The rise of intelligent voice agents – Your virtual assistant
By : Mathew Sam
Marketing
Enterprises today have defined digital customer experience as one of the primary drivers of business. Customers choose to communicate with enterprises based on perceived ease, quality and timeliness of service. And, they expect prompt response in real time which would incite a sort of personalised engagement.
The plain vanilla Chatbots
A number of digital savvy enterprises have launched Chatbots to engage with customers on touch points like website and mobile app. They handle tasks which require little to no human intervention.
However, Chatbots, quite often, do not understand the user well and have a short attention span. They are designed to respond only to specific commands and adhere to only rigid, pre-defined conversation flow. It is for the user to figure out the right phrases that need to be typed to get appropriate response. Moreover, Chatbots lack the personality of a human being, creating a feeling of detachment for the customer.
Another important drawback is the security loopholes in a Chatbots-based ecosystem. Users can be tricked into sharing their confidential information. There have been numerous instances of phishing attacks masterminded by hackers using Chatbots as the bait.
To sum it all up, talking to a Chatbot is usually by no means time-saving and also defeats the purpose of convenience and creating a satisfying personal customer experience.
Voice recognition is getting perfect
Despite the limitations, it is an accepted fact that bots help in automating a part of the customer engagement, thereby reducing operating costs. However, there is plenty of scope for further improvement.
An estimated 325.8 million people used voice control in the beginning of the year according to Global Web Index (i.e., 10% of the online population. By 2019, the voice recognition market is estimated to be a $601 million industry.)
The leading players in this space are Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana and Facebook M. Amazon Alexa enabled devices have the lion’s share in the market followed by Google Assistant. Amazon sold 4.4 million Echo units in its first full year of sales and over 500,000 Google Home units were shipped in 2016. Microsoft Cortana has 133 million monthly users. 50% of all the searches will be voice searches by 2020.
Growing popularity of voice search and interactions is mainly due to the advancements and perfection in Natural Language Processing that these players have brought in their platforms. Apple’s Siri and Google’s voice recognition have achieved almost 95% accuracy rate for the English language.
Turning Voice Agents to Intelligent Agents
Majority of the communication is not in the words we speak, but in the subtext, tone, and voice inflections of the speaker. Intelligent agents should be able to interpret voice inflections and map them onto emotions such as happiness, surprise, anger, and disgust.
Artificial intelligence engine and natural language processing can breathe life into them- almost literally! Intelligent Voice Agents are capable of further taking over routine activities which otherwise require human intervention. Intelligent voice agents allow users to initiate a natural voice conversation. Backed by machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, the agents can think and learn about the user’s surroundings, habits and usage patterns.
Moreover, they need to have intelligence on customer’s historic usage, device, location and so many other variables that influence behaviour to make the responses dynamic and relevant to specific customers.
For example, if you are making a plan to travel to London, you could ask your virtual assistant to recommend an international roaming pack. Your virtual assistant would analyse your previous usage pattern and based on your duration of stay it will recommend an apt roaming pack. It can even understand that your price affinity so as to suggest the right pack out of the options.
Another example would be your banking experience using intelligent voice agents. You can interact with your bank through the virtual assistant on applying for a credit card. The virtual assistant powered by AI at the back end can analyse your income and previous transactions and recommend a credit card with the apt spending limit.
Digital customer engagement can be fortified with intelligent voice interfaces capable of personalising voice conversations on any digital touch point supporting the likes of Alexa and Assistant. (Flytxt Intelligent Voice Interface)
An evolution waiting to happen!
Enterprises can incorporate intelligent voice agents in several areas of business operations. Intelligent Voice Agents will become long-term virtual assistants to customers as they are designed to evolve with the customer. They will help in personalising interactions & elevate customer experience to the next level.
