Artificial Intelligence and the Customer Journey
There is an important role for vendors to play in helping brands meet their needs. As Lommel points out, most enterprises interested in conversational agents don’t have in-house expertise in all of the areas required to address consumer needs and operational requirements. “They may experiment with technologies and frameworks, but real expertise is uncommon,” he says.
Vendors can help here by “building capacity and data resources in languages and various domains,” Lommel says. “Those that can deal with these areas and that have solutions to address the issues around state will have real advantages with clients who want to deploy quality solutions around the world. Because many of the problems with multilingual agents go beyond simple translation, vendors that know how to adapt concepts to meet market needs in other languages and locations will also have an advantage.”
Changes to Expect in the Future
For now, while some big brands are dabbling and experimenting with the potential of voice-enabled consumer-brand interactions, most marketers are like many consumers—paying attention, thinking about the options, but not quite ready to move forward full speed.
“Speech technology is arguably one of the most critical and fastest-growing data acquisition channels for marketers,” says Bergh. “The amount of data that comes pouring in via speech tech is like a fire hose. The trick for leveraging this increasingly crucial data channel is being able to most effectively extract and analyze the data, as well as marrying those analytics to other marketing data the organization has via other areas, like mobile, web, apps, location-based, advertising, social media, etc.”
Currently, Bergh says, most organizations are collecting this data in separate systems—ERP, MRP, CRM, marketing automation, web analytics, DMP, or call center platforms. “They need a unified view of all interactions and data related to that customer. This means integrating all of the various operational systems that collect customer data as well as any third-party data feeds.” DataOps—“a new methodology with a rich ecosystem of vendors behind it”—has the potential to help, says Bergh, by providing “the methodology, architecture, and workflow automation that can break down data silos.”
Moving forward, Bergh says, brands are likely to see virtual assistants amp up their intelligence and capabilities. “For instance, customers will be able to interact with virtual assistants that will immediately be able to understand context and be able to anticipate their needs,” he says. Truly intelligent systems, he says, will not only know why a consumer is calling, but what is needed to resolve their issue. Virtual assistants leveraging AI-driven technologies such as voice and behavioral biometrics, he says, “will be able to seamlessly identify and authenticate customers within a matter of seconds, and hyper-personalize their engagements so that they are getting the best experience possible while ensuring their data is secure.”
Virtual agents will become more capable as developers gain access to increasing amounts of data, Lommel says. Ongoing technological advancements will also help. “Improved natural language processing (NLP) components—such as speech recognition and synthesis, entity recognition and sentiment analysis, and improved machine translation—will enable agents to become more relevant and specialized,” he says. “When [these components are] combined with improved state modeling, we may finally get the truly useful personal online digital assistants that have remained ‘five years away’ for the past 30 years.”
Vendors and developers are working hard to provide the type of seamless, personalized voice interactions that consumers are coming to expect and brands are eager to deliver.
But, says Subrammanian, “the frantic pace of these transformations hides something unchanging. Consumers just want things to be genuine. They want their voices heard. They want to be the decision makers of their own journeys.” And, she says, “brands should be there to facilitate that—by engaging them as complex individuals, providing them with contextually relevant communications and being always willing to listen.” Whether that occurs through AI speech technology, text, email, phone, or old-fashioned face-to-face communication, engaging and keeping customers remains the holy grail.
Lin Pophal is a freelance business journalist and content marketer who writes for various business and trade publications. Pophal does content marketing for Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and individuals on a wide range of subjects, from human resource management and employee relations to marketing, technology, healthcare industry trends, and more.
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