The Future of Chatbots and Conversational AI

robot, AI, NLP, chatbot

On 3rd December 2020 Group Futurista hosted another insightful webinar under their FutureCast Series.

In guiding the businesses through AI-based evolution, Group Futurista hosted the ‘Future of Chatbots and Conversational AI’ webinar. From their niches, the speakers presented how AI is an essential upgrade in their respective industries. 

Presenting how AI-powered CX intelligence can help in automating the scale gap, David Lehman, COO & President at Birdeye illustrated some great points. The highlights include:

  • Customers today rely more on their experience when interacting with products, AI & Chatbot Strategy the experience, and foundational gaps can be closed efficiently.  
  • Intelligent Automation of businesses can assist businesses to reduce their scale gap. 

Further in the webinar, Ashish Kulkarni from Standard Chartered Bank noted how Chatbots have become the new face of brands in the Banking Industry. Noting that:

  • For delivering a seamless client experience, optimizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) becomes a priority.
  • Effective implementation of chatbots at all channels along with a personality to engage better with customers. 
  • “AI Chatbots to become the first point of contact for better customer experience,” says Ashish. Which in turn will bring value to the organization.  

Focusing on the current needs of the customers, Elan Keshan, Product Marketing Manager, and Josh Solomon, Director of Enterprise Sales at Ada explains how conversational AI plays a key role in meeting the customer’s expectations. 

Some of the points included: 

  • Putting automation at the forefront of development, to meet the changing needs of customers. 
  • AI to deepen customer understanding, and able to take complex actions from valuable interactions or workflow orchestration. 

Next, contributing some insightful points as to how the future of Conversational AI can be anticipated, James Whittaker, Chief Evangelist at DefinedCrowd talked about the transformation from traditional to AI-based solutions. James noted that:

  • “34% of consumers prefer to use chatbots while shopping online, while 64% of users cite 24/7 availability as the best feature of chatbots.” 

Where the future of conversational AI represents

Mark Dembo, Vice President of Strategic Development at e-bot7 explains the recent shift in customer service, from appreciation to expectation:

  • Easy, secure, and dynamic deployment of chatbots across all channels is done by e-bot7 across global and SMEs. 
  • Reduced chat duration, reduction in costs, and efficiency for both customers & human agents are the benefits enjoyed by Deutsche Bahn and ROLAND Assistance, where e-bot7 rendered their services. 

Jeroen Das, Product owner Conversational AI and Chat at ABN AMRO Bank N.V.  talked about incorporating conversational AI in ABN AMRO’s customer interaction vision. 

  • Introducing virtual assistants named “Anna” & “Abby” who are deployed as Customer Service Agent and Internal support agent respectively. Where proactive engagement plays a crucial role in improving CX. 
  • The focus of virtual assistants lies in displaying smart routing capability from chatbots to human interactions for a better customer experience. 

Emphasizing the technical aspect of Conversational AI, Phil Gray, EVP Corporate Development at Interactions LLC, touched upon Omnichannel Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs). Some points included:

  • Conversational AI & Human-in-the-loop Technology that will be able to create transformative CX.
  • Machine Learning to be adapted to improve Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Generation (NLG), and other channels. 

Further, the Panel Discussion included Shnay Chohan, Senior AI Product Manager | Digital Technology at NatWest Group, Chaitanya Hiremath, Founder & CEO at Scanta, and Andrew Stack, Senior Product Owner – Messaging & Conversation Automation at NAB who joined the discussion along with the above speakers, moderated by Phil Gray. The discussion included:

  • How chatbots in the future could enhance customer expectations through coverage and providing the right answers. 
  • Also how the pandemic accelerated the use of AI across various industries in transforming and delivering the user experience.
  • Stressing more on the human aspects of conversational AI and Chatbots could help in increasing customer engagement.

Lastly, Andrew Stack talked about building Next-generation CX in the Financial Industry and deploying the same at NAB through NAB Virtual Assistant. 

How it has transformed banking for their customers, through Live chat, Smart voice, and automation in finding the answers effectively for customers’ queries.


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