The voice bot technology has made the headlines for its power-packed ability to interact; and businesses have leveraged that too. Voice bots provide customers with the guidance to purchase products or service; helping them with their queries in a seamless way. This has the potential to drive the sales up to 80% growth.
Wondering how? It’s not that difficult to imagine.
Just think of those voice-enabled devices at your place or your friends’ like Amazon’s Alexa. Or simply say “Siri!” And if that doesn’t do it for you then ask Google Assistant a question. The discussion here is how these voice bots have integrated into the routine life solving minor doubts in seconds and how businesses are leveraging that.
Organisations have a lot to gain from the top-notch prowess of the AI-enabled voice bot technology. They can drive more customer engagement, boost sales, streamline operations, and improve overall operational efficiency. It makes a great tool for businesses dealing across various industries, offering benefits to every department. However, it takes a systematic approach to implementing voice bot tools in the system, and that begins with understanding the basics. So, let’s launch into this section and explore what voice is bot technology exactly, the benefits of voice bots for businesses, its functions and more.
What is Voice Bot Technology?
Voice bot technology is essentially AI-enabled tools that are devised for streamlining interactions with users using voice commands. Voice bots are clad with amazing capabilities that can simplify things in daily lives whether or no we realise it. One thing to underscore here is that voice bots are able to comprehend the language spoken and then respond to the same in quite a conversational manner. This is unlike traditional bots that typically rely solely on text mode of communication. Note, these bots leverage technologies and innovations like natural language processing, voice recognition, and the elements of machine learning to interpret speech and extract meaning.
Businesses can integrate voice bots in a variety of operational applications ranging from e-commerce platforms to back-office functions to customer relationship management platforms and more. This factor alone makes the voice bot technology versatile. These bots come with the ability to process a multitude of languages, different accents and speech patterns. Due to this, businesses can leverage the personalisation element in their processes, making customers happy.
Moreover, voice assistants keep on improving read updates, new data, etc. They become more indispensable with time, in areas dealing in sales, customer service, healthcare, e-commerce, and hospitality. The ease of accessibility and hyper simplicity are what make the voice-based interfaces a choice among customers to engage with businesses.
The Elements of Bot: How Do Voice Bots Work?
Voice bots are the byproduct of various technologies that come together to deliver a seamless user experience to both the businesses and the customers. We will now explore how voice bot technology works:
Voice Recognition
Voice recognition basically entails the conversion of spoken language into text. This element of the voice bot technology utilises advanced algorithms in order to detect various speech patterns. It then transcribes those spoken words with unmissable accuracy even in the environments where there’s a lot of noise and in different accents too. Moreover, the higher the quality of voice recognition, the more the voice bot will be able to comprehend commands with utmost precision.
Machine Learning
Machine learning the key player in AI technologies is the powerhouse for voice bots to keep on learning and improving. ML models help the bots to understand as well as provide an answer to the user. Voice bots can refine the way they communicate, their responses, aiming to carry out every interaction with complete accuracy and of course relevance. This is a rather continuous process, in which bots keep on learning from past patterns. So, when. The voice bot receives a new communication, it is ready to cater to different needs or requirements of the user.
Natural Language Processing
Natural language processing is one the core technologies and driving forces behind the revolutionary voice bots. Once voice recognition converts spoken words into text, comes the important step: understanding what that text even means. Natural language processing helps right with that. The technology enables the bot for processing those words/text, and then, analyse the syntax and context of the same.
Is it a request to play a song?
Is this a question?
Or perhaps, a weather check or appointment scheduling?
This process helps the bot understand what the user wants to communicate.
Text-to-Speech
What happens when the voice processes a command by the user? It needs to respond; but how does it do that?
Enter text-to-speech technology.
This technology is the enabler of written text into spoken language. It powers the voice bot technology to communicate to the user in a tone.
Ever noticed Alexa or Siri’s tone of voice? Paid attention to the conversational flavour in speech of these popular voice assistants?
That’s what text-to-speech does. It allows voice bots to talk in a rather natura, human-like flow and ultimately boosts the user experience.
The technologies discussed above, when integrated, enable voice bots with capabilities to provide seamless humanised communications; and make them valuable for businesses.
What’s In It for Businesses? Top Benefits of Voice Bot Technology
Voice bots come with numerous advantages for businesses across different industries. We will discuss the breakdown below of the key reasons why organisations are favouring voice bots:
Positive Shift in Customer Service
The greatest advantage of implementing the voice bot technology in systems is ease of interaction with customers. Voice bots offer customers a faster and more hassle-free mode of interacting with businesses. They don’t have to navigate through the long, stretched menus on their phones anymore, nor do they have to wait for a customer service agent to become available. Instead, they can simply communicate with the voice bot in need of any assistance and receive prompt responses. The level of accessibility ultimately fuels customer satisfaction more so in case of businesses dealing in time-sensitive operations.
All Things Personalised
Voice bots can be made pro at offering personlised experiences to their customers, by tailoring responses based on their preferences, previous interactions, and purchase history. This leads to improved customer satisfaction, as the user feels the ease when they interact with the bot. Let’s understand with a common example: Voice bots in the retail sector can provide the customers with product recommendations based on their past searches, and purchases. Another example is banking, where voice bots can offer instant account updates.
Boost in Efficiency
One of the core benefits of artificial intelligence is automation which makes voice bot a blessing for businesses, again. Voice bots can remarkably enhance operational efficiency of businesses by automating various tasks, essentially day-to-day ones. In contact center services, this can mean handling generic questions, troubleshooting (that does not necessarily require human intervention), transactional queries, and other such functions. Hence, businesses are most likely to witness drop in workload and spike in efficiency.
Cost Savings Made More Achievable
Cost savings is yet another reason why many businesses are moving towards investment in the implementation of the voice bot technology. Since voice bots automate customer service operations and a number of functions across various departments, this exhibits its potential for businesses to cut back on resources. With reduction in the number of customer service teams which contribute a significant portion of operational cost businesses can unlock substantial savings.
Less Risk of Errors
Error is something humans are prone to making; owe it to fatigue, workload or anything. With automation in picture, businesses can relax a bit when it comes to taking care of accuracy. Voice bots have the capabilities to work on pre-defined structures, and can process massive data streams seamlessly and accurately. This leads to reduction in likelihood of mistakes that can lead to costly delays. Besides, this saves time, too.
Multilingual Support Decoded
Businesses that operate in global markets need to provide multilingual support to their customers worldwide. This is where voice bots prove to be extremely helpful, again. The bots can be programmed to fetch, and understand the commands by different customers in different languages. This enables businesses to cater to diverse segments without requiring multilingual human support teams.
Increase in Sales
Voice bots are becoming increasingly popular and valuable among businesses for boosting sales. In retail and e-commerce, for example, businesses can leverage the voice bot technology to personalise the services for customers. Customers can even execute such tasks through voice commands which speeds up the processes for them as well as businesses. This accommodates impulse purchases too, minimising friction in cart abandonment. Moreover, voice bots can also help businesses with lead nurturing by interacting with customers, collecting relevant information, and more. This level of automation is, nonetheless, the need of the hour.
In the Real World: Top Use Cases of Voice Bots
So far, we have understood the key essence of voice bots: versatility.
How are different industries leveraging that? Let’s read a bit about that below.
Retail
Voice bots in retail and e-commerce pose as virtual shopping assistants for customers, guiding them through product pages, best recommendations, order assistance, and more. Customers can pass the commands, and voice bots will process that to streamline the shopping experience accordingly. This reduces friction in the entire journey and encourages shoppers to keep coming.
Customer Support
Customer support is one of the core examples of where the voice bot technology is emerging as a revolution. Customer service businesses dealing in different sectors from retail to banking to hospitality to more can use voice bots to manage basic tasks on an everyday basis. This includes handling simple questions, troubleshooting, order tracking, account updates, etc. With voice bots, contact center service providers can expect reduction in wait times and boost in customer satisfaction.
Finance
Banking and financial services is one of the prominent use cases of voice bots out there. Voice bots in banking sectors can be used to account managers, transactions, financial advisory, and more. Customers can enquire about their account balances, recent transactions, fund transfer, and more with voice bots. The technology helps both financial services providers and customers enjoy hassle-free accessibility.
Travel
In travel and hospitality, voice bots are popular for providing seamless travel services to the customers. Instead of waiting for a human agent to come on the line, travellers can get updates on the status of flights, hotel bookings, and more such information, from voice bots. In fact, customers can also take a hand from voice bots for itinerary planning and services. This leads to faster communication and processes, increasing customer satisfaction.
Healthcare
The voice bot technology helps healthcare companies tremendously with automation. Businesses in this sector can use bots to carry out tasks such as appointment scheduling, prescription management, and more. Customers can check for doctor’s availability, time slots, medication schedules, etc. with voice bots. Moreover, advanced voice bots also manage crucial tasks such as health assessments, making day-to-day operations seamless for both sides.
What Lies Ahead? The Future of Voice Bots
Voice bots offer stellar benefits to businesses across different sectors; and that makes it interesting to see what’s next in the line for this technology? The future of voice bot technology looks promising with so many examples in our day-to-day being visible. Now here are the top trends in voice bots that businesses can expect in the future:
Hyper Personalisation
Voice bots will only become more capable of gathering user data (such as their preferences and buying patterns), leading to more robust personalisation interactions with customers.
Multimodal Interaction
One of notable voices bot future trends has to be the rise of multimodal interfaces. This interface technology will simplify user interaction by improving voice, visual, and touch elements. From smart TVs to mobile apps, voice bots are expected to be integrated in the interfaces of various types of devices seamlessly.
Advanced Security
Since voice bots are at their all-time high, there is also stress on the security aspect of the voice bot technology. Voice biometrics will be the highlight when it comes to authentication, and will be leveraged to enable customers to authorize transactions using unique voice prints. This will not only boost security, but will also provide convenience.
Make the Most of Voice Bot Technology with OptiML BoT
From productivity to scalability voice bot technology has a number of benefits to offer to businesses across various industries.
How can you make it work out for your business? Enter OptiML BoT by RMT Engineering.
This cutting-edge product is designed, devised, and powered by advanced AI technology. It ensures on-time and accuracy response delivery to customers, elevating the experience on both ends.
Here are some of the highlights of OptiML BoT:
- Personalisation: Provides customised responses; catering to unique preferences of each user.
- Multilingual service: Offers hassle-free experience by eliminating the language barrier, all thanks to interactions in multiple languages.
- NLP support: Enables understanding and helps craft contextual responses with NLP technology.
- Voice security: Ensures safer customer experience by enabling voice authentication; prevents frauds, and boosts trust.
- Omnichannel capability: Has integration capabilities across different platforms; allows consistent customer experience everywhere.
Final Word
Voice bot technology has already come a long way whether or not we have stopped and taken a look around. Voice bots can provide fast, human-like interactions, making them a valuable tool for everyone. This transformative technology is changing the way we approach interactions, search, and routine tasks every day. Just like that, it is also redefining the business workflows. That said, it’d be interesting to watch how businesses from different sectors make it work in their favour.