Deciding Where To Start With Conversational AI

While there are some obvious financial and operational efficiencies to be gained from implementing an AI solution, the ideal implementation should keep customer experience at its core. This will vary from business to business, however, by looking at consumer data we can identify a few key trends to help guide your decisions.

Customer Communication Trends

How consumers communicate with businesses is the easiest, and most instructive data to evaluate. According to Drift’s 2018 State of Chatbots Report, this is how many customers use each communication channel:

• 60% by telephone.
• 60% through email.
• 54% through the company's website.
• 39% face-to-face.
• 38% through online chat.
• 30% through a mobile app.
• 28% through social media.
• 15% via chatbot.
  

Many companies still aren’t using any automated communication. So, adding conversational AI and chatbots can be a big brand differentiator. Provided it’s done right of course.

The vast majority of consumers communicate with brands through channels that can be augmented with conversational AI and chatbots (telephone, company websites, online chat, and mobile apps).

Additionally, customers have stated how they’d like companies to use chatbots. When asked what they predict they would use a chatbot for, customers responded like this:

• Getting a quick answer in an emergency: 37%
• Resolving a complaint or problem: 35%
• Getting detailed answers or explanations: 35%
• Finding a human customer service assistant: 34%
• Making a reservation (e.g. restaurant or hotel): 33%
• Paying a bill: 29%
• Buying a basic item: 27%
• Getting ideas and inspiration for purchases: 22%
• Adding yourself to a mailing list or news service: 22%
• Communicating with multiple brands using one program: 18%
• (none of these things): 14%
• Buying an expensive item: 13%
  

The upshot? You’re almost guaranteed to see a positive impact from implementing conversational AI and chatbots, if you do it correctly.

Conversational AI and chatbots can enhance the communication channels that customers use most. And, customers have some expectations that companies will use automation to make certain buying and customer support activities easier and more convenient.

However, this means that you could potentially use conversational AI and chatbots for just about anything, since they cover most communication channels and a lot of business activities.

Check out our eBook: Your Guide to Better Leveraging Conversational AI to learn about key conversational AI use cases across industries.