alerts and recommendations, intelligent virtual assistants (IVA) have taken the entire business landscape by storm.

Today’s market is filled with AI-enabled chatbots and voice assistants, including Microsoft Cortana, Google Home, Apple Siri, and Amazon Alexa, embedded on every platform and device, such as websites, social media apps, smartphones, portable speakers, smartwatches, and tablets. Indeed, it’s time for organizations to jump on board with this transformation to survive and thrive in the market.

So, if you plan to implement chatbots/virtual assistants for your customers and employees, read on to learn about the latest industry trends and use cases, and top statistics to look out for in 2021.

Customer and employee challenges

33% are most frustrated by having to repeat themselves to multiple support reps. (HubSpot Research)
60% of customers feel that long holds and wait times are the most frustrating parts of a service experience. (Zendesk)
30% of customers will leave a brand and never come back because of a bad experience. (IDC)
The average business worker uses 4 different applications for daily work.
Employees spend over 3 hours a day on easily automatable tasks. (Business Standard)
70 to 80 percent of business intelligence initiatives end up failing due to bad user experience. (Gartner)
In a survey, 99% of the respondents said it is valuable for employees to easily find HR information, such as maternity leave or other company policies. (ServiceNow HR Tech Conference and Expo)

Chatbot Adoption Statistics:

3 in 5 millennials have used chatbots at least once in their lives. (Outgrow)
There are more than 300,000 active bots on Messenger. (Review42)
About 7 billion conversations take place on Facebook Messenger every day. Messages are opened more often than emails, with a 30-40 percent CTR. (G2 Learn Hub)
Teams that use chatbots to automate conversations are 27% more likely to meet rising customer expectations than those that don’t. (Tech Republic)

Customer Service Chatbot Statistics:

By 2023, 30% of customer service organizations will deliver proactive customer services by using AI-enabled process orchestration and continuous intelligence. (Gartner)
By 2025, proactive customer engagement interactions will outnumber reactive customer engagement interactions. (Gartner)
By 2023, more than 60% of all customer service engagements will be delivered via digital and web-serve channels, up from 23% in 2019. (Gartner)
By 2025, customer service organizations will elevate operational efficiency by 25% by embedding AI in their multichannel customer engagement platforms. (Gartner)
Chatbot conversations will deliver $8 billion in cost savings by 2022. (Juniper Research)
By 2023, 25% of the customer interactions will be via voice. (Gartner)

Employee Chatbot Statistics:

In 2021, artificial intelligence will recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity globally. (Gartner)
By 2022, 70% of white-collar workers will interact with conversational platforms on a daily basis. (Gartner)
Support leaders whose teams use chatbots are 60% more likely to report an improvement in resolution times and 30% more likely to report an increase in customer satisfaction than those who do not. (Tech Republic)
Organizations are increasingly using RPA chatbots to automate diverse, repeatable tasks and back-office operations in HR, IT, etc. RPA software spending will total $2.4 billion in 2022. (Gartner)
92% of HR teams agree that chatbots will be important in directing employees toward finding the information they need in the future. (ServiceNow HR Tech Conference and Expo)
90% of businesses report faster complaint resolution with chatbots. (MIT)

Chatbot Market Statistics: Outlook in 2021 and beyond

The global chatbot market in BFSI is projected to reach $2,186 million by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 29.7% from 2018 to 2024. (Allied Market Research)
The operational cost savings from using chatbots in banking will reach $7.3 billion globally by 2023, up from an estimated $209 million in 2019, representing a whopping 862 million hours of time saved for banks. (Juniper Research)
The retail sector will gain the most from chatbot technology. By 2023, 70% of chatbots accessed will be retail-based. (Juniper Research)
The smart speaker market segment will grow at a CAGR of 40.3% until 2027. (Allied Market Research)
Voice shopping is estimated to hit $40+ billion across the U.S. and U.K. by 2022. (Tech Crunch)
By 2021, early adopters of the technology who have redesigned their websites to support voice search capability will increase revenue by 30%.
By 2024, consumer retail spend via chatbots worldwide will reach $142 billion – up from just $2.8 billion in 2019. (Insider Intelligence)
The Healthcare chatbots market is poised to value over $340 million by 2027 end with a CAGR of over 20.5% during the forecast period 2020 to 2027. (Future Wise)
AI may automate more than 100,000 supportive roles in the legal sector within the next two decades. (Deloitte)
85% of travelers book travel activities via mobile. (Hotel Tech)
87% of users would interact with a travel chatbot if it could save them both time and money. (Hospitality Technology)

How can Acuvate help?

At Acuvate, we help clients deploy AI-enabled chatbots and virtual assistants with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.

With minimalistic coding requirements and a visual design interface, enterprises can build and deploy chatbots for a wide range of use cases, including HR, IT, intranet, business intelligence, customer service, and contact center support, within a few weeks. Our bots leverage the best of Microsoft’s AI, machine learning, and natural language processing technology to understand what the user wants, learn from past conversations, retain context, and provide proper support.

Moreover, BotCore allows organizations to create an intelligent virtual assistant network by connecting multiple bots within your enterprise, supporting third-party app integration, and enabling built-in support for Power Virtual Agents, LUIS, and QnA Maker.

Enterprises can also cater to a global customer and employee audience with support for multiple languages like French, German, English, etc.

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

The post The Future of Chatbots: Top statistics to look for in 2021 and beyond appeared first on BotCore.

How Conversational AI is transforming Digital Marketing

Abhishek Shanbhag — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 06:58:00 +0000

How Conversational AI is transforming Digital Marketing

With customer experience (CX) becoming a critical deciding factor in the choice of brand, organizations are looking at ways to engage with customers across all digital marketing platforms.

As customers increasingly demand round-the-clock access to information, social media and instant messaging apps replace phones and email. Companies, particularly FMCG brands, have started responding by implementing conversational AI experiences.

Mark Zuckerberg once said, We think that you should just be able to message a business in the same way that you message a friend. You should get a quick response. And it shouldn’t take your full attention like a phone call would. And you shouldn’t have to install a new app.

Conversational AI chatbots leverage machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to mimic real people and hold human-like conversations with customers. Chatbots embed easily in day-to-day messaging apps. They are reliable and accurate and enable companies to interact with their customers all-day. Moreover, they are intelligent. Capabilities like dialog management and sentiment analysis help chatbots gauge context and customer emotions and respond to their needs better.

Conversational AI bots help customers seek information, purchase products and services, and enable brands to push the latest offers and marketing campaigns.

Let’s understand further how conversational AI is transforming digital marketing.

Revolutionizing digital marketing with Conversational AI

1. Access information and perform simple tasks

As seen above, conversational AI chatbots are available 24X7, provide instant answers, and can be deployed on multiple channels.

They can answer simple customer queries, such as, “What is the status of my flight” or “When will my order reach me” or “Is this car available in red.” Moreover, they can handle multiple requests simultaneously, easing the burden off support staff and helping organizations provide quick, interactive support at scale. Additionally, chatbots can be used to execute customer requests, like booking a hotel room, transferring money from one account to the other, etc.

2. Educate customers on how to use the product

Recently, organizations have started using chatbots to recommend how customers can use the product or service.

Take this example – Quaker Oats, a famous food brand, uses its Facebook Messenger brand called Otis to recommend oats recipes, set reminders for overnight oats, and assist customers with online shopping. Users may use a combination of text and emojis to discover new ingredients and recipes.

3. Update customers about new products and offers

Brands can leverage AI-enabled chatbots to study customer profiles and proactively inform them about the new products, latest offers on products they may be interested in, upcoming sales, tailored product recommendations, etc.

Such services add a new dimension to their marketing endeavors and go a long way in building brand loyalty.

4. Capture customer feedback

To improve product design and quality, make meaningful adjustments in the product development process, and adapt to evolving customer needs, organizations can use conversational AI chatbots to capture customer suggestions and feedback.

Feedback may be in the form of a 1-10 rating scale, or the chatbot may request the customer to provide a written review, or else the customer may upload product images and videos.

The current scenario

Organizations deploy chatbots on various messaging apps and platforms, the most popular being Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and official company websites.

With over 300,000 active bots on Messenger and approximately 1 million new WhatsApp users every day, Deloitte predicts that by 2022, “we’ll be talking to bots more often than we talk to our own spouses.”

5 Examples of companies using conversational AI in their marketing mix

1. POND’s

We, at Acuvate, built POND’s Facebook Messenger bot called SAL that was launched across nine countries. SAL leverages augmented reality to provide skincare recommendations across four areas – pimples, wrinkles, spots, and uneven skin tone. Customers need to upload a selfie, post which SAL gives a personalized skin diagnosis and recommends products accordingly. SAL managed a 98% positive customer review, with the brand generating 15 times higher purchase intent.

2. Adidas

Adidas added an exciting element to its marketing mix with its “Rent-a-Pred” chatbot on WhatsApp to assist recreational football teams hire a professional athlete if a player backs out at the nth hour.

The campaign, which included the likes of football star Kaka, generated significant buzz around the brand and helped Adidas market its Predator20 Mutator footwear.

3. Whole Foods

Whole Foods’ chatbot for Facebook Messenger lets customers find recipes based on their favorite ingredients, dish type, dietary preferences, etc. Again, just like Quaker Oats, customers may use both text and emojis to find the recipe of their choice.

Also, the chatbot helps customers check if their nearest Whole Foods store has the necessary ingredients for a particular recipe.

4. Absolut Vodka

When Absolut Vodka launched its limited-edition collection in Argentina called Absolut Unique, it organized an exclusive party to generate excitement and positive word-of-mouth.

Since only two members from the general public could attend the party, people had to convince Absolut’s virtual bouncer, Sven, to give them the tickets. The campaign was a resounding success, with the company receiving more than 1000 hilarious videos, images, and voice notes from users on why they should be invited to the launch.

5. Dominos

Dominos Pizza launched its Facebook Messenger chatbot named Dom to help customers view the menu, place an order, track existing orders, and chat with customer support.

How can Acuvate help?

At Acuvate, we help clients build AI-enabled chatbots with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.

Our chatbots can be deployed with minimalistic coding requirements within a few weeks and across different channels, with channel-specific API. BotCore’s bots support multiple languages to help you reach out to a global consumer base.

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

The post How Conversational AI is transforming Digital Marketing appeared first on BotCore.

How is Conversational Search transforming the digital shopping experience?

Abhishek Shanbhag — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 09:53:00 +0000

How is Conversational Search transforming the digital shopping experience?

Research by Forrester says, “Search is a primary tool for customers throughout their life cycle. More than 90% of the consumers use one of the search channels offered (mostly general Internet searches, but also searches on retailer sites or social platforms) when discovering, exploring, or engaging.”

However, there hasn’t been a significant transformation in the way we search for products online. The process involves entering keywords, checking-unchecking filters, navigating through hundreds of search results, and going through technical product descriptions, and is undoubtedly tedious. Simply put, traditional search lacks personalization and takes the joy out of shopping.

If your organization is planning to reinvent the digital shopping experience for consumers, increase conversion and brand loyalty, you may want to consider adopting Conversational Search.

Let’s explore further.

What is Conversational Search?

Conversational search leverages AI to understand the customer’s needs and provide product suggestions accordingly.

Through chatbots, voice bots, or retail web portals, the customers are asked a series of questions that help narrow the search results to fewer product options. On the flip side, brands get valuable insights into customer preferences and product performance across channels and geographies.

Thus, conversational search overcomes the limitations and challenges of traditional product search, which are as follows –

An overabundance of choice – The overload of product choice is certainly overwhelming. Think about the last time you searched for “concealer for freckles,” and the website presented hundreds of results. You then had to filter the product range by gender, skin type, price, and much more to get another long list of options to choose from and buy. Felt like abandoning the cart, right?
Technical product descriptions – Often, product descriptions are filled with jargon that consumers might not understand, and hence they fail to conclude if the product is the right fit for their requirements.

And, of course, the fear of losing out on a better product hinders the consumer’s decision-making capacity.

Conversational search engages customers in more interactive, intuitive, and personalized shopping experiences and helps convert “searchers to buyers.”

Conversational search and chatbots

AI-driven chatbots facilitate conversational search by understanding context and intelligently guiding the customers to the right products via text-based dialogue.

In this way, they shorten the sales cycle. Moreover, their machine learning abilities enable them to comprehend customer needs better, send suitable recommendations, and upsell complementary products.

Take the example of eBay.

eBay ShopBot for Facebook Messenger is a personalized shopping assistant that makes shopping with eBay a breeze.

The bot asks questions to understand the shopper’s intent, sends product recommendations, and helps customers find the best deals amongst the 1 billion listings on eBay.

ShopBot is especially useful for customers looking for specific products, which they may not easily find through a traditional keyword search.

Conversational search and voice bots

Voice bots, like Alexa, Cortona, Google Home, and Siri, are intelligent voice assistants that can be accessed through speakers, smartphones, and other devices.

The bot can understand the intent when the user utters a command and locate the desired products or services. Therefore, voice bots provide a hands-free, hassle-free, and comfortable search and shopping experience to customers.

Coming back to eBay’s example. Since the chatbot is built for Google Assistant, shoppers can use it through their phone or speaker to buy products at the lowest prices by saying, “Ok Google, let me talk with eBay.”

Conversational search and retail portals

To help customers sail through the myriad of products online to find the right one, many retail websites provide personalized conversational search experiences.

Let’s take a look.

1. KitchenAid

KitchenAid has built conversational search solutions across eight product categories, which guide customers to the products that best suit their needs.

The solution asks need-based questions, post which it suggests mixer grinders. Shoppers can customize their mixers according to their requirements. Additionally, KitchenAid can upsell additional products by recommending add-ons and also gain insight into customer preferences and behavior.

2. 3M

3M leverages conversational search across 5 product categories and 3 languages to help customers buy personal protective equipment based on usage and risk management.

For instance, 3M’s safety eyewear advisor asks users whether they need eye protection for “general use,” “flying solid particles, ”chemical hazards,” or “welding/blue light/improved contrast.”

Conversational search also helps 3M gather valuable insights into buyer personas.

How can Acuvate help?

At Acuvate, we help clients deliver conversational search experiences through AI-powered chatbots built with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.

BotCore is a low-code platform, hence chatbots can be built within a few weeks, across different channels with channel-specific API. Our bots support multiple languages to help you reach a global consumer base.

Let’s take a quick look at an example. Shopping for skincare products is a complex process. Hence, Acuvate built SAL, POND’s Facebook Messenger bot that was launched across nine countries.

SAL customizes product recommendations across four major skincare areas – spots, pimples, wrinkles, and uneven skin tone. Customers need to upload a selfie and fill in a quick survey. Post which, SAL delivers a personalized skin diagnosis and suggests products based on the customer’s skin type and needs.

Over time, SAL has generated 98% positive customer reviews and 15 times higher purchase intent among customers.

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

The post How is Conversational Search transforming the digital shopping experience? appeared first on BotCore.

Using AI to Accelerate Competitive Advantage

Abhishek Shanbhag — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 08:48:00 +0000

Using AI to Accelerate Competitive Advantage

Today’s business landscape is significantly tech-driven, and AI is at the heart of this change. Indeed, for an organization to fully reap the benefits of artificial intelligence, it is no longer sufficient to experiment with it in bits and pieces. Instead, a full-blown AI-driven digital strategy has become a “must-have” for companies that wish to accelerate growth and retain a competitive advantage.

Mitra Azizirad, Corporate VP for Microsoft AI, was quoted as saying, “In the next five years, every successful company will become an AI-company. It is now the next level of competitive differentiation.” No wonder the global AI market is expected to reach $15.7 trillion by 2030. Those still caught in the loop of experimentation and risk assessment face the dangers of being left far behind than organizations taking practical measures to implement AI.

Indeed, with its ability to operate and analyze faster and more effectively than the human brain, AI provides unprecedented performance benefits. The purpose of this blog is to get an in-depth insight on how organizations can leverage AI to accelerate competitive advantage, look at a few real-life examples of companies using AI to solve business problems, and tips for leaders to implement AI at-scale.

Moving from exploration to true AI implementation

AI capabilities are advancing quickly, and companies are achieving tangible benefits from implementation. While it is true that many companies haven’t deployed AI technologies yet, and some are working towards scaling it, the early-mover advantage of adopting AI may fade away soon.

Research conducted by Deloitte has found, “AI adopters are investing significantly, with 53% of the respondents spending more than US$20 million over the past year on AI-related technology and talent. At the same time, 71% of adopters expect to increase their investment in the next fiscal year by an average of 26%.” Consequently, to retain a competitive edge, leaders may quickly need to move beyond leveraging AI to optimize and automate processes and start using AI to create new products and operation methods.

In such a scenario, starters, or businesses still dipping their toes into AI adoption, with no concrete plan for the future, are at significant risk of jeopardizing their operations.

To implement and scale AI, organizations must consider the technical aspects and the ethical and cultural ones too. Consequently, it is not only essential to strategize in terms of the data, technology, and skills required. Instead, leaders must determine the business ventures in which AI can achieve something productive and ensure the benefits are felt inclusively by everyone in the organization.

How AI accelerates competitive advantage: A peek into the use cases

1. Acting as a smart assistant

AI solutions can act as intelligent assistants of employees and streamline business operations by merely taking over most of the mundane, repetitive, low-involvement work, allowing employees time to focus on the more productive, valuable, and expertise-requiring tasks.

2. Boost marketing ROI

Companies have a significant amount of customer data at their disposal. However, it is only AI, with its ability to learn and provide insights on such data, that helps organizations adopt an objective and data-fuelled approach to meeting customer expectations. Advanced AI analytics enables companies to obtain a holistic, 360-degree view of their customers. Keeping track of customer behavior helps companies tailor product recommendations to the customer’s taste and generates brand loyalty.

3. Data security

When the business landscape is becoming increasingly digitized and many organizations are moving their resources to the cloud, data security becomes a significant matter of concern. AI solutions can track patterns and locate any deviations or anomalies. They can predict and prevent threats and other suspicious activity or outages (for example, a DDOS attack) that can bring the entire network and business operations to a standstill.

Case studies: How companies are using AI to stay ahead

A) Ask Wilbur: Centrica’s chatbot for support agents

Here’s a case study by Microsoft:

Centrica is an energy and services company serving in Ireland, the UK, and North America. Their biggest AI venture, ‘Ask Wilbur,’ leverages natural language processing (NLP) technology to support contact center agents. When a customer reaches out to support, the bot pops up and asks the agent what the customer wants. So, if the agent says, “the customer wants a brand new supply connection,” the bot comes up with a quick list of questions that the agent may ask further. In Centrica’s own words, net promoter score for customers serviced with Wilbur turned out to be higher than for those who weren’t.

Today’s customers expect fast, easy, personalized, and accurate support. Moreover, employees need quick access to information to carry out daily operations and address customer concerns in the shortest time-frame.

AI-enabled chatbots provide information faster and more accurately, thus delivering a fair, competitive advantage. Automated support is available 24/7, and chatbots can quickly provide the relevant service and handle requests at scale with increased efficiency and reduced costs.

B) M&S’s AI-enabled advanced analytics

Let’s look at how Microsoft helped one of the biggest retail chains implement AI:

M&S, one of the most prominent names in UK retail since 1884, holds an outstanding brand image for quality products and services. Within M&S, AI-driven predictive analytics has proven to be valuable in building an efficient supply chain, forecasting customer requirements, and deriving useful insights from complicated datasets to assist with more accurate product management.

With the abundance of data available at every organization’s behest, decision-making at any organizational level has become more data-centric. Such information is used for AI-driven predictive analytics.

Be it decisions related to inventory reporting, purchase dynamics, demand planning, supplier discounts, supply predictions, or even customer preferences and customer loyalty programs, AI-enabled analytics helps leaders make smart choices in every aspect of the business.

C) How ESNEFT hosted its RPA platform on Microsoft Cloud

East Suffolk & North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT), a healthcare organization, post implementing its first-ever RPA solution, did a pilot project for invoice processing in the finance team. By the 12th month, not only was the company able to avoid potential human errors, but it also increased efficiency by releasing about 4,500 hours a month.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA), or RPA, leverages AI and machine learning to perform various routine, repetitive tasks, including calculations, data entry, etc.

When the cognitive ability of chatbots is combined with the automation capacity of RPA, enterprises can automate tasks end-to-end. Moreover, an RPA-enabled bot can integrate with legacy enterprise systems to retrieve information and handle more complex tasks.

Tips for leaders to scale AI

By the end of 2024, 75% of enterprises will shift from piloting to operationalizing AI, driving a 5X increase in streaming data and analytics infrastructures.
~ Gartner

As seen above, merely exploring AI in individual pockets of the business will no longer suffice. Instead, embedding AI at an enterprise-wide level will unlock its maximum potential in transforming employees, customers, and business performance.

So, here are a few tips for leaders to implement AI at scale –

View AI as a business change program and not a mere IT project.
Do not force AI on the people; instead, take everyone on board by articulating the reason for the change and the benefits they can reap.
Understand the problem and then brainstorm how AI can solve it.
Make sure your data is in order and ready to be capitalized for data-driven decision-making.
Do not expect organic growth. Instead, build an organization-wide strategy for AI to scale.
Don’t make a single person in charge of an AI-led transformation. Rather, motivate each person to take personal responsibility for the change.

At Acuvate, we assist clients with implementing a host of AI technologies, including advanced analytics, RPA, and chatbots. Our robust AI solutions help businesses build an agile, resilient, and future-proof workplace capable of meeting the expectations of all stakeholders.

Please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our AI experts to know more about our service offerings.

The post Using AI to Accelerate Competitive Advantage appeared first on BotCore.