3 Reasons Why You Should Start Every Conversation with AI

Customer experience has been on a path of transformation since the days of "Press 1 for..." Then came "You can say things like... pay my loan, check my balance, or transfer funds," which became the new way to start a customer service conversation through traditional speech IVRs around 2016. During that time, customers had to be directed in what they could say to the bot in order to get their intentions understood and processed.

This is called a directed dialogue approach. It consists of the caller going through a series of yes/no type questions with extremely limited responses. Anything outside the scope of the IVR’s understood responses can easily confuse the system and end up in a longer and more stressful experience, often ending unsuccessfully.

Since then, conversational AI has come a long way. Natural language intent capture, or intent recognition, is trending in the CX world.

"How can I help you?"

No leading. No directing. No caveat. A customer can say whatever they want, be understood, and have their words processed correctly to get them where they need to go. Across different industries, use cases, and customer interactions, there’s now an opportunity to leverage AI in a whole new way with an intelligent front door.

But why should you start every conversation with AI?

Using the capability of natural language intent capture gives customers the power to dictate the flow of the conversation. Customers are no longer boggled down by legacy and traditional voice bots that demand specific responses or face the wrath of a frustrating process.

In the age where personalization is everything, the way businesses and consumers interact is much more customer-driven. And a giving-rather-than-taking approach helps create an environment where customers feel heard and self-sufficient. Thus, positive experiences are had and made.

Following customer autonomy, starting a conversation with "How can I help you?" gives you the ability to understand and process what your customer aims to do and curate the experience based on their needs.

In the example above, the customer is asking to change their appointment – and that’s the intent, or the goal that the customer is trying to achieve. With natural language intent capture at work, it captures both the intent (change appointment) and the entities (next, Friday, 4pm) correctly in order to deliver what the customer wants. It’s not enough to know that the customer wants to change their appointment – we also need to know what day and time to change it to.

So, the intent recognition takes the utterance from the caller and parses it to determine exactly what the customer intention is. The virtual agent can then assist the customer with the utmost accuracy.

A lot of contact centers don’t have a good understanding of why their customers are calling and exactly what they are calling about. When you adopt a strategy of open-ended intent capture for your front door that allows your customers to say anything, a gold mine of data begins to build that you can use to optimize your bot. It will also give you the ability to find out why customers are calling and for what.

From an unrecognized intent, you can make considerations to determine how the keyword should be handled in the future. In the above example, you can:

By using data to understand the intentions of your customers, you're able to expand the customer experience with each interaction and elevate the impression your customer service leaves.

If you're interested in a deeper dive to understand the ins and outs of data mining for an always improving virtual agent, and to see a live demo of natural language intent capture at work, watch our latest webinar: Start Every Conversation with AI.