In this insightful blog, we will delve into the world of AI Chatbots, a powerful wing of conversational AI, that has fundamentally changed how we interact and connect in this digital era. We will explore the impact of live chats backed by AI conversation bots and explore how they enhance customer experiences. Let us begin.
What is a chatbot? A chatbot is a computer program that can talk and chat to people, just like a human. They work by reading what you type and then giving smart answers. Chat capabilities bridge human limitations to provide 24/7 customer service and form the first line of support for brands — a valuable tool for improving conversational CX and operational efficiency.
There has been common curiosity among chat users about chatbot vs. conversational AI. For them, a chat tool is a program designed to carry on basic, rule-based conversations. But when you implement conversational AI bots to the chat tool, it becomes a more advanced system that uses machine learning and natural language processing to understand, learn from, and engage in more complex conversations. A combination of automation technology and artificial intelligence enables chatbots to provide more accurate and human-like interactions in the absence of human agents.
Also read: Conversational AI Bots Offering Infinite Solutions (Gen-AI Innovation)
Explore what you can do with AI chatbot
With the AI chatbot tool, you can maintain low response times with users. That means faster and more efficient communication! Service representatives and customers can easily share screenshots, images, supporting documents, website links, browsers, and laptop/computer screens, providing clearer context to their issues and facilitating troubleshooting. Simply put, during ongoing chat sessions, users can undertake the following actions:
- Simultaneously, chat with multiple visitors.
- Conference chat with a visitor and another user.
- Group chat with other users.
- Transfer chat to another user.
- Create a case from chat.
- Send out chat transcripts during or after a chat conversation.
Customers do not have to stay tied to their devices and can multitask while seeking support through the chat channel. You can activate text chat, audio chat, or video chat, depending on your plan's availability. And the conversational AI feature will be built into the chatbot.
Interesting aspects of ThinkOwl’s chat tool
ThinkOwl's chatbot AI tool has quite a few interesting capabilities that make ai conversations intuitive and seamless besides amplifying the user’s quality of experience. Let us look at them one by one.
Automatic invitations: To engage users, especially visitors to your organization’s website, the chatbot can provide interesting phrases to initiate conversation. These phrases can appear as pop-ups on your website. With the automatic invitations functionality that enables the chat invitation pop-up, you can rest assured no visitor gets missed, thereby vastly improving your brand’s customer-centric image.
Chat triggers: Chat triggers ensure no visitor leaves your brand’s touchpoint unattended. That means depending upon visitors’ typical behavior, a set of parameters like the visitor’s country. The webpage visited/ frequented by the visitor, duration of time spent on the website/specific webpage, and visitors’ overall behavior, the chat triggers interactive messages that help initiate conversations with users.
Chat routing: Merely facilitating communication does not make the chat tool a trusted business resource. What sets it apart is its chat routing functionality that decides how incoming visitor chat requests are routed and distributed among other agents.
Either, the chats can be routed to one available agent at a time. That means each visitor chat request gets routed to a single available agent at a time. Chat requests are presented to the next available agent when the previously available agent either did not accept the request on time or rejected the request.
Or, the chat requests are made available to all available agents at once. This implies that visitor chats get routed to all the available agents simultaneously, allowing any user (support agent) to accept the chat.
Creating cases from chat interactions: The chatbot is a great tool that enables seamless communication. It does so by creating cases from customer interactions, automatically capturing issue-relevant information, and raising tickets depending on the severity of the situation.
Collecting feedback: The chatbot helps you collect customer feedback based on their experience. The tool sends out emails to visitors to collect ratings. Or the ai bot may ask visitors to leave feedback and ratings on the post-chat form, enabling you to listen to your customer’s voice continuously.
Internal chatting: Your ThinkOwl chat channel allows users to communicate freely with one another. This enables support agents to pass on important information, discuss any customer issue, ask for help from another support agent, etc., swiftly and effectively. Users may set up a group calling within the chat tool if they require it. Pretty versatile. Isn’t it?
Also read: Maximize Service Agents' Efficiency With Intelligent Suggestions
Impact of conversational AI integrated into the chat channel
From the chat tool that assists in customer service to virtual assistants that help you organize your life, we are diving into limitless possibilities. Conversational AI bots can be found in various industries and are chiefly deployed in customer service functions.
Powered by natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) enhancements, conversation bots can understand user intent and customer sentiment, provide information, execute tasks, and even engage in casual conversation. When integrated into your chat channel, these bots simulate human conversation and respond to text or voice inputs with contextually relevant and coherent answers.
Conversation bots integrated within your chat channel can sense customer sentiment and allow instant handover to human agents when necessary. This ensures that experienced reps handle complex issues or sensitive matters, providing a seamless customer experience. However, there’s one condition that needs to be fulfilled.
The efficiency of your conversation bot is only guaranteed when you train the AI with your process data. The AI learns the ropes of doing work from your agents. It observes cases and learns how a particular case has been resolved. Over time, the AI keeps learning the process thoroughly to guide agents when they face any difficulty. The chatbot gets a leg up with AI and assumes a conversational role, thus becoming capable of holding meaningful conversations.
Various perspectives on using AI Chatbot
Customer’s point of view: From the customer’s end, you should ensure your chatbot AI tool is accessible to customers across various platforms or applications, like your company’s website, mobile application, or social media platforms. You can enable your setup so that customers interact with a chatbot first. Your chat channel should ensure that customers can explain their issues or inquiries through typed messages, helping your teams with more information by sharing screenshots or other files.
After that, depending on the gravity of the issue, the customer might connect with a specific agent or get assigned to the first available agent. Interestingly enough, this decision was made by AI, making your channel more humane and considerate of your clients' issues.
Now that you have seen a glimpse of how chat works from your customer’s point of view. Let’s understand how chat functions from your agent’s perspective.
Agent’s point of view: Your AI chatbot can monitor incoming chat requests from customers. Additionally, The AI in your chat support can prioritize them based on urgency, type of issue, or complexity.
Now, your chat channel serves a dual role. On the one hand, it can accept customer chats/issues of lesser intensity and divert complex cases to agents based on their experience or availability. On the other hand, the chat channel serves as a documentation system where transcripts are automatically saved with a record of the conversation with the customer and can be referred to in the future. In addition to saving transcripts, the chatbot allows you to send the chat transcripts to visitors at the end of the chat session.
Also read: Navigating The AI Landscape: General AI And Generative AI
Some interesting FAQs on AI chatbot
1. What is the best AI chatbot?
The best AI chatbot is the one that understands your needs and responds quickly, ensuring natural, human-like ai conversations. It should be able to handle many different types of questions and provide helpful answers.
2. How to create chatbots?
To create a chatbot, you will need to start by choosing a tool that lets you build one. You will define what tasks you want the chatbot to help with, then create responses and conversations. Some tools let you design chatbots without coding like ThinkOwl, while others require programming skills.
3. How do chatbots work?
Chatbots work by using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to understand what you say and then giving the best response. They "read" or "listen" to your words, analyze them, and look for patterns. Based on this, they choose the most appropriate reply. AI chatbots also learn from past conversations to get better over time.
To conclude, your chat channel is a support medium that can provide the perfect balance between live agent and tech support. AI chatbots can guide customers through service tasks in a conversational form, and it’s programmed to assist 24/7. Your agents’ productivity skyrockets as they are relieved from attending to every incoming customer query or support request, letting them attend to the most important tickets. To explore the benefits of ThinkOwl’s chatbot and its AI capabilities, sign up for a 30-day free trial.