How Hybrid AI conversational tools can enhance your sales

Hybrid AI conversational tools influence the performance of any business through its bounce rate. For online businesses, the bounce rate refers to the number of single-page sessions compared to all sessions on the website. For offline businesses such as retail stores, it is measured as the ratio of store visitors who did not make any purchase against the total number of store visitors. A higher bounce rate means lesser sales opportunities for the business. Even though there are several reasons that can result in a high bounce rate, the most prominent one is the unavailability of quick information about the business or its products/services. When a visitor doesn’t get the information they are seeking, chances are high that they would drop out from the visit than spending more time to seek the information. In this context, thoughts of most business owners boil down to a single question;

How can a business serve accurate and quick information to its customers?

Initially, businesses relied on chat options (for online businesses) and sales concierges (for offline stores) to engage with the visitors. But, these solutions were not scalable with the increasing number of visitors.  Then they relied on dialogue pre-designed chatbots which are incapable of delivering responses for most of the queries. These tools are programmed to adhere to specific rules and respond to questions by users. Gradually businesses started using AI chatbots which were comparatively more accurate. However, even the best AI chatbots available today fail to deliver accurate information when the visitor asks complicated questions.

The video below explains how AI-powered hybrid conversational tools helped our HR department to perform better.

Dawn of Hybrid AI Conversational Tools

Hybrid AI is a combination of machine intelligence being continuously improved and validated with human supervision. The entire concept of Hybrid AI revolves around the single fact that human and machine intelligence is not meant to be adversaries but complementary forces that join hands to deal with problems more systematically. In this model of AI, we cannot exactly term the final decisions made by algorithms as autonomous. The system is trained with the assistance of a human to arrive at a decision after any processing activity.

After each iteration of the data, the AI system automatically calculates a confidence score for the decision made. This score is the basis of determining how well the system is guaranteeing an accurate result. A low confidence score indicates that the result produced does not guarantee accuracy and thus the system needs human supervision. After imparting the training, the system is again made to determine autonomous decisions and the confidence score is again calculated. Only when the confidence score is fully satisfactory, will the system be allowed to make standalone decisions.

Simply put, in case of AI chatbots, when interacting with the user, in case of being unable to provide an effective solution, the system would escalate the conversation to a human handler. Moreover, such hybrid AI conversational tools are able to learn from the interaction between the user and the human handler. Over time, this would enable it to have complex conversations, which would otherwise not have been possible. This constant cycle of learning makes it a robust and highly dynamic tool, with myriad applications across sectors. Deployment of hybrid AI conversational tools would result in a win-win situation for the service provider—through major cost savings on manpower—as well as for the visitor by—providing a highly personalized and efficient experience.

The Benefactors

The burgeoning e-commerce sector is expected to be among the major adopters of these systems, allowing for a highly personalized conversation with the user, based on various aspects such as gender, age, ethnicity, and region, while assisting the user with purchasing a product. Hybrid AI conversational tools could also help connect the user to the most compatible sales representative based on match scores (the system will evaluate the outcomes for connecting the user to each salesperson and ultimately connects to the salesperson who has the best result for the particular user). 

The applications of hybrid conversational tools are endless, right from replacing live chats to providing users with a personalized virtual store experience, wherein the chatbot would help you make your purchase similar to how an in-store employee would go about it. Another application area for this technology is in the hotel industry, currently in the midst of raging price war, with online travel agencies walking away with a major share of the pie. Digital concierge is one such solution that can turn the tide in favor of hotel owners, by providing a highly customized customer experience from pre-booking to post-stay. Other potential use cases of hybrid AI includes

• As a conversational tool delivering quick information in business websites
• Digital sales concierges in stores, shopping malls
• Iintelligent KIOSKS at inquiries desk at public places
• As inter-departmental information enabler

Bottom line,

We have only just skimmed the surface of this highly dynamic tool, which promises to put an end to endless wait times to get through to a human customer care agent. While this may sound like the death knell for industries such as call center, it is only a matter of time before these tools find their way across to all sectors. So, next time you are asked to confirm that you are not a robot when visiting a website, you may just be greeted by hybrid AI conversational tools on the other end.