Over the years, our relationships with computers have become more and more personal, with the emphasis moving from simple transactions, like sharing and accessing information, to much more meaningful experiences driven by rich stores of information about who we are.
So, what’s the next step to create more meaningful and personal consumer experiences? Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) - like chatbots and voice tech - are an attempt to make computers feel more human. But, it’s probably safe to say that most CUIs miss the mark in making a computer interaction feel personable, delightful, or even conversational.
Currently, CUIs may seem like a risky investment, especially when there isn’t a great off-the-shelf solution, but we believe there’s a huge opportunity to deliver smart and personable customer experiences with this tech. Here are three reasons why businesses should start thinking about bringing CUIs into their digital ecosystem.
It’s better for the customer
It’s no secret that customers’ expectations are changing. Whether it’s a website, mobile app, chat, or voice experience, customers expect their interactions to be seamless, integrated, and genuinely conversational in nature. Businesses are faced with the challenge of keeping up with these expectations as technology becomes more accessible and intelligent across all areas of our lives. So the solution isn’t just “how do we make our chatbots sound more human,” but how do we make each touchpoint of communication adaptive to the unique needs of a customer?
Can an in-store conversation with an agent be remembered and relayed to your app? Or can concerns about a phone bill be voiced through an assistant like Google Home to the provider? This is where we see CUIs truly making an impact in the future. The capabilities of voice or chat as a conversational touchpoint can be powerful if used to understand frustrations and anticipate customers’ concerns to deliver quality interactions.
Investing in conversational touchpoints today is about providing synchronicity of service that customers will expect in the future from every channel of business.
It’s better for business
What’s good for the customer is good for the business, but creating space to experiment with CUIs may seem like high effort and high cost. On top of this, businesses are often faced with the criticism of ‘phasing out’ frontline customer service employees in favour of bots. The purpose of conversational experiences isn’t to and shouldn’t be to replace people. The goal is to make customer interactions with real humans of higher value by having service agents focus on complex problems.
Expanding the role of digital in your customer experience (CX) operations can help shift to a culture where customers feel empowered to self-serve and perform simple tasks, like adding a feature to an existing product or accessing the cost of their latest bill. Not only will this drive down operational costs through automation, but it will also alleviate the pressure put on customer service centres to respond to these repetitive tasks. By making strategic investments in digital CX through conversational experiences, businesses can automate simple tasks while making the best use of a human agent’s time.
It’s not as complex as you might think
Integrating CUIs into your customer journey might feel like an overwhelming experience. However, it’s not as hard as you might think - it’s really about bringing the right mindset, people, and approach to the table. The most important thing is to start with something small, safe and experimental. Starting with small investments, such as proof of concepts and small pilots, allow for teams to learn and experiment with building technology inside your organization, without affecting other ecosystems. You can identify these areas of opportunities by mapping your ideal customer experience journey and seeing where conversational interactions could offer a better experience. Building from this understanding, you would demonstrate the art of the possible with a design prototype to test and validate your hypothesis while gathering user and business feedback. Using this prototype as a starting point, ask yourself “Do I have an existing set of tools and technologies in place to make this happen?” More likely than not, the answer is yes.
At Nascent, we’ve been able to show that huge overhauls in technology do not need to happen to create effective conversational touchpoints. RBC Voice Labs, an innovation team within RBC, saw the potential of voice tech in RBC Venture’s Arrive, a start-up focused on supporting newcomers to Canada to achieve their life, career, and financial goals. Focusing on one line of business, we created a voice application that was a digital coach for newcomers at major life milestones. Adding voice made the experience become more integrated and delightful (AKA more human!). You can read more about the work done with RBC Voice Labs and creating a great conversational experience here.
While it may take time to advocate for conversational experiences in larger companies or to individuals, starting off with pilots can help build impactful cases that can be scaled over time.
Engaging in the long game
Conversational experiences have a real opportunity to improve quality of life by creating seamless interactions between humans and technology. Significant progress in disciplines such as machine learning, speech recognition, and natural language processing will make computing more human. But how we translate those advancements into the customer journey is something that companies are still grappling with. We’ve seen chatbots appear in some of the largest companies, with mixed results. But it’s important to realize that this is a means to an end - today’s work with chat will only open the door for more advanced cases that will seamlessly integrate and personalize experiences across web, chat, and voice. If companies want to help customers feel good about their brand interactions in the future, starting to work with conversational experiences must start today.
