The irresistible emergence of natural language IVRs
Oct. 29, 2021
Thanks to innovations in voice recognition and natural language understanding, voice assistants are gradually replacing the Dual Tone Multi Frequency keypad system, and dusting off IVRs. Whereas DTMF-based IVR systems are becoming increasingly limited in their functionality, natural language-based IVR systems exploit the first moments of the conversation to quickly identify the reason for the customer's call. The stakes are high: by providing a better understanding of the customer and directing him or her to a competent advisor, call waiting times and abandonment rates are greatly reduced, and the customer experience is made more fluid.
Conversational artificial intelligence at the service of customer relations
The last thirty years have seen conversational artificial intelligence tools improve dramatically, thanks to a combination of factors. The introduction of fixed and mobile networks enabling real-time exchanges, the increase in computing power and storage capacity, combined with the creation of labelled corpora, all explain the explosion of voice assistants and conversational agents, which are now ubiquitous in our daily interactions.
The contribution of artificial intelligence is at the heart of the revolution represented by the new natural language IVRs. Their performance is based on a complete technological foundation:
ASR, Automatic Speech Recognition, which analyzes the human voice and transcribes it into machine-readable text via a STT (Speech-To-Text) module;
NLP (Natural Language Processing) and NLU (Natural Language Understanding), which enable the understanding of natural language via the recognition and extraction of intentions and entities, and the contextualization of exchanges;
A dialog manager, which, when coupled with natural language understanding, builds scenarios according to the different responses given by the user;
NLG (Natural Language Generation), and TTS (Text-To-Speech), which can transform text phrases into phonemes and combine them to generate natural language, using a wide catalog of different voices and intonations.
The state of development reached by these technologies favors the deployment of smarter, more efficient applications, capable of routing callers to the right destination in record time. Let's decipher the advantages of these personal voice assistants!
The development of natural language IVR: a real technological leap forward...
Thanks to natural language, users can easily interact using their own words , without being limited by a list of predefined responses. As for IVRs, they are able to better understand human language and route the caller to the appropriate agent. And the facts are in:
A greatly improved first-call resolution rate: by identifying the caller's reason for calling, an appropriate agent takes over directly, and call misrouting is greatly reduced;
Significantly lower abandonment and callback rates than with DTMF IVR: callers actively interact with a Callbot. They feel helped and understood, and don't have to wait endlessly for pre-recorded options that don't correspond to their needs;
A rising rate of self-care call handling (without the intervention of a telephonist).
These elements have two major impacts:
An optimized customer experience: by fostering a better understanding of the customer and a better final orientation, the customer journey is perfected from end to end.
Financial and operational gains for companies, thanks to a significant reduction in the cost of handling telephone customer requests
Thus,conversational AI promises to improve working conditions for call center agents, generate significant gains for companies, and positively transform the customer experience. Nevertheless, the technology is not capable of responding to all customer requests...
... but no substitute for human contact!
Let's be clear: a conversational assistant is not designed to replace telephone advisors. Instead, it qualifies the call upstream, so that the agent can refocus on tasks with human added value. In this way, the agent acts as a true switchboard operator, able to adapt to different customer profiles to ensure simplified contact. Human contact remains a crucial element in a customer's relationship with a company, and is often the most privileged aspect of exchanges. According to a study conducted by the AFRC*, "the use of virtual assistants is appreciated for their speed, cost savings and ease of use, while the human touch remains central to the relationship, the personalization of the relationship and trust."
Indeed, as impressive as AI's capabilities are, it is still far from being perfectly autonomous. Its real purpose is to support agents and relieve them of repetitive, low-value-added tasks, allowing them to focus on the human aspects of the relationship. Routing and responding to customer requests over the phone using conversational assistants is no longer a myth, it's now an operational reality!
ViaSpeech, towards enhanced customer relations
ViaDialog's commitment to putting conversational AI at the service of customer relations is reflected in the development of ViaSpeech.
ViaSpeech offers a complete solution for automating the natural language customer journey, with tools for creating voicebots, callbots and assistants that can be integrated into your voice servers. For more information, our teams are available to advise and support you at every stage of your projects!
*ARFC Barometer, INFOGRAPHY "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VS HUMAN: WHAT FUTURE FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONS?"
