Many of us today have had the opportunity to interact with a speech bot. Whether it's about checking up on our bank accounts, or resolving an issue with our IT provider, it is not uncommon to be directed to an automated voice on the other end of the telephone.

Depending on how 'intelligent' the bot is, we either walk away from the interaction happy that our problem has been quickly and efficiently resolved, or frustrated about being led around in circles. Speech bot technology has come a long way and is increasingly helping customers in their everyday lives, experts at the DigiTrans 2017 forum said on Wednesday.

Citing the results of a Gartner study, Saad Khan, partner and co-founder of Digismartek Group, said that by 2020, customers will manage 85 per cent of their relationship with a company without interacting with a single human. Messaging apps, he noted, have even surpassed social media networks, and that businesses have a better chance of reaching their customers via messaging apps.

Michal Kawulak, consulting director at Comarch, said that many of us have been in a situation where we have been frustrated by a lack of human attendants and personnel. This normally happens at public locations such as airports.

"There has been a fair bit of criticism about automation taking over certain jobs and putting people out of employment, but you have to realise that automation has also greatly helped us," he said. "Flyers that used to complain about long queues at airport check-in counters, now have systems in place where their wait times are significantly reduced due to automatic counters."

Kawulak also pointed to predictive technologies that are being used by companies such as Google. And in Dubai, "the police force have their very own robot cop, so the future of such technologies looks very bright".

When it comes to automation and AI, the question is not if, but how, he said. "AI is still in its infancy, but you can be certain that it will have a larger role to play in the near future, especially since it has the power to boost consumer satisfaction, and improve customer efficiencies."

Chris Lord, global head of digital experience at HGS United Kingdom, also revealed that digital interactions account for over 42 per cent of all interactions taking place in contact centres. "Automation is revolutionising the next chapter," he said. "Anything that is digital can be automated. But you have to remember that digital transformation is not about the technology; it's all about the business impact and your customer."

So, how do we adopt automation? The good news is that businesses are already halfway there.

"If you look at the model in terms of levels, then notification and alerts were level one, in how businesses reached their customers. Level two involved two-way messaging, and level three follows with native social channel transformational user experience.

Speech bots, he listed, come in at level five, and the adoption of such technology is "exploding."

The next level involves avatars and personas that put a face and image to the voice that customers hear. This will help customers feel more comfortable with the technology. The last level involves constant learning to create a more humanistic AI, that will make less mistakes and constantly improves the quality of interaction. -rohma@khaleejtimes.com

Source: Khaleej Times