More and more companies are choosing to hire bots
In the new reality, remote contact channels such as call centers or chat on the website and in social media have become a key element of customer service for most companies. More and more decide to hire bots for this purpose, which are able to handle up to 40% of. customer inquiries. Consumer confidence in this type of solutions is growing – in the coming years probably already 70% of. choose contact with artificial intelligence instead of handling matters in person. One example is Alior Bank, which in February this year. introduced a voicebot for its customers – InfoNina.
Customer confidence in bots is growing
Polish company SentiOne in 2020. won tenders for the implementation of customer service automation for a total amount of PLN 6.5 million. The company has seen a definite increase in interest in bots over the past year, both among businesses and among ordinary consumers. Internet monitoring and analysis of statements made by Internet users show that even in early 2020. approached the subject skeptically, fearing whether artificial intelligence would actually be able to understand the essence of their issues. However Since May 2020 the number of positive statements about chatbots and voicebots increased by 60%. compared to the previous year. Some Internet users even called for the introduction of bots to the helpline and the website of the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate to answer the most frequently asked questions and help in registering for a smear or vaccination.
Artificial Intelligence will take over even 40 percent of. customer service
Customer service is a process that can be successfully automated using artificial intelligence. Especially in industries such as banking, insurance or energy supply, the closure of stationary branches due to the pandemic has increased the traffic in remote contact channels so much that often a few hundred or even a few thousand agents are not able to handle all inquiries on time. Employing a bot can already automate 30-40 percent of. customer service during its first months of operation, according to the experience of SentiOne, a Polish company that supports brands in automating customer service using AI technology.Currently is working on ten implementations chatbots or voicebots in consumer companies, m.in. The most important ones include Alior Bank, BNP Paribas or Kruk S.A.
Work on the voice assistant started at Alior Bank long before the epidemiological threat posed by the coronavirus. It has undoubtedly accelerated our activities in this area. During a pandemic, the preferred form of contact is the remote channel. Our customers expect it to be as fast and as helpful as meeting a banker at a branch. We are confident that voicebot InfoNina will respond to these expectations – says Mariusz Piturecki, Director of Digitalization and AI Development Department at Alior Bank.
How we can use chatbots and voicebots?
The vast majority of issues that customers come in with are repeatable. In banking these are usually questions about blocking cards or checking account balance, in insurance about the status of a case or reporting a loss, and in the energy sector – about meter reading and reporting a failure. Often, however, the waiting time for a call to the hotline is longer than the call itself, which angers and discourages customers. This is where voicebots and chatbots come into play, which are able to handle up to several hundred connections simultaneously. They can m.in. independently verify and authorize customers, process insurance applications, collect debts, check payment declarations, help in filling out forms and arrange meetings with consultants.
In our experience, bots need to recognize not only what issue someone is contacting about, but also four important elements: greeting, vulgarity, silence and small talk. They occur in many conversations and a bot must know how to respond to them – says Bartosz Bazinski, founder and chief operating officer at SentiOne – The effectiveness of our engine for understanding natural language is even 94%. We are very proud of this result, as both our and our clients’ initial assumptions about the bot’s effectiveness oscillated around the value of 80%.
Artificial intelligence allows companies to completely change their path. In a traditional business model, scaling up requires continually increasing costs, e.g. hiring new employees or buying more equipment. However, in the case of artificial intelligence, it is enough to invest in its implementation once and bear the associated fixed costs. In this way, you can increase efficiency without an increase in expenses, serve many customers at the same time and scale automation to subsequent processes. Current projections suggest that by 2022. 70 percent. Consumers are replacing visits to branches, stores or banks with contact with a voice assistant (Report “Smart talk. How organizations and consumers are embracing voice and chat assistants”, Capgemini Research Institute).