Conversational AI – The Secret Weapon Enterprise & Government Agencies Are Using That Isn’t Such A Secret Anymore

Enterprises and government agencies are always trying to out-pace the support and communication demands of their customers and citizens. Senior leaders are chasing a seemingly impossible solution to reach their audience with new ways to improve customer satisfaction levels, while delivering much needed relief for staffing levels that are already stretched thin, and save on budget expenditures.

Organizations across industries are finding that a rapidly emerging technology, Conversational AI, offers a modernized approach to handling sales inquiries, support interactions, and more. According to research from BlueWeave Consulting, demand for conversational AI will grow to a whopping $29B by 2028 due to these impressive benefits.

So, What Is Conversational AI?

Conversational AI is the technology behind automated messaging and speech-enabled applications that offer human-like interactions between computers and people. Conversational AI allows sophisticated communication by recognizing speech and text, understanding intent, deciphering different languages, and responding in a way that mimics human conversation.

Why everyone isn’t running to adopt Conversational AI technology in their communications

Many government agencies and enterprise-level companies are slow to augment their contact centers, websites, and other informational outlets with automation because of the time, cost, and complexity traditionally associated with IT projects that affect their numerous communications channels.

Take Bank of America's Erica® chatbot as an example. Launched in 2018, Bank of America stated that Erica surpassed 10 million users in just 18 months. An impressive number of users, however, the costs associated with creating and marketing the chatbot were said to be somewhere around $30 million; taking more than 2 years to create, and involving more than 100 staffers.

Game Changer: Making It Easy to Leverage Conversational AI Without Hiring An IT Pro

Three Northern California high schools are using Conversational AI to bring their student-run media outlets to the front of the class.

These media outlets are accelerating user engagement, increasing accessibility, and providing information quickly and easily.

Students and local residents can use voice assistants, including Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, or voice apps on their phones to find answers to questions about the school's latest articles and news. 

               > 3 min video case study

The information provided through the voice assistants is powered by content that often already exists, including FAQs and pre-existing internal documents, and is easily uploaded to create user-facing content. This is all done without any required IT or technical support using Zammo’s simple interface. Students, teachers, truly anyone is able to accelerate user engagement without hiring voice developers or investing in siloed, platform-specific software application development projects.

Within a short period of time working with Zammo’s platform and their support team, high school students were able to deploy the solution and see almost immediate relief from their routine inquiries they received on a daily basis in a surprisingly short period of time.

The Evolution of Conversational AI In Companies And Agencies Like Yours

Since British computer scientis Alan Turing asked the question, “Can computers think?”, computer science had developed the use of artificial intelligence (AI) that can naturally interact with humans, and increasingly ‘think’ like us. Maryville University points out that computer scientists are the perfect problem solvers to advance the technology. So why not turn their focus on advancement of the use of AI to be able to engage with certain problems and suggest innovative solutions to meet our growing needs, right?

The long and complicated history of this technology started when Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed Eliza, the world’s first chatbot, in the 1960s. Although primitive compared to today’s chatbots, his bot was able to give human-like responses when spoken to. Since then, conversational AI has undergone significant advances with increasing interest and investments from giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google in the past several years. Today’s experts have both the foundational and specialized knowledge needed to give conversational AI its remarkable functionality, natural humanlike interaction, and flexible application across industries. If you love being able to ‘ask Alexa’, the efficiency and ease of use of website chatbots, and the convenience and speed of contact center IVR systems, you have these experts to thank.

The Traditional Drawbacks & Challenges Of Conversational AI Solutions

Building and launching an AI solution, even on platforms that offer ‘DIY’ options, can pose significant challenges. Often times, communication pros like your CIO or CMO can’t collaborate during the process. This leaves the IT Pro’s to develop the conversation workflows, resulting in unnatural sounding dialog or conversation paths that deliver inconclusive results. Additional challenges included:

• Faster Cycle Times - Conversational AI workflows taking months to years to build and deploy, and taking considerable financial resources to see them through to completion.
• Multi-Channel Deployment - Publishing meant deploying conversational content to each channel individually versus the available one-click multi-channel deployment available in platforms like Zammo.ai.
• Flexible Integrations - Highly manual integration with limited capabilities; typically requiring service contracts with IT Pro’s that could build out integrations on your behalf.

The Secret Weapon: The Software Platform To Help Your Team Leverage Conversational AI

• Streamlined setup - Our solution removes the hassle of training and deploying conversational AI by using an intuitive, no-code platform to launch chatbots for your website, IVR system, or voice assistants. Our team has done all the coding for you, so you don’t have to. Simply feed your existing Q&A forms or other pertinent documents into the Zammo platform, test it with our simulator, and publish it!
• Enhanced customer experience - With LivePerson reporting that 83% of consumers worldwide now prefer the use of conversational AI, you’ll be able to reach and appeal to more customers, as well as increase accessibility as noted in our post ‘Voice AI Breaks Down Barriers to Job Application’. Zammo goes a step further by analyzing data from customer interactions on its unified analytics dashboard. With it, you can customize your AI to respond in multi-turn conversations, and even suggest products and guide customers throughout the buying journey. Zammo’s analytics dashboard can help organizations to understand exactly what information their customers are interested in and, thus, tailor content to give customers exactly what they need.
• Optimal ROI - All these features can only benefit your business. With advanced conversational AI tools guiding customers, more visitors will come to your site and other channels become leads — leads that are more likely to translate to sales. Our no-code platform also means any business user can have their conversational AI project running in weeks, not years, with savings of up to 96% to train and deploy these tools. This makes Zammo perfect for businesses looking to get the most ROI.

Click here to see Zammo in action.

Eager to learn more? Check out our videos showcasing how Zammo’s no-code platform is revolutionizing business for enterprises and government agencies.