AI Voice Chatbots: The Future of Customer Support

AI-powered voice chatbots are growing in popularity as companies try to elevate customer experience using AI technology. Companies are rushing to adopt AI voice chatbots into their operations, eyeing potential savings in labor-intensive areas like customer support. In this article, we discuss the fast adoption of AI-powered support in call and contact centers. We then explore how knowledge bases are enabling robust training of bots to make them more effective.

How AI Voicebots Work

A voice chatbot or voicebot is an AI tool that talks with a user just like a human would. Companies are using them to answer routine customer service questions in place of a human agent. Voicebot solutions use advanced technology, including auto speech recognition (ASR), natural language processing, machine learning and text-to-speech (TTS). These advances are strung together to:

1. Turn a customer’s voice into text.

2.The text is evaluated using natural language processing and machine learning to understand intent and context.

3. It is matched with an answer.

4. A response is generated and converted to speech. 

“Voice has been a primary channel, especially in enterprise industries,” said Alan Finlay, Head of Product for OvationCXM. “ IVRs have served as the go-to for quite a while. As generative AI and natural language conversations get faster and latency goes down, you can interact with a chatbot via voice like you would another human.” 

How Conversational AI Chatbots are Different?

The use of generative AI and machine learning specifically expands the bot’s understanding from past interactions. Machine learning enables AI bots to constantly improve and enhance their comprehension of conversations and customer responses.  

Did you know? Deloitte expects voice bots to contribute to 30% of total e-commerce sales by 2030.

Customers Optimistic About AI Support, But Think It’s Inconsistent

Shep Hyken, a CX expert, reports that many customers think AI will eventually lead to better customer experiences and more personalization; they are generally positive about AI's impact on their CX. 60% of customers believe AI can reduce time spent interacting with customer service agents. Sixty three percent admit though that they’ve gotten frustrated using it. Hyken believes it is due to inconsistent performance from the bots, especially early on.

Robust Knowledge Boosts Voicebot Performance

As a company that focuses on customer experience and support, OvationCXM has unique insight into this challenge. We agree with Hyken. Voice assistants must have robust guard rails, infrastructure, but most especially, in-depth, accurate training sources. We've solved that by unifying knowledge base resources to train voice and chatbots.

Curating internal corporate knowledge is critical. If it’s too thin, virtual agents will give only rudimentary, basic replies that don’t solve a customer’s problem. On the other hand, if bot training is too broad, incorrect or inappropriate, answers and even hallucinations can result.  However, that can be addressed and mitigated when working with the right provider.

Customers Want to Use Self-Serve Options, If they Work

According to The State of Self Service Report. It reports that 44% of B2B customers said self-service is their first choice when reaching out for help. For software specifically, that number jumps to 60%.

So, to win a customer’s approval of your AI support including voicebots and AI chatbots, lean into providers experienced in training AI models on an organization’s internal resources. Learn more about our experience delivering AI support, knowledge and our CXM platform.

AI + Knowledge Lead to Best Voicebot Results

Look for platforms designed to collect corporate resources into organized knowledge bases and link these knowledge bases to AI models. Not only will this power new technologies like AI voice, but at a more fundamental level, it will unlock tribal knowledge siloed in different departments and employees and make it democratized and accessible to everyone in the company who needs it.  

We help companies aggregate product and company information in one place, and connect it to delivery channels to customers and employees that include a variety of options, including AI tools. One top five bank that uses OvationCXM reduced attrition, boosted employee expertise and morale and reduced time to resolution using our knowledge base capabilities. 

We also recommend that companies look for customer support companies that leverage AI vs. AI companies that dabble in customer support. There's a difference in expertise and approach that's dramatic.  

About OvationCXM

OvationCXM was founded to support B2B businesses that onboard and service customers adopting new products, services, technology and equipment. As a CX provider that was part of complex customer journeys involving multiple steps and organizations, we recognized how data silos between teams and companies, knowledge gaps,and communication and collaboration hurdles caused customers to become frustrated, which led to higher attrition and lower satisfaction and loyalty.

We built our CX management platform to solve these problems. We orchestrate your ecosystem of partners and vendors, unlocking data flow between and unifying customer interaction and operational data in one place. With unified data on customers, you can build more personalized experiences using our no-code journey builder and AI insights and automations to better serve your customers.

Our AI tools can also streamline operations, allowing you to access necessary information quickly to help customers and automate many CX functions. 

Find out more about our CXM platform and how it has helped KeyBank grow revenue, reduce operational costs, and create happier customers and more efficient teams.