Why conversational AI is the next wave in automation and smart assistance for business enterprises – CNBCTV18

Conversational AI (artificial intelligence), a broad term that includes advanced chatbots, virtual assistants, and voice-activated systems, is emerging as a powerful force driving significant business transformation.

Cutting-edge conversational AI tools are now better equipped to understand and respond to human language thanks to advancements in natural language processing and machine learning. These tools do not rely on strict key words or scripted rules, allowing for more dynamic and fluid conversations.

The conversational AI paradigm provides users a personalised, seamless, and natural interface to engage with business enterprises. Voice-activated virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant are now widely accepted as a channel for B2C interactions.

How Does It Help 

The benefits are already visible across use cases that span multiple business functions. Powered by sophisticated algorithms, advanced chatbots can handle routine queries, provide product information, and even assist in troubleshooting common issues. This enhances customer satisfaction by reducing the time to resolution and the outcome quality and allows employees to focus on other complex customer issues.

Executives can use voice commands to perform various tasks when they cannot otherwise be productive. For instance, when stuck in traffic jams, executives can use voice commands to remotely reschedule meetings, check emails, or retrieve information from systems. It is even conceivable that using voice commands, information can be collated in tables or slides.

In e-commerce, chatbots on websites guide visitors through the entire shopping journey. Information is often interspersed with nuanced suggestions that nudge the buyer to make a purchase decision.

From product recommendations to order tracking, conversational AI creates a personalised, interactive shopping experience, mimicking the level of service one might expect from an assistant in a physical store. When integrated with generative AI language models and copilots, intelligent bots can extract data around customer demographics, preferences, habits, and more on the fly, modify the language of interaction, come up with better product/resolution recommendations, or even present customised offers including discounts.

Obviously, each industry and enterprise will need to evolve use-cases specific to its own context to maximise the use conversational AI.

Why It’s A Game-changer  

Conversational AI can be a game-changer for internal automation and assistance. It is the next wave in automation and smart assistance for businesses because it promises plenty as it matures. Conversational AI systems can understand context and continuously learn from user interactions, improving its outcomes, thanks to machine learning algorithms.

This adaptive capability of conversational AI enables business users across teams to access and work with more accurate and relevant information. Conversational AI can help employees automate repetitive tasks and facilitate collaboration. This leads to three clear benefits:

1. Faster and better data-driven decision-making.

2. Superior employee experience and a sense of contributing to the business (instead of just doing grunt work); and

3. Enabling employees to focus on strategic activities that need human judgement and skill.

Conversational AI can be applied to internal business operations to extract value in many ways. Here are some examples of how conversational AI can help:

a. HR functions better manage various employee-related functions and services.

b. CRM platforms expand the wide end of the lead generation funnel through automated tracking and analysis of visitor behaviour.

c. Enhance in-house collaboration platforms such as MS Teams. For example, for multilingual teams, it can facilitate real-time, accurate translation.

d. Educate employees about the latest cybersecurity policies in an engaging manner and detect security violations.

e. Teams identify and access the ideal case studies with greater ease and speed by combining it with generative AI.

f. IT companies optimise project allocation to software engineers per their skill and capabilities, based on real-time insights on utilisation.

g. Hospitals to schedule appointments and answer routine queries and reduce the load on staff.

h. IT help-desks improve their service-level speed and resolution.

Monetising Conversational AI

For businesses, conversational AI is an instrument of both “smart automation” and “smart assistance”. In a market with increasing competitive intensity and rapidly changing customer needs, companies must adopt conversational AI to deliver more efficient, personalised, and engaging experiences for internal and external stakeholders to gain competitive edge and increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.

—The author, Bindya S Raj, is Head and Associate Vice President – Strategy, Planning & Operations, Digital Experience at Infosys. The views expressed are personal.

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