How AI Backed Virtual Assistants Drive Digital Engagement in Telecom Industry
Posted On: January 28, 2019
In this era of modernization, subscribers wish to use the services of a network that caters to their needs, offers innovative digital services, and provides them with an exceptional experience. So, to scale up the satisfaction of their customers, network operators have started to embark on a journey to be a fully digital telco.
Telecoms are increasingly emphasizing the value of customer experience and customer satisfaction as a result of which they have started deploying AI aided virtual assistants. Working through machine learning algorithms, these virtual assistants help telecoms in increasing network reliability and optimize business operations for higher profits.
According to a report by ABI Research, virtual assistants will enable telecom service providers to save $1.2 billion on customer care management by 2022, resulting in a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% over the next five years.
Components of Virtual Assistants
1.Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural Language Processing is the most crucial component of AI aided virtual assistants for interacting with intelligent systems using natural language. It can capture emotions of user and answer questions accordingly. Without NLP, artificial intelligence can only answer simple questions, but will not be able to understand meaning of words in context.
2.Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Working on artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, robotic process automation (RPA) helps telecoms in handling high-volume, repetitive tasks that required humans to execute. It allows you to configure a robot to capture and interpret existing applications for handling a transaction, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems.
3.Decision Trees (DT)
When it comes to chatbots, a decision tree helps them find relevant answers to your questions. They are basically a sequence of coherent statements which serve as a step by step way of finding solution for a given problem and play a key role in improving customer service level and can be integrated with websites, self-care apps, thereby making it easy for customers to figure out technical and troubleshooting issues. For instance, if a customer visits an e-tail website and inquires about a product, then this AI aided virtual assistant answers these queries and makes it easier for a customer to buy a particular product.
4.Picture Guides (PG)
Picture guides are step by step visual guides that empower effective agent training and help them deliver quick solutions to customers. Enabling open-ended communication between support team and customers, these AI aided virtual assistants easily have a direct positive impact on resolution delivery. Hence, they deliver a high level of customer engagement and satisfaction. For example, when a customer visits an e-commerce website, then the pictures of products aids customer to know about the brand, color, shape etc. Thus picture guides influence buying decision of customers and enhance CX.
Bot Training
With artificial intelligence, bots are trained and built for seamless conversations. These AI aided virtual assistants (bots) help in reducing contact center tickets and minimizing support costs. For example, Vodafone, built an AI aided virtual assistant app named TOBi which can be directly accessed by customers through their web chat service. TOBi offers immediate support to resolve more than 70% of customer queries and even makes changes to their accounts thereby improving customer experience and freeing up time and demand on their staff.
There are innumerable bots that have failed miserably as a result of which they had to be removed. For example, Microsoft’s bot Tay was designed to interact with people on Twitter and develop a personality through those interactions. But unluckily, Microsoft had to remove Tay within 24 hours as it started posting aggressively racist tweets and denied existence of Holocaust.
AI and machine learning powered knowledge framework trains your bot to enable it deliver contextual answers. It organizes your knowledge base, integrates with your bot and trains it to acknowledge user intent and fetch most relevant answers.
Benefits of Virtual Assistants
1. Enhance C-SAT
According to research by Gartner, organizations reported a reduction of up to 70% in email queries after implementing Virtual Customer Assistant. They also reported increased C-SAT and a 33% saving per voice engagement.
Be it in helping customers navigate through content or troubleshooting their queries in minimum time, virtual assistants have come a long way in improving customer service and increasing CSAT.
2. Time-Saving
Virtual Assistants help you in organizing and managing your emails, addressing support requests, messages and social media posts. They reduce your work-related stress and make sure that all the tasks get completed within time. In this way, employees can focus on the tasks that are more crucial. For example, answering every customer query becomes difficult for employees as it consumes more time whereas bots have an in-built capability of saving every answer so that it doesn’t take much time for them to answer same customer queries.
3.OPEX Reduction
Using virtual assistants, companies can save their expenditure on office space, maintenance cost, and additional taxes. A virtual assistant costs less as compared to hiring a regular employee as you don’t have to pay for any employee benefits. Therefore, they help you cut down on operational expenditures.
To sum up, AI backed virtual assistants strengthen digital journey of telecom industry by delivering quick, and consistent responses to customers and providing them with personalized support so as to increase C-SAT and CX. KocharTech is one of the largest technology enablers of connected device ecosystem having significant experience in offering comprehensive services to a number of telecom companies. We help brands deliver a superior customer experience and unravel new opportunities for them to drive revenue in business. Our digital solution experts would be presenting comprehensive product portfolios at Mobile World Congress at Barcelona this year. MWC is the largest mobile event in the world, bringing together latest innovations and leading-edge technology from more than 2,400 leading companies.
Want to implement AI aided virtual assistant platform for your telecom company? get in touch with us.
