What is the growing role of conversational AI in driving impactful customer engagement for brands and its contribution as a business bottom-line driver?
Automated bots in customer support enable customers to receive answers on product or pricing enquiries, schedule deliveries and make payments via customer’s favourite channels. Such intelligent features can help businesses to scale customer service quality, increase efficiencies and allow companies to up and cross-sell. Moreover, AI can help businesses obtain hyper personalised end-to-end customer experiences with analytics and provide better customer journey.
For instance:
- Infobip developed an AI-powered chatbot for Uber where customers are allowed to order rides via WhatsApp. This global first initiative created a seamless booking experience through chatbot. The WhatsApp to Ride (WA2R) experience is now available for Uber riders across Delhi-NCR, one of Uber’s top cities globally by volume. Uber received a significant proportion of ride requests from new users after the launch of this feature, demonstrating its potential product market fit.
In recent years, consumers have increasing demand in having conversations with brands or companies on their preferred communication channels. In order to fulfil customer demand, it is important for brands to be easily reachable across all different platforms. With the use of conversational AI, businesses can obtain valuable insights including consumer behaviours, performance metrics and area of improvements to solve customers’ pain points, delight customers and boost customer loyalty.
What is the potential future that conversational AI will deliver for businesses and reshaping customer service experience?
In order to maintain a company’s competitiveness in addressing customers’ needs through conversations, there are several trends that we will advise businesses to look into. One of the trends is hyper personalised end-to-end customer experiences generated by AI that can predict customer behaviour and drive real-time responses. Businesses will be able to personalise ways of communication that each customer prefers to build customer loyalty and drive sales. This trend can be enhanced by the increasing shift to first-party data and automation in writing AI code.
Next, automated bots with hyper automation and intelligence can help enhance marketing and sales activities. In future, we expect automation progress will exceed text where voice and video bots will be included to deliver another level of customer service experience. In addition, conversational user experiences expand across sectors from ride-sharing to healthcare and even the public sector will adapt to conversational everything. Two-way conversations will scale hugely across the customer journey while creating a richer and more proactive experience for customers.
At Infobip, we believe that in the future, composable technology platforms can help in reducing implementation time and deliver results more efficiently. With such solution, organizations can quickly integrate new technologies with less time and cost. According to Accenture, companies that adapt to interoperable technology can achieve six times higher revenue growth compared to their peers with low interoperability.
Moreover, immersive hybrid ‘phygital’ experiences where the physical and digital meet to create immersive experiences for the customers is happening and creating a trend worldwide. For instance, geofencing, a location-based marketing tool that allows retailers to send automatic alerts including coupons or promotions when potential customers are around a certain area around the store. Meanwhile, eCommerce platforms will use virtual and augmented reality to create a 21st-century digital store that enables customers to ‘try on’ clothes through virtual dressing rooms.
How is the outlook on the impact of conversational AI in Malaysia?
The adoption of conversational AI in Malaysia is getting common in various industries, which include:
- E-commerce: Companies are integrating chatbots to answer common inquiries with quick solutions and assist customers at all times. Conversational AI in e-commerce platforms also help businesses identify consumer behaviours and provide personalised experience according to their interest.
- Banking & Financial: Human-role in this industry has been side-lined for routine tasks like loan applications or balance inquiries, leading to lesser processing time and more productivity.
- Telecom & Media: Conversational AI enables for a more personalised customer experience. Through AI-powered chatbots, customers can manage their accounts, check data usage, and receive support for billing, coverage, or promotions.
- Travel & Tourism: Businesses in the travel and tourism industry are using a chatbot to not only address customer queries and provide support but also provide customers with an option to check on flight bookings, cancellations, and other inquiries, through Messenger and other messaging apps.
The implementation of conversational AI into improving customer experience and driving business revenue brings about immense opportunities and in Malaysia businesses are just about to discover its potential. Its impact in the years to come will be tremendous and the rate of digital penetration will continue to spur its adoption and growth.
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The Infobip commissioned IDC’s Asia/Pacific Communications and Collaboration survey 2022 highlights that over 70% of organizations in Asia/Pacific are looking to increase their spending in SaaS-based Conversational Commerce Solutions. This is because businesses aim to deliver personalized interactions, in order to improve customer experience throughout the life cycle.
On the local front, 56% of organisations in Malaysia reported that they currently use CPaaS solutions within their organizations. However, 73% of organisations plan to increase their communications platform spending over 2023-24 as they aim to leverage conversational commerce to offer distinctive and immersive customer experiences.
