Conversational AI Trends

 AI Trends: The conversational AI industry continues to expand at an accelerated pace as a direct consequence of the current coronavirus epidemic.

This led to an invention boom – from self-learning AI to breakthroughs in speech technology – the fruits of which will yield fruit over the next 12-18 months.

Alongside this technical evolution, the conversational AI industry has forced suppliers to modify how they design and deploy their products.

The heydays of simple question-and-answer chatbots have made way for artificially intelligent virtual agents that give quick, 24/7 support and complete complex transactions on behalf of consumers.

Advancements in conversational AI have enabled customer self-service to be significantly more efficient and convenient than feasible.

And, as such, the expectations of what a simple AI solution can provide, both companies and consumers, have evolved.

Companies no longer demand one-size-fits-all chatbots and, instead, intend to adopt enterprise-ready solutions that take full use of the technology.

Here are a few significant market developments that will drive the commercial value of conversational AI long into the future:

1) Going ‘chat-first’ will give the quickest return on investment

Gartner argues that the future of self-service will be propelled by customer-led automation.

By 2030, Gartner experts expect that chatbots and virtual agents would automatically raise a billion support tickets – or their near-future counterparts.

This makes a lot of sense. Chat-based self-service is a low-cost, low-barrier solution to automate consumer interactions at scale.

And, as customers grow more acclimated to it, we will begin to see companies benefit from this trend.

Adopting a ‘chat-first’ approach – where a firm directs all customer service traffic via a conversational AI solution – would allow companies to play to the strengths of automation by decreasing support expenses and driving up CSAT ratings.

We have previously seen this strategy deliver excellent outcomes inside the banking sector:

DNB – Norway’s biggest bank makes its virtual agent the primary point of contact for clients visiting its website.

In 2020, the virtual agent automated over 10,000 inquiries per day and accounted for over 20 percent of total customer care traffic across all channels.

Sparebank 1 SR-Bank- AI Trends

Today’s medium-sized Norwegian bank automates 42 percent of all B2B and B2C support traffic owing to its ‘chat-first’ strategy.

Seventy-five percent of consumers also claim that they prefer to obtain assistance from the bank’s virtual representative – even when offered the chance to talk with a person.

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