Last year, we witnessed the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) infused business applications given the momentum and hype surrounding generative AI and LLMs. These advances in AI technologies have combined with conversational AI solutions to more than prove their mettle in enhancing customer experiences and driving automation for brands.
Generative AI-powered chatbots can provide quick and personalized responses to complex customer queries across verticals and use cases. By automating various routine tasks and processes, they can also improve efficiency and productivity in customer care. However, it is their ability to “get into character” that has companies now even more intrigued in establishing a chatbot that is aligned with their brand voice.
As companies increasingly adopt AI-driven technologies, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, to automate and personalize interactions with their customers, maintaining a consistent and authentic brand voice across channels is becoming not just a critical consideration, but an outcome that can be achieved.
Thanks to these technological developments, brands are now realizing some of the immense potential of AI and are creating chatbots and virtual assistants that closely embody their unique personalities and voices.
Conversational AI: The AI Artistry of Giving Chatbots Personality
Leveraging AI-driven conversational interfaces such as chatbots and virtual assistants helps brands shine by automating and personalizing interactions to ensure coherence and resonance across all channels.
However, with the advent of generative AI, chatbots and virtual assistants can now more closely embody a brand’s unique personality and voice. Traditional legacy chatbots were primarily transactional, developed for linear conversations based on input/output decision tree-based paths that didn’t allow for the brand’s personality to shine through. As a result, brands have been typically reluctant to inject personality into their chatbots, fearing getting it wrong would result in a bot that is too “off-brand.”
Today, generative AI allows brands to tap into the artistry of applying human-like characteristics to fine-tune conversational AI interfaces, so chatbots and virtual assistants can exude brand authenticity — much like a live agent speaking to customers with exceptional and recognizable brand voice.
Plus, with generative AI, brands can keep their chatbots “on brand” by training them to avoid taboo or slang terms or, to the contrary, tune them to respond with specific persona attributes — whatever is most brand authentic. Conversational AI applications can tap into this artistry and leverage appropriate compliance guidelines and AI safety nets to avoid some of the pratfalls and hallucinations that are all too often amplified by the media.
Do More With Less With Next-Gen Chatbots
Leveraging chatbots to take customer experience to the next level comes at a critical time. Customer engagement has drastically evolved over the past few years. Interaction volumes are increasing while customer expectations are skyrocketing. Meanwhile, brands are trying to do more with less to respond to rising customer expectations and deliver incredible experiences.
A recent study shows that 31 percent of consumers have higher customer service expectations than last year. More worrisome is that 69 percent have stopped doing business with a company due to a single poor customer experience.
A key aspect of solving the CX-cost equation is being able to scale interactions without drastically increasing budgets or reducing the quality of customer engagements. Another study reveals that 45 percent of highly confident respondents currently share work between human employees and bots. And 72 percent of highly confident respondents indicated that utilization of chatbots and messaging channels has been extremely effective for them during the past two years.
Generative AI-fueled chatbots and virtual assistants allow engagement at scale — now with a voice that reflects your brand’s personality, values, and goals to maintain brand consistency across channels.
Instilling Brand Voice with Ease and Trust
With the advent of generative AI and LLMs, the legacy world of building intents and alternates has evolved to design thinking or a user-centered approach to conversational AI.
The power of automated conversational experiences is now in the hands of enterprises with or without a conversational AI platform, and the key to execution will be platforms that enable safe, compliant, and trustworthy AI automation that orchestrates customer experience across contact center technologies and robotic process automation (RPA).
In addition, conversational AI platforms must truly be “LEGO-like” kits that can not only build what is prescribed with established widgets and integrations — but can also allow the practitioner and brands to build outside the instruction manual. In other words, brands must be empowered to build applications and integrations that serve their interest, and not always be reliant upon the commercial interests of the platform provider.
In this world of extensibility, open means client-built applications and integrations that can be published in a hub or marketplace that enable cross-workplace and organizational sharing with vendor- and community-driven issue tracking and collaboration.
With LLMs, RPA and conversational AI solutions all working in conjunction to orchestrate experiences and automation across agent- and customer-facing tools and applications, having true transparency into data remains as important as ever.
From the data lineage of what was used to train a mode while helping to ensure compliancy, to a validated and reliable vision that turns into results, to consumable, yet secure client data usage, conversational AI platforms must now help enable true vision into AI data governance for brands to maximize and protect their investments in automation.
Furthermore, trust as well as responsibility goes hand in hand with this new power. The winners will be those technology companies that get what it means to be a proven, trusted contact center-grade partner.
Powering Consistent Brand Experience with Conversational AI Chatbots
Chatbots are a key element of customer service due to their around-the-clock availability, cost-effectiveness, and data-driven insights for enhancing customer satisfaction and streamlining operations. Implementing chatbots to support the customer experience and the employee experience is highly valuable, but we also need to factor in their significance to support the overall brand experience.
Generative AI is a new powerful force that can enable organizations to train their chatbots to stay on tone and character in keeping with a brand’s unique voice and personality traits for a consistent brand experience.
