Conversational AI: why you must heed

Conversational computing, in the broadest sense, is the promise of computing that eliminates the 200 times a day you open your phone or log into your business applications to check monthly sales figures. It could also eliminate the frustrating 30 minutes you spend poring through your auto insurance website to figure out how to file a claim. It is the promise of an ongoing, multi-modal, human computer interaction by either using voice, text in natural language and getting the job done.

Increasingly intelligent listening devices in your home and messaging applications at work are incorporating natural language processing technologies that are getting more sophisticated by understanding dialect, context and emotion to make these interactions ubiquitous at home or workplace.

Conversational Computing is now being coupled with the rise of Machine Learning or what is broadly called as Artificial Intelligence — the ability of computers to absorb terabytes of human knowledge and data and then applying it to “real world” situations and tasks to aid decision making.

The intent is to replicate the cognitive actions of a human. Technology vendors, on their part, continue to fuel the hype. For instance, Google says we’re moving from ‘mobile first’ to ‘AI first’; Microsoft says human-AI partnerships can solve society’s problems and IBM says cognitive computing will impact every decision making in five years.

Combining the ability of natural language with advanced machine learning creates a new
computing paradigm that allows us to speak or text our queries and requests to generate immediate and accurate answers. This allows decisions and tasks to be completed quickly irrespective of the input device. This is a brave new world that promises to be as meaningful as the invention of the internet browser.

Conversational AI combined with your company’s data, knowledge and workflows presents a very new and interesting application — the virtual assistant, a piece of software that works alongside you and participates in your day to day activities as a digital co-worker.

While its fun to ask Alexa for recipes or the weather before dropping your kids to school, Conversational AI, in fact, presents a larger opportunity when applied intelligently to solve business problems. It holds tremendous promise for enterprises which could use it to reduce costs or improve operations.

Press”0” for customer service: The most frequently pressed number with a curse is “0” for customer service. Imagine a virtual assistant who knows the brand and can answer questions about bills, troubleshoot or report fraudulent transactions and smoothly interface with a human agent.

Virtual assistants are intuitive and learn about the customer in advance by tapping into CRM systems, and, most importantly, don’t need time off. Telcos, banks, insurance companies can make a huge difference in their customer engagement by leveraging such platforms.

Help! What is the status of my order?: Manufacturing seems to be lagging behind in embracing these technologies. About 84% of supply chain professionals say visibility, transparency and traceability still continue to be a challenge despite all the investment in software, procurement and logistics systems.

Imagine a virtual assistant that is tied into the supply chain systems and is available by voice or text to your supplier or customer in natural language, with details of the order status, shipping status, port of entry or billing status.

I want a new insurance policy: Securing a new insurance policy is universally defined as one of most complex transactions, what with having to wade through the diverse regulations, insurance carrier specific verifications and policy declarations. Insurance companies like Birla Sunlife, ICICI Prudential, Apollo Munich are all launching virtual assistants to handle the demand in one of the fastest growing segments in the Indian financial services market.

In a recent survey by a progressive insurance company, virtual assistants scored higher than humans, because the former did not “sell” and was more truthful. In other words, the assistant took the knowledge available and delivered it in the most factual way possible and also executed the task in the most economical way possible.

Management consultancy McKinsey and Company predicts that over the next 10 years, ‘knowledge work automation’ will be worth $5-7trillion to the global economy. And an important component of this automation will be conversational AI-powered applications.

The change is taking place in mundane sections of the economy where work can be easily automated using conversational AI technologies to deliver value to the bottom line — which is why you should be listening!

(The writer is CEO & founder, Avaamo)