Index
1. Top 5 Chatbot Trends
2. The value of the conversation
3. The design of the conversation
4. Conversation management with Pat's framework
What are the main chatbot trends? What do businesses need to know right now about conversational AI, virtual assistants and bots? Why is the conversation with your users becoming a real distinctive element compared to your competitors?
In this article we will give some ideas to understand what the new trends for Chatbots will be and we will report the main key points that emerged during the "European Chatbot and Conversational AI Summit".
We will also see how strategic an effective conversation between customers and bots is for the company.
In this webinar we have provided specific and clear instructions to start a Chatbot project in just a few steps.
Top 5 Chatbot trends
For several years now, we have been talking about Chatbots. These technologies are becoming increasingly important for the development and support of companies, with the aim of providing excellent service to customers, improving interactions and optimizing the Customer Experience.
Availability, response speed, increased interactions, personalization and proactivity are the most immediate and evident advantages in the use of Chatbots.
According to IDC's White Paper "Digital Customer Experience: Leveraging Conversations to Drive Innovation and Differentiation in the Enterprise", to date 82% of companies globally tend to leverage conversational customer engagement to support customer service.
Also according to the same research, 35% of organizations plan to escalate assistance from the Chatbot to a human operator, in case the customer needs advanced support.
Despite the experience acquired so far, Virtual Assistants are still evolving, companies are technologically perfecting and AI technology projects applied to the conversational context are improving.
Chatbots, therefore, are a constantly growing technology, which takes advantage of the continuous evolutions of digitization on a daily basis. What is the “future of chatbots”?
Below we will report the 5 main trends to follow, which emerged in the most recent "European Chatbot and Conversational AI Summit", to enhance and improve the quality of the service offered by a Chatbot.
1. A user-friendly chatbot is the brainchild of several teams
Creating successful conversations between bots and customers requires collaborative, cross-disciplinary work across multiple business teams: from technology departments to creative conversation design departments to corporate business.
Putting together the different information and skills generates an optimal result for the creation of a high quality and easy to use Bot.
2. More intuitive and more conversational chatbots
Chatbots must differ from FAQ-style answers: the conversation that a Chatbot should propose must take on a conversational value, proposing a series of questions and answers. This approach will lead the customer to be more engaged and involved, increasing trust in the Bot.
3. The Chatbot must have its own personality
A Chatbot that provides answers in a standard tone is not pleasantly received by customers. For this reason, the trend today is to design charismatic Chatbots, with positive personalities, an aspect that leads to improving interactions by making them more engaging. Depending on the company business and the reference sector, Chatbots can be configured with different "tones of voice", to optimize the conversation.
4. The Chatbot responds effectively based on quality data
One of the most common assumptions is that a Chatbot "works better" if it has a lot of information. In fact, it is much more valuable to provide the right data, instead of collecting a lot of it that is not used correctly or that can slow down the Bot.
5.Voice or chat? Not all conversations are the same
Text and voice are intrinsically different ways of interacting, responding to different support and Customer Service needs. When adopting a Bot, the company concerned should analyze the most suitable channel for its users to provide a tool suited to expectations.
Download this ebook and find out how to choose the ideal Bot for your business, between voice bots and Chatbots.
The value of the conversation
The 5 Chatbot trends listed above clearly show how much the conversation with your customers is a strategic and competitive element.
In fact, every single point listed highlights how a "good conversation" between virtual assistant and customer can take place by exploiting quality data, proposing personalization in the dialogue and knowing one's interlocutors.
There are several advantages that an effective conversation can bring to companies that have adopted a Bot:
1. Learn almost in real-time what customer expectations are, whether we are meeting them or not;
2. Always respond to needs and requests for information: the presence of assistance that is always available (even if virtual) is received positively and is equivalent to increasing trust in the brand;
3. Optimize services, personalizing communications and the proposition of products/services.
For more insights into the topic of “Customer Service Chatbots” and what benefits are generated, read this article.
The design of the conversation
As we have described, conversations with your customers are extremely strategic for companies.
However, one of the most common mistakes that companies can make when starting a Chatbot project is to see it only as an IT project. However, these projects, dealing with conversations, are more complex and must involve cross-company teams.
To this end, we talk about Conversational Design: a discipline at the base of communications between humans and Bots which aims to design the best experience of interaction and virtual conversation between users and a brand.
According to Cathy Pearl, design manager for Google Assistant:
conversational design creates experiences that teach computers to interact like humans
The conversation design aims to make the interaction between humans and bots as natural and smooth as possible.
This "design" of the conversation is applicable to all virtual agents in use at any company: by exploiting this technique, the performance of Chatbots, voice assistants, Virtual Assistants and conversational agents will be much better. This is because, despite the need to quickly provide the user with the right answer, the latter is more attracted by a constructive and personal dialogue than by the essential, albeit precise, answer of a Bot.
The benefits of conversation design:
1. Greater satisfaction: an engaging conversation creates a positive experience between a customer and the brand. Conversation design can add that level of attention and personalization to your virtual assistant conversations and improve Customer Engagement.
2. Increased loyalty: Positive brand interactions keep customers coming back. The better the conversation design, the better the chances that customers, after experiencing a rich and satisfying conversation, will return to your digital channels.
3. More conversions: Engaged customers tend to buy and spend more. If conversations are well designed, customers will respond positively to the interaction.
Conversation management with Pat's framework
Following market trends and thanks to twenty years of experience in the Virtual Assistance, Artificial Intelligence and Chatbot fields, Pat is able to guide companies in building a multi-channel interaction path with their corporate interlocutors.
Through CX Studio, an interaction framework based on Artificial Intelligence, which guides in the definition of digital processes, it is possible to design specific Customer Journeys aimed at optimizing the conversational experience for customers.
In addition to technology, which allows you to model and design interactions through a flow designer, Pat offers a design and consultancy approach, starting from a standard delivery plan, which aims to adapt the multi-channel conversation process to the corporate business.
Together with our consultants, we will set up an interaction design model: the starting and ending point of the conversation and the different paths users can take to get there.
We will establish a precise scope and clear objectives, punctually answering questions such as: who will use the Bot? What will he answer? In which language should you answer? Is there an escalation on the human operator?
These are just some of the design aspects that allow us to guarantee optimal results for our customers.
For example, the Zucchetti company, thanks to the semantic engine and AI technology processes, "HR Virtual Assistant" is able to support users in 10 different thematic areas. Furthermore, it manages to respond to more than 80% of user requests via Chatbot.
Learn more by reading the Case Study, or request a demo.