Can Conversational AI Become The Face of Tomorrow's Business?

Written by kristy-hill | Published 2020/02/13
Tech Story Tags: artificial-intelligence | conversational-ai | ai-trends-for-2020 | machine-learning | user-experience | chatbots-and-voice-searches | ai-top-story | hackernoon-top-story

TLDR Conversational AI has become a tech buzzword in the global market. However, the aggressively growing popularity of AI is leaving many individuals in a great dilemma of whether they should be fear of losing jobs in the future or get excited to leverage the latest edition of the AI-driven applications in businesses. According to the latest case study of McKinsey Global Institution, it has been concluded that at the pace, things are revamping and automating, it can tremendously enhance the business productivity from 0.8 to 1.4 percent annually.via the TL;DR App

In recent times, conversational AI has become a tech buzzword in the global market. However, the aggressively growing popularity of AI is leaving many individuals in a great dilemma of whether they should be fear of losing jobs in the future or get excited to leverage the latest edition of the AI-driven applications in businesses.

Someone recently asked Alexa: How Could AI Impact My Business in 2020? Does it change the traditional outlook of my business? Is it essential to have a thought about chatbot development services?
And Alexa simply answered this question with the mindful saying of Stephen Hawking:
“Computers will overtake humans with AI within the next 100 years. When that happens, we need to make sure the computers have goals aligned with ours”.
In recent times, conversational AI has become a tech buzzword in the global market. However, the aggressively growing popularity of AI is leaving many individuals in a great dilemma of whether they should be fear of losing jobs in the future or get excited to leverage the latest edition of the AI-driven applications in businesses.
If you are also feeling clueless, then have a glance over some facts and figures representing “how vital is AI for your future business and industry?
A search report forecast that, in America, voice-assistant devices have been increased to 129% from the last year.
According to the survey, AI global market is projected to grow up to a value of $89.9 billion by 2025.
In 2018, 29% of the task of top 12 industries was handled by AI-driven machines and encourage automation in the business.
61% of professionals are considering Machine Learning and Artificial learning as their company’s most part of their growth.
80% of business leaders have concluded that AI boosts productivity and create better growth opportunities.
These statistics are portraying, how quickly AI is reshaping the traditional business structures and adding a technological curve to your business.
If you are still not investing relentless efforts in the latest technologies, including Machine Learning, data-driven intelligence, chatbots, then you will not last in the market for the next decade.
Now the central question that must be hitting your mind is “why Conversational AI is speedily paving the way for change in industries?
Why is AI Spreading Up Expeditiously?
Accordingly, to the latest case study of McKinsey Global Institution, it has been concluded that at the pace, things are revamping and automating, it can tremendously enhance the business productivity from 0.8 to 1.4 percent annually.
Secondly, AI-driven robots and systems can handle any task in a better way than humans. Also, it adds cognitive capabilities that not only help you accomplish the job in real-time but also automates various activities such as driving, making strategic judgments, sensing emotions and more.
Thirdly, the conversational AI modules create unique opportunities for businesses and customers, such as improving customer experience with chatbots, reducing the workforce, reducing production costs, and so on.

How Businesses are Leveraging Conversational AI These Days?

While, the concept of AI was launched with the Artificial Neuron in 1943, by William McCulloch and logician Walter Pitts, but, today, experts have unlocked the new opportunities and capabilities for individuals to outshine by solely incorporating the conversational AI in their respective industries.
Regardless, AI is already widely used in the various sectors of the businesses and adding a sharp-edge to their work. Right from Natural Language Processing(NPL), making data analytics, automatic activities to robotic communication, AI is flawlessly improving work efficiencies and streamlining operations.
Let’s get deep in the concept and understand how AI is impactfully changing the face of traditional businesses in 2020. 
Here are some facts, stats and theories below that may move you…
1. Conversational AI Will Market Your Business in Real-Time
How quickly and innovatively you market your new products and services will significantly impact your business growth…
According to the survey, real-time marketing provides a tremendous lift to the customer sentiment(16%), purchase intent(14%), visit interest(18%), and the word-of-mouth advertisement(18%).
Earlier, when it comes to launching new services and products in a new market, according to traditional business structures- you need to make a hefty investment. Right from staffing and marketing to manage the bulk of new sales and handle customer queries in all time zones and multiple languages, there are lots of things to look for in a traditional business.
But, as soon as businesses incorporated with Conversational AI, the cost of deploying staff to launching new product services to handle customer care has been profoundly reduced.
Today, Virtual agents or chatbots can work round the clock and integrated with NLP; hence, they privilege businesses to bring their new offerings to market in a real-time and provide customer support in multiple languages, which is limited with the traditional business structure. And at the same time, they simplify the product delivery process and promote unique revenue systems.
2. Conversational AI Build Brand Loyalty With Virtual Agents
Marvin Minsky says, “Artificial Intelligence is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men”.
And this is so true and proves to be the most reliable tool when trying to build brand loyalty with virtual agents.
Unlike traditional customer support, chatbots offer a frictionless communication channel to get the answer to every query instantly. While there are certain cases where automation is not exactly fit to resolve the problem, but, still it can save your customers from being distracted and guide them, where they need to navigate next.
Regardless, whether you are dealing in eCommerce or a banking sector, customer support is considered as the first-line support for the customers. And well-implemented virtual agents are capable enough to automate 50% of chat traffic and resolve the query of the customers.
Chatbots not only solve customer queries every time but also free up your staff from replying to the repeated questions and allow them to focus on more complex queries.
3. Chatbots Lead To Higher Customer Satisfaction
According to the PWC report, 63% of consumers believe that AI will significantly help in solving complex problems created in modern societies.
On one spectrum, many businesses are using this tool to reduce the customer support stress from their staff, on the other side, many customers are chasing with the mystery that “how do chatbots predict the customer’s queries and provide automated answers?
As conversation AIs are integrated with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), it can deeply sense the customer’s intent and provide valuable support to the customers.
Besides, they are not just available 24/7 but also help to analyze chat conversations and offer real insights to determine future sales conditions.
With the automation of routine queries or payment processing relations queries, the live agents are free to focus on more complex issues of the businesses and able to generate better revenue in the future. By keeping this fact in mind, a survey report has estimated that the brands will spend $8 billion more on customer services in 2020.
4. Conversational AI Is Adding a New Curve To Developer’s Career
According to the IDC Survey report, the number of best AI developers in the world reached 22.3 million in 2018 from 18.5 million programmers in 2014.
Surprised to know how these figures have raised so quickly?
The evolution “no UI is the best UI” encouraging a large number of artificial intelligence development companies to hire passionate AI developers that can design and build disruptive business solutions.
Before proceeding further, let me clarify the meaning of “No UI is the best UI”. Today, many of you have noticed how quickly Graphical User Interface is moving to Voice User Interface. 
But do you feel that user interface matters while we are communicating? Instead, we use our sensors for active and healthy communication.
For instance, if the climate is hot, you know they are going to want the air conditioners on. So the goal should be identifying how to do that automatically. In that case, the developers should aim to design the applications with “NO UI”.
There are some principles to design applications without using many codes, that your computer needs to learn. While everyone is different, hence having different likings, so let your computer understand how users live naturally and adapt the many facts to help you develop an application with less UI.
5. Artificial Intelligence Can Prevent Cyber Frauds
While the recent developments in Information Technology promising you various benefits and comfort, at the same time, increasing cybersecurity has become a need of the hour for many businesses.
Did you know in 2018, the cybercrime industry alone has generated $1.5 trillion in revenue? And according to reports, it was estimated to reach $3.6 trillion in 2019
The rapidly increasing figures of cyber-attacks are becoming a severe issue for many businesses and organizations as most of the operations are depending upon the computer networks.
So what’s the solution here? How is Artificial Intelligence the blessing to enhance the cyber-security?
No doubt with manual security applications, it is challenging to detect pattern recognition cyber frauds and seems to be a never-ending process for the businesses. But, that’s where Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can be a significant game-changer and prove to be a powerful security-enhancing tool for developers.
Now AI and ML are no longer just a hot topic of the town, but also being extensively used in various industries including customer services, education, automation and more, to advance the security structures.
How does it work now? While machine learning is the part of AI, which is extremely useful in detecting cyber threats after understanding the algorithm based data and observing any anomalies.
After concluding all these impacts of Conversational AI on businesses in 2020, there is one question that continuously bothering me is“ Will it impact on USER EXPERIENCE”?

How Does Conversational AI Help You Improve the User-Experience?

Whether you are a bootstrapper or a larger enterprise, the most important thing for businesses is the Customer Experience. And, everyone knows how AI is playing a massive role in transforming the business trends in this age of digitization.
Let’s get deep and understand how it helps in improving customer experience?
1. Encourage Automated Life Assistance
With the launch of virtual assistants- Siri, Alexa, Cortana, undoubtedly, life has got far more comfortable and convenient.
From turning on the music to switching off the lights, booking movie tickets to shopping for groceries, to paying bills to transfer money, your voice command can do all for you!
The virtual assistance has not only streamlined the daily activities of many individuals but also leaves a substantial impact on the global market, shown in the image below;
2. 24/7 Customer Support
Regardless of your business size and domain, customer support is the first line support for the users. And unlike live agents, chatbots are the bonus for businesses- which never sleeps!
In today’s highly competitive market, customers have thousands of options to explore, so why did they wait for you to open the doors. The large segment of the customer base is depending on the customer support and offering 24/7 support is not just an additional feature but also becomes a need of an hour today.
3. Offering Happy Customer Support to the Users
With live agents, it’s impossible to serve customer support in a happy mood all the time. Many of us encountered a bad time during work, which leads the agents to quit the job in a middle way. But, AI-driven Chatbots neither ditch you, nor get upset!
Leveraging the power of learning emotional intelligence, they always deal with customers calmly and happily. That gives great peace of mind to the companies that their customers will leave with a smile on their face and satisfaction.
Ending Note
With the above-mentioned stats, facts, and theories, hopefully, you understand how Conversational AI will break the ground in the coming years and scaling up the business trends with smart and accurate predictions. AI is not just impactfully transforming the business cultures, but also, adding significant value to the global economy.
Thanks!!
(The author works at Xicom Biz and can be contacted here)

Written by kristy-hill | Sr.Business Consultant & Passionate Blogger |AI |Blockchain| IoT |Mobile & Web Enthusiast
Published by HackerNoon on 2020/02/13