Aion Digital: The Renaissance of Conversational AI

by Sheraz Sharif, Head of Data and Cyber Security at Aion Digital

Customer support is one of the most essential areas to respond to your consumer needs, address their concerns, build community, relationships, and loyalty around the business brand. Just like everything else, customer support was directly struck by Covid-19 because of its operating model.

For most establishments, customer support is still primarily managed through manual means, it requires human interaction which means high cost and inconsistent results. However, customers need for immediate results are growing more with each day. As per estimates, 65% of consumers still utilize call center channels to connect for inquires. Another interesting stat is that nearly 50% of consumers expect a response on questions or complaints within an hour, with 18% expecting an immediate response.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted customer support significantly, it presented an opportunity for banks to innovate and amplify the existing digitization trend. That is where Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) played a vital role by transforming the way banks provide customer support and interact with their client-base as a first touch point. In addition, the advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) have enabled conversational AI technologies and widened their reach, leading to tools such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Home which are part of many consumers’ everyday lives. According to estimates, more than 70% of consumers worldwide used a chatbot or virtual assistance for customer support in the past 12 months.

Conversational AI is considered a digital workforce made available 24×7 that can handle questions from customers. Using this technology, customers are engaged immediately without having to wait to connect with a human agent. Some interesting stats indicate that 61% of consumers feel that having Chatbots in customer service is the way of the future and 70% of millennials report positive experiences with Chatbots [Aspect Consumer Experience Index].

Ultimately, customer experience (CX) is improved due to stronger, more effective, and efficient services. In fact, 33% of customers say getting their issue resolved in a single interaction is the most important aspect of customer service [American Express]. Conversational AI can learn languages, accents, and even new vocabulary through deep learning capabilities and captures data that can be used for refining analytics results. These results include user segmentation which is identified by recognizing the users’ needs and preferences. These needs and preferences are based on conversational data, personalized offerings, bot usage metrics, user types, channels used, sessions length etc. These analytical results are now so refined, that 72% of consumers expect advisors to know who they are, what they have purchased and have insights into their previous engagements (Microsoft).