We’ve seen it already, every time there’s an advancement in technology, many companies rush into adoption instead of adaptation, this is, acquire or use a technology without really worrying or understanding how it can help their business or whether it will be helpful at all.
Trying to use a tool without understanding it can be both tricky and expensive. Conversational Interfaces are not different. So, how can you figure out which is the most appropriate implementation of a Conversational Interface for your company?
Let’s first establish the two ways in which we can communicate with a computer system via conversation: we can either use text, which is usually called a chatbot, or we can use voice, normally referred to as Voice Assistant.
Chatbots can be supported through messaging applications like Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, a website plugin, and others, while Voice Assistants are available through smart home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home or mobile devices using Siri and apps with Siri enabled features.
The medium does not limit the functionalities as much as it does the user engagement and how that functionality will behave: customers can be adapt to chatbots faster in a particular industry while in another voice assistant may be the way to go but, as far as usages and implementations go, these can vary between devices. Having this in mind let’s approach this from an industry perspective:
Media & entertainment
Content browsing, selection and distribution are the most out of the box opportunities in this industry however this only enhances regular interactions so much. By providing the ability to extend upon the content being delivered the experience can become much richer, from adding capabilities like asking for player statistics when watching a sporting event to placing bets for your team before the kick off.
Retail & eCommerce
Catalogs can be available through either voice or text activated services. It could be considered an improvement over what visual interfaces do for us today, meaning we connect the customer directly to what they are looking for, without needing to go through our whole navigation catalog. In this case we can consider the CUI as a shortcut to the user’s needs.
These experiences don´t need to be limited to the purchase only, customer support and fulfillment notifications also be integrated to deliver an end to end experience.
Financial
Leaving aside that most financial transactions can be simplified using Conversational interfaces, there are other processes which seem interesting to explore like having a 100% technology driver user onboarding. Making user data available and queryable can be a differential feature over other platforms.
Health Care
Patients can now have a more customized service at home when a CUI is employed: it can guide them to take a test for a disease, recommend them to book a doctor’s appointment or even remind them about the care they need to take as well as the time for their medicine.
Keep in mind that, regardless of the industry, CUIs can be used not only to engage customers but also to increase productivity company-wide providing a new tool for task management, information querying and distribution, and, when combined with a potent A.I. automate complex tasks.
This is only a common list of what you can expect a Conversational Interface to do for your customers in your specific industry.
