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Top Voice Bot Use Cases In Different Industries

Abhishek Shanbhag — Tue, 24 May 2022 09:15:00 +0000

Top Voice Bot Use Cases In Different Industries

A few years back, voice search and voice-based assistants were more a novelty than common parlance. With the advent of more powerful AI, natural language processing (NLP), and speech recognition technologies, AI-based voice search and voice support have come to the forefront in various industrial use cases. Statista research shows a whopping 154% jump in the voice AI market share is expected from 2020 to 2026.

Voice bots and other voice-based assistants have taken conversational AI and traditional IVR to the next level. Powered by advanced AI and NLP technologies, voice bots allow consumers to communicate with the bot in natural speech and have them respond in their own natural voice. They analyze the linguistics and intent behind the user’s request and respond accordingly, be it answering queries, delivering on a request, or pulling essential information for the user.

Convenience is the name of the game when it comes to voice bots. Indeed, customers’ have a natural tendency to prefer voice over chat support, especially in times of a crisis, simply because speaking is faster and more hassle-free than typing. 2022’s voice statistics reveal almost 50% of all searches in 2022 are done speaking.

Moreover, by personalizing voice bots according to a brand’s identity, organizations can elevate employee experience, scale-up employee support, reduce costs, and potentially set the company apart from competitors.

Voice bots play different roles in different industries, be it healthcare, banking, insurance, or eCommerce. Let’s take a closer look.

Unique Voice Bot Use Cases for Various Industries

U.S Bank launched an AI-enabled Smart Voice Assistant embedded in its Android and iOS app to allow users to carry out banking requests using conversational language.

Acting as a digital bank teller, the AI voice bot starts listening when a customer taps on the microphone button in the app. It then enables customers to pull up bills and spending history, carry out transfers, and manage credit cards.

Most recently, the bank has debuted a Spanish-speaking version of this voice assistant. Users can use this feature simply by changing the U.S. Bank mobile app language preference to Spanish.

So let’s explore some of the other popular use cases of voice bots in different industries.

Healthcare

Consumers’ interactions with healthcare services have dramatically shifted amidst the rise in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research by voicebot.ai found that just 7.5% of U.S. adults had used a voice assistant for a healthcare need v.s. 21% in 2021.

Voice bots augment the way healthcare is administered today. By handling both various routine tasks, voice bots have paved the way for more efficient telehealth services, some of which include the following

Scheduling doctor appointments
Pre and post-surgery check-up calls
Preliminary health analysis and initial health assessment
Symptom triage and diagnosis
Accurate and reliable healthcare information
First aid and emergency tips
Healthy nutrition advice
Reminders for appointments and prescription refills
Accessible reports and test results

Banking

AI-enabled voice bots have revolutionized the banking sector as well, answering queries quickly and helping customers seamlessly execute routine banking functions, thus taking the burden off the customer support staff.

Voice bots carry out secure, encrypted conversations in natural language, ensuring customers receive the most accurate information and get transactions completed without compromising on security, speed, privacy, or quality.

Voice bots fulfill the following functions within the banking and financial services industry

Manage credit cards
Pull up past billing and spending history
Provide tailored financial tips depending on customer profile
Perform critical transactions, such as transfers, blocking a lost card, etc.
Assess the risk appetite of customers
Recommend suitable financial products for clients
Make reminder and follow-up calls for debt collection and loan repayments and gather information about the probable date and mode of payment.

As part of its digital-first organic growth strategy, Kotak Mahindra Bank in India launched Keya, an AI-powered voice bot in the banking sector that augments the phone-banking helpline and traditional IVR.

Customers needn’t go through the complex menu and myriad options offered on the IVR. Instead, they just need to give a single command. Built on advanced AI and speech recognition technologies, Keya understands and verifies the caller’s intent, thus ensuring accurate routing, speedy resolution, and improved customer satisfaction.

Insurance

A few months back, Edelweiss General Insurance (EGI) launched an AI voice bot to enable hassle-free, real-time registration of motor claims 24X7. Available in three languages, the voice bot answers any questions registered by garage representatives and routes complex queries to EGI agents, besides being a claims assistant.

EGI’s voice assistant makes insurance easy, superior, and seamless.

Guiding users step-by-step through processes like filing insurance claims, making payments, etc.
Automate routine information collection for customers by integrating with the CRM, customer databases, etc.
Sending timely reminders for policy renewal and payment of premiums.
Update customers on processed payments and activated policies.
Collect customer feedback

Retail and Conversational Commerce

Communicating via voice is the most natural and flexible way of human interactions. And eCommerce brands have surely picked this up quickly. Voice bots can analyze purchase history, understand customer preferences and past behavior, and proactively recommend suitable products.

Users can even ask the bot to suggest complementary products, explain product specifications, and help with order management. Assisting with return/exchange, tracking order status, and sending delivery updates and reorder reminders are some of the most common use cases of voice bots in e-commerce.

What’s more, users can offer product feedback or request product support, and the voice bots can seamlessly automate time-consuming queries, ensuring shoppers get quick, personalized, and round-the-cloud service.

Flipkart, an Indian eCommerce brand acquired by Walmart, has launched a voice assistant on its mobile app that allows customers to order groceries in the language of their choice, English or Hindi. Owing to its ability to comprehend different languages, colloquial terms, and mixed-language commands, Flipkart has made buying groceries as easy as shopping from a local store.

Walmart has developed a voice assistant for employees at more than 5,000 Walmarts in the US. The “Ask Sam” voice assistant answers employees’ queries about locations and prices, sends alerts about emergencies and policy changes, and helps managers broadcast the latest company updates.

Manufacturing

Voice bots for manufacturing play a significant role in streamlining operations at the factory level or on the field, resulting in improved efficiency, reduced man-hours, and enhanced employee experience.

Voice bots connect to the backend manufacturing systems for direct input and quick retrieval of data. Moreover, they can help synchronize operations by easing the communication between different departments and functions.

Additionally, some companies have taken AI-powered voice automation to the next stage by providing a hands-free connection to the plant equipment, making it an IoT-enabled manufacturing plant.

BSH, a leading European home appliances manufacturer, implemented a voice control solution that allowed workers to operate heavy machinery hands-free by speaking into a headset connected to an embedded voice recognition system. The technology supports various languages and accents.

Voice automation helped the company increase production line efficiency, improve ergonomics, and reduce yearly manufacturing costs.

How can Acuvate help?

As the world moves towards voice technologies, it is evident that voice bots are the future of customer service and employee experience in various industries and are set to deliver exceptional engagement and impressive ROI.

Acuvate helps clients in several industries develop voice bots for several use cases with our enterprise-bot building platform called BotCore. Additionally, as a Microsoft Gold Partner, we leverage Microsoft’s low-code platform, Power Virtual Agents, Azure AI services, and powerful machine learning (ML) and NLP technologies to build bots that provide human-like support and positively impact user experience.

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

You can also learn more about the advantages and essential capabilities of a voice bot here..

The post Top Voice Bot Use Cases In Different Industries appeared first on BotCore.

6 ways chatbots can help improve customer engagement in CPG & Retail industry

Abhishek Shanbhag — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 06:25:00 +0000

6 ways chatbots can help improve customer engagement in CPG & Retail industry

Juniper’s recent study, “Conversational Commerce: Market Outlook, Emerging Opportunities, and Forecasts 2021-2025,” has highlighted that the total spend over conversational commerce channels will reach $290 billion by 2025.

Conversational commerce leverages chatbots, messaging, and digital voice assistants to automate retail transactions and payments. Chatbots shall process $145 billion of the spend by 2025.

With customers adopting digital channels post-pandemic, customer experience has gained traction and become as significant as the products and services the brand provides. Customers, particularly in the fast-moving world of retail and CPG, not only expect speedy resolutions but also want brands to understand their preferences, interactions, and end-to-end history and remember them at every touchpoint.

In short, retail brands must take a proactive stance to comprehend the potential value of each customer interaction and how it can be leveraged to deliver personalized engagement.

Many organizations in the CPG and retail industry have started adopting AI-enabled chatbots to address these challenges. Chatbots offer a fast and easy way to interact with customers and help retailers streamline processes and earn more revenue.

Let’s explore in detail.

1. Send personalized product recommendations after understanding customer needs

Chatbots can study customer profiles to provide personalized product recommendations and engage smartly with customers by leveraging intelligent machine learning technology.

Moreover, retail brands may design bots to ask a few questions about the customer’s needs and preferences and then display a tailored collection of specific products that they may like. Customers can click through to the brand’s online store and make a purchase.

2. Push notifications about new products

Retail brands must concentrate their marketing efforts on the channels where customers are present and most likely to engage with the company.

They can deploy AI chatbots on popular messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to push alerts and notifications about new products and services, increase sales, and ensure customers are constantly engaged with the brand and its offerings.

3. Assist in online shopping

Chatbots can lead customers to the retailer’s online website, help them navigate the portal, suggest complementary/alternate products, and assist with payment and checkout.

Moreover, retail bots can also bring back customers who added products to their cart but left without buying anything. Abandoned cart reminders from a chatbot are beneficial in converting sales. Research shows they have 80% open rates compared to email’s 25% and ten times higher click-through rates.

4. Give personalized tips and advice

Brands can use chatbots to send personalized tips, diagnosis, and advice and help customers select the right products.

Moreover, they can provide additional product information and suggestions on how to use the product.

Unox has been linked to Dutch cuisine for over 80 years. The brand is popular for its smoked sausages, frankfurters, and canned soup.

Through its website chatbot, “Mark,” the brand answers customer queries, addresses their complaints, and provides recipes for delicious Dutch dishes, with options for vegetarian recipes too.

Another brand in the food space that has deployed a chatbot to deliver personalized engagement to website visitors is Conimex.

Conimex brings delicious Asian flavors to the Netherlands. With more than 100 products, including soy sauce, sambal, side dishes, soups, and marinades. The brand’s website bot Connie helps customers answer questions, give suggestions and feedback, and look for recipe inspiration.

Whole Foods’s Facebook Messenger chatbot helps customers find recipes based on meal type, ingredients, and dietary restrictions— foods for dinner, gluten-free and vegan recipes, etc. Customers can use emojis or a combination of text and emojis to find new meals.

Moreover, they may also check if their nearest Whole Foods retail store has the required ingredients for a particular recipe.

POND’s SAL is an interesting example of how chatbots have transformed post-pandemic customer engagement in the retail industry. Customers can access SAL through Unilever’s flagship store on Shopee under “chat.”

After that, a user must upload a selfie, and based on the headshot, the bot identifies key skin concerns in four significant areas— wrinkles, pimples, spots, and uneven skin tone. While the skin analysis takes place, the bot keeps sending beauty tips to keep the user engaged.

Post the skin analysis, SAL recommends suitable products from POND’s according to the user’s skin type.

98% of users cited positive ratings with SAL. 95% of users who have completed the SAL experience on Shopee have enjoyed the personalized shopping experience.

5. Provide customer support

AI chatbots can assist users with their queries, handle grievances, and provide product support.

Chatting with a bot is not only fast and convenient— users can request support at any time of the day and through any platform the brand is on. The chatbot will be available instantly to provide personalized support.

Moreover, retailers can customize their bots to support multiple languages— driving engagement and localizing experiences for global customers.

6. Boost customer loyalty and advocacy through offers and feedback

Digidentist, Pepsodent’s personalized oral care advisor, helps you with common oral health problems, including tooth pain, sensitivity, tooth decay, etc. The bot is a free online tool to help with oral health concerns quickly and provide personalized healthcare advice endorsed by the IDA.

Moreover, Digidentist collects personal information from website visitors, such as phone numbers and email addresses, to send information about Pepsodent and other Unilever brands’ products, services, and offers.

Chatbots can build customer loyalty by sending freebies, offers, and discount coupons to customers through email and social media.

Moreover, data collected by the bot helps retailers predict customer needs, understand the features they like and the ones they don’t prefer, and design products and marketing campaigns accordingly.

Additionally, retailers can use bots to collect customer feedback, understand their pain points, and help solve these through suitable engagement.

Building loyalty increases customer satisfaction (CSAT) levels and improves the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Meet HelloFresh’s Freddy

HelloFresh sells pre-curated meal kits in the US. The company delivers step-by-step recipes complete with nutritional information and fresh, pre-measured ingredients to help customers whip up delicious meals in no time.

HelloFresh has deployed a customer-facing chatbot called Freddy. Freddy’s primary purpose is to shorten wait times for customers by responding to customer queries. Besides providing customer support, the bot offers recipe suggestions to customers looking for a particular dish, reminds users to pick their weekly meals on time, and provides Spotify playlist recommendations so that customers have something to listen to while cooking their meals.

The bot also comes with built-in “food-themed” quizzes to engage and entertain users. Freddy has been so successful that HelloFresh has recorded a 47% increase in incoming messages and witnessed a staggering reduction in response times by 76%.

How can Acuvate help?

At Acuvate, we help our retail and CPG clients deploy customer-facing chatbots to deliver fast, interactive, and personalized customer engagement with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we leverage the best of Microsoft’s AI, machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) technologies.

BotCore boasts of the following capabilities —

An intuitive, low-code, visual interface allows the quick implementation of AI chatbots in the fast-paced retail world.
Seamless integration with existing legacy systems and AI services
Our chatbots simulate highly complex customer conversations.
Our bots are deployable on almost all popular enterprise messaging and social media channels and support multiple languages, including English, German, French, Italian, etc.

Moreover, we help clients build and deploy AI chatbots using Microsoft’s low-code bot-building solution called Power Virtual Agents.

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

The post 6 ways chatbots can help improve customer engagement in CPG & Retail industry appeared first on BotCore.