DTWS: How far have chatbots come and how far do they have to go?
AI-based customer services such as chatbots have developed and become more prevalent. A panel of industry leaders in the customer experience space explored just how much.
30 Oct 2020
DTWS: How far have chatbots come and how far do they have to go?
Jerry Smith of the Ogilvy Group* moderated a panel at TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series as a part of the 'Humanizing the digital experience' session, which was sponsored by Oracle and came under the Forum's Customer Experience & Trust theme. The group came together virtually to discuss trust, AI, curiosity and next-level chatbots on October 28. Watch the session on demand here.
Businesses want to improve their NPS scores and levels of customer satisfaction as part of their customer experience (CX) strategies, said Smith. A key component of this is reducing the time and effort taken to resolve customers’ issues. “This area is seeing some breakthrough in innovation, especially in chatbots and the use of AI,” Smith continued, “So let's see how well this is working and if these improvements are really helping with consumer trust.”
Akemi Tsunagawa, Founder and CEO of chatbot start-up Bespoke, started with the hotel industry as an example, explaining that back in 2015 hotels in Japan were wary of using chatbots. “Then things evolved, very, very quickly,” she said because until Covid-19 hit, the number of tourists visiting Japan had tripled over the previous seven years.
On one occasion when an English-speaking hotel guest couldn’t communicate to staff that her son was choking she kept messaging “Emergency 911” to the chatbot, which a human operator picked up and quickly contacted hotel staff to get help. “That was [the] best example of how we handled customer experience – we were able to save at least one human [life],” she said.
Tsunagawa’s examples didn’t end there. In September a typhoon spurred the Japanese government to use Bespoke’s services to help non-Japanese speaking tourists to reach Kansai airport, as there was very little support or information available in other languages.
Earlier in the year, Japanese authorities struggled with huge spikes in enquiries which started with the much-publicized situation of almost 4,000 people being quarantined on a cruise ship at Yokohama in January. She said, “All these tourists started asking about where to buy face masks, then in February [the] train [situation] changed very quickly so everyone started asking about travel restrictions and if they can enter the country, coming from certain places.
“In March, things got very crazy because [people weren’t aware they couldn’t visit the hospital emergency room],” she continued. The problem was that people didn’t understand they should call health authorities to be tested before going to the hospital. “What we do is more than just automation, we help detect trends, and then report information back to the government,” Tsunagawa said.
The pandemic has created challenges but also enabled businesses to engage better with their customers using emerging technologies. “If one [positive] thing has come out of it for the CTOs, is that the adoption of technology has been increased,” noted Rakesh Ajbani, Senior General Manager, Digital Customer Experience & Omnichannel, Dialog Axiata. His company launched chatbots via Whatsapp during the pandemic because it is customers’ preferred channel to communicate with the operator.
Mohamed Oubbati, Chapter Head of Intelligent Customer Experience at Degussa Bank, stressed that a chatbot providing a predefined answer to a predefined question is not enough for customers now. He said, “They…won’t want to spend too much time talking to a bot. They want to be served now and quickly.
Ajbani agreed, adding that companies must keep the long-term goals in focus with the customer at the center. “You need to know what your customer journey is…and then you architect your way [there] accordingly. Do you want to have something that just gets answered by a bot? Do you want agent support with it? What are the channels that you would want to get into? There's Facebook Messenger, there's Alexa, there's Google,” he pointed out.
He continued that there is the language aspect that businesses need to factor in, which depends on where they are in the world, and which languages are preferred locally. He acknowledged that other than in English, chatbots generally have still not “hit the mark”. This is because English is so widely spoken it attracts the most investment.
Ajbani concluded, “We need to be cognizant of that and if that means being more pragmatic and going with a menu-based structure when you're answering on a chatbot, then so be it. But at least you know [it] will help.”
* Jerry Smith is Executive Partner, COO Asia, The Ogilvy Group, and Principal Consultant, Digital Transformation at Ogilvy Consulting
You can watch the full session on-demand now. Watch the rest of Digital Transformation World Series content live and on-demand now too! Not registered for DTWS yet? There’s still time. Join 12,000 of your peers online through November 12. CSPs receive complimentary passes. Sign up here.
Businesses want to improve their NPS scores and levels of customer satisfaction as part of their customer experience (CX) strategies, said Smith. A key component of this is reducing the time and effort taken to resolve customers’ issues. “This area is seeing some breakthrough in innovation, especially in chatbots and the use of AI,” Smith continued, “So let's see how well this is working and if these improvements are really helping with consumer trust.”
Extreme circumstances
Akemi Tsunagawa, Founder and CEO of chatbot start-up Bespoke, started with the hotel industry as an example, explaining that back in 2015 hotels in Japan were wary of using chatbots. “Then things evolved, very, very quickly,” she said because until Covid-19 hit, the number of tourists visiting Japan had tripled over the previous seven years.
“Most hotels were struggling to recruit talent who speak English, Chinese and all these different languages for tourists who were everywhere. The only option they had was automation,” Tsunagawa continued.
On one occasion when an English-speaking hotel guest couldn’t communicate to staff that her son was choking she kept messaging “Emergency 911” to the chatbot, which a human operator picked up and quickly contacted hotel staff to get help. “That was [the] best example of how we handled customer experience – we were able to save at least one human [life],” she said.
Tsunagawa’s examples didn’t end there. In September a typhoon spurred the Japanese government to use Bespoke’s services to help non-Japanese speaking tourists to reach Kansai airport, as there was very little support or information available in other languages.
Earlier in the year, Japanese authorities struggled with huge spikes in enquiries which started with the much-publicized situation of almost 4,000 people being quarantined on a cruise ship at Yokohama in January. She said, “All these tourists started asking about where to buy face masks, then in February [the] train [situation] changed very quickly so everyone started asking about travel restrictions and if they can enter the country, coming from certain places.
“In March, things got very crazy because [people weren’t aware they couldn’t visit the hospital emergency room],” she continued. The problem was that people didn’t understand they should call health authorities to be tested before going to the hospital. “What we do is more than just automation, we help detect trends, and then report information back to the government,” Tsunagawa said.
Service innovation in adversity
The pandemic has created challenges but also enabled businesses to engage better with their customers using emerging technologies. “If one [positive] thing has come out of it for the CTOs, is that the adoption of technology has been increased,” noted Rakesh Ajbani, Senior General Manager, Digital Customer Experience & Omnichannel, Dialog Axiata. His company launched chatbots via Whatsapp during the pandemic because it is customers’ preferred channel to communicate with the operator.
Before the crisis, the company averaged about 1,000 conversations a day; during the pandemic, it rose to 20,000. “[The chatbot] was relieving a lot of the pressure that was going into the contact center, or [from] humans going into the stores to get issues resolved,” he said.
Ajbani added that the company was automating upwards of 70-75% of all the transactions that came through those chatbot conversations, performing far better than the voice channels or any of the other traditional interactive voice response (IVR) technologies.
Moving forward with chatbots and AI
Mohamed Oubbati, Chapter Head of Intelligent Customer Experience at Degussa Bank, stressed that a chatbot providing a predefined answer to a predefined question is not enough for customers now. He said, “They…won’t want to spend too much time talking to a bot. They want to be served now and quickly.
“That's why that's why we have to move to the next level of AI bots, and these bots have to understand the customer needs, and recognize by themselves, automatically, their problems, and then select a solution for them.” He added that the bots’ responses and solutions must be as immediate as possible because any lag creates great frustration for customers.
Ajbani agreed, adding that companies must keep the long-term goals in focus with the customer at the center. “You need to know what your customer journey is…and then you architect your way [there] accordingly. Do you want to have something that just gets answered by a bot? Do you want agent support with it? What are the channels that you would want to get into? There's Facebook Messenger, there's Alexa, there's Google,” he pointed out.
He continued that there is the language aspect that businesses need to factor in, which depends on where they are in the world, and which languages are preferred locally. He acknowledged that other than in English, chatbots generally have still not “hit the mark”. This is because English is so widely spoken it attracts the most investment.
Ajbani concluded, “We need to be cognizant of that and if that means being more pragmatic and going with a menu-based structure when you're answering on a chatbot, then so be it. But at least you know [it] will help.”
* Jerry Smith is Executive Partner, COO Asia, The Ogilvy Group, and Principal Consultant, Digital Transformation at Ogilvy Consulting
You can watch the full session on-demand now. Watch the rest of Digital Transformation World Series content live and on-demand now too! Not registered for DTWS yet? There’s still time. Join 12,000 of your peers online through November 12. CSPs receive complimentary passes. Sign up here.
