What is Conversational AI?
Conversational AI is an artificial intelligence that can automatically conduct a conversation or language interaction with one or more people. The term Conversational AI can be described in German as a dialogue system based on artificial intelligence — i.e. a combination of AI and conversation.
The term Conversational AI is now used for various applications and is more of a collective term for various technologies that use artificial intelligence to conduct conversations. It is not specified whether these conversations are made by spoken language, as with Siri or Alexa, or by written language, as with chatbots, be guided. This technology can be used in many areas, such as customer service, sales or personnel development.
What is the difference between conversational AI and chatbots?
The terms conversational AI and chatbot are used interchangeably in some cases. However, there are important differences. Because a chatbot may are based on artificial intelligence must But not it.
There are various Chatbot types, there is a fundamental distinction between rule-based chatbots and intelligent chatbots. A rule-based chatbot does not work on the basis of artificial intelligence, but on the basis of predefined rules. With these chatbots, even free text entry is usually not possible or is only understood to a very limited extent.
This is different with chatbots that are based on AI. Die artificial intelligence gives these chatbots the ability to learn from conversations, develop themselves independently and also understand free text inputs. In short: Conversational AI and rule-based chatbots usually don't have much in common.
But what is the situation with intelligent AI Chabots and Conversational AI — what is the difference here?
Conversational Al is a technology that enables chatbots to be developed. Chatbots are software programs that are able to communicate with people in a human-like way. In other words, chatbots are the mouthpiece for Conversational AI. And intelligent chatbots rely on conversational AI.
It is therefore not necessarily a question of “either/or”, but a question of cooperation and combination. With our moinAI solution, the chatbot uses Conversational AI in the background to provide users with appropriate answers.
Applications of Conversational AI
Conversational AI offers companies great versatility and can therefore be used in many industries and in various departments. It is particularly common in customer service relied on conversational AI. But also marketing & Sales can benefit from Conversational AI — many companies are already showing how well this works (see practical example).
The industries that use Conversational AI include the following:
The great thing about conversational AI is its development potential and its changeability. For this reason, it can be easily used in various industries — it always adapts to users and their questions and concerns. Conversational AI can therefore be a great solution both for a tourism company from the Black Forest and for a software provider from Berlin to advise customers, prospects and website visitors around the clock and answer questions.
Ultimately, Conversational AI grows with its area of application and continues to train itself on the basis of this.
What are the benefits of conversational AI?
- The effort and maintenance of a conversational AI is not very high. In contrast to many “simpler” chatbot solutions, high-quality conversational AI does not have to be trained by yourself and does not have to be supervised by a company's IT department. It can develop independently.
- The use of conversational AI is scalable. Regardless of how many channels Conversational AI is to be used on. No matter how many people you want to communicate with at the same time — once trained and implemented, a Conversational AI offers answers & conversations for a large number of users in many different places (homepage, FAQ subpages, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.)
- Easy to use. Both for the owner of Conversational AI, i.e. the company that uses the system, and for users, the user experience comes first:
- On the one hand, care is taken to ensure that users can get in touch with Conversational AI particularly easily, e.g. through an appealing interface, a UX-optimized Chat widget and, of course, automated answers in a matter of seconds.
- And owners also get their money's worth: Since Conversational AI neither needs to be trained nor extensively implemented, there is more time to create suitable response texts in the user-friendly hub that match the company's tone and corporate identity.
- “24/7” availability. A conversational AI knows no end of work and no weekend. Users can communicate 24/7/365 with a conversational AI and thus receive quick answers and solve their problems independently (keyword: self-service).
- Automate recurring requests. Repetitive questions account for almost 80% of all inquiries, are expensive for every company and are actually easy to prevent. However, not all users want to click through FAQs or PDFs. That's why the same questions come up over and over again, especially when it comes to customer service. Conversational AI is ideal for answering them automatically, concluding cases and without manual intervention.
- Save costs in the long run. A high-quality chatbot solution combined with conversational AI comes at a price. However, the acquisition costs and ongoing monthly costs are usually amortized within a short period of time, as Conversational AI saves companies a great deal of time.
Would you like to do the math yourself? We have developed the “return on investment” calculators for this purpose:
- Generate more leads: Calculate your advantage with our conversion calculator
- Save time and costs: Calculate your monthly saved costs with automated tickets
Case Study: Cyberport Best Practice
As mentioned above, many companies are already showing how to successfully use conversational AI.
One of these companies is Cyberport, which uses conversational AI on its website. that ecommerce-The company serves over 5 million customers, offers more than 45,000 products (smartphones, Apple products, etc.) and has 13 stores in Germany and Austria.
Cyberport has around 2 million customer contacts on all channels, including social media, email, phone calls and, since 2014, live chat.
Despite the large number of channels, Cyberport still wanted to find a solution for more relief.
The starting position:
- Overall number of inquiries is too high, despite the service area
- High volume of repetitive inquiries
- 24/7 service expectations from customers
Cyberport saw a solution for this initial situation in a conversational AI, which processes and answers online inquiries in conjunction with a chatbot.
The goal:
- Resolving repetitive customer inquiries on a case-by-case basis. The chatbot should be able to conduct a conversation satisfactorily for the customer and offer a solution that concludes the case. It should be more than just a “router” that directs customers to the right point of contact. Rather, it should be a real point of contact for customers.
- Handover to human contacts. If Conversational AI is stuck with its knowledge in individual cases, an easy transfer to a live chat employee should be possible. Because as smart as conversational AI may be, some topics need human support.
Areas of application:
- Services
- After-Sales
Detailed advice to customers before purchasing the products should primarily be provided by competent specialists. However, Conversational AI should provide support during service and even after the purchase.
Soft launch and iterative expansion of Conversational AI and Chatbot
After onboarding and anonymized evaluation of conversations that had already been held, it only took a few weeks and Cyberport was able to start using Conversational AI in the test environment. After the entire chatbot solution was tested and responded to questions in the way Cyberport wanted customers to, it was quickly initiated to go live on the website.
The topics that Conversational AI was able to work on and answer in the first step were the following:
After going live
After going live, Cyberport always kept an eye on all important figures, feedback and statistics, which can be viewed in the Conversational AI backend. Which topics are already well received by users? Which topics receive bad reviews and therefore still need to be adjusted? Cyberport found answers to these questions in the analytics sector.
What was easy to remember: Cyberport had not yet “had breakfast” with the initial theme set — there were many questions about topics that Conversational AI did not yet know as a first step.
But Conversational AI works not only to recognize user requests, but also to develop topics in-house. The dreaming feature regularly provides Cyberport with new suggestions for topics that address customers in the chat. Cyberport was then able to create new answers with just a few clicks and thus expand the set of topics step-by-step and automatically answer more and more questions from users. Another advantage: Cyberport receives automatically evaluated user insights from AI in this way.
The results and benefits:
- Immediately after the start, the level of automation was already very high: After using Chatbot & Conversational AI for a week, 41% of incoming messages could already be automated — and that was also to customer satisfaction. It was important for Cyberport not only to see that the chatbot answered questions independently, but also to recognize that the customer was actually satisfied with the communication and the answers.
- The 24/7 availability outside service hours was immediately surprisingly well received after the live operation and was gladly used by customers and interested parties.
- The chatbot is constantly evolving. The dreaming feature constantly provides new topics, which Cyberport adds with great pleasure and little effort.
- Noticeable effects on the number of conversations that take place on other channels. E-mail, hotline and live chat are significantly relieved, leaving more time to advise customers before making a purchase or to help with very complex issues with personal advice.
- Ideal cost-benefit ratio. The costs paid off in a short period of time.
Challenges when using Conversational AI
When implementing a conversational AI, those responsible (i.e. chatbot owners) often think not user-centered enough and set up the chatbot solution, including Conversational AI, in such a way that they like it themselves but doesn't really help users. Therefore, as with website design, writing information materials and other measures, the elementary question with conversational AI is: How can the user be helped in the best possible way?
It is advisable to look at real user data and questions before deciding in which direction conversational AI should develop thematically. In order to find out what users actually address and ask in the chat, it can be useful to evaluate the live chat. But the analysis of other communication channels, such as the service hotline, emails or social media messages and comments, is also recommended in order to intercept frequently raised topics using Conversational AI.
Ultimately, it is important to define a clear use case.
✎ In order not to have to start from scratch, we have developed a “Chatbot Canvas” for this case, which helps you start and outline the use case.
Another challenge when introducing conversational AI can be a lack of innovation culture be in the company. The narrative that prevails in some areas that AI is becoming too powerful and completely replacing human work is out of touch with reality. Conversational AI can complement human work in service, but never completely replace it. Nevertheless, the introduction of conversational AI can cause concerns and concerns for some people. It is important to take these concerns and concerns seriously and resolve them through education and informational resources. Because even though a conversational AI can take on many (especially recurring) tasks, it will not be able to replace interpersonal encounters, humor or emotional intelligence. When introducing conversational AI, teams and employees should, at best, work hand in hand to get the most out of this innovative technology.
Conclusion: the importance of conversational AI for the future of customer communication
Fortunately, more and more companies recognize the potential of chatbots — and conversational AI in general — to provide users with quick answers and ultimately improve their own customer relationships while relieving employees. As users become more familiar with this technology and as it becomes more and more established, Conversational AI is likely to reach new heights as a tool for companies that want to improve relationships with their customers.
Conversational AI is one of the newer technologies in the digital space, and its potential for use cases is virtually limitless. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most fascinating developments in the area of AI currently taking place.
In summary, it can be said that technology and artificial intelligence will continue to develop in the area of dialogue-oriented user interfaces. These advances will make it possible for Conversational User Interfaces (CUI applications), such as chatbots, to provide users with faster, personalized, convenient and user-friendly services.
Would you like to dive more into chatbots? Download the free Chatbot guide Download and learn more about the benefits of using chatbots as an innovative, scalable and automated communication channel:
