When Big Data is not so big anymore

sasha uritsky

Oct 11, 2014

We are inundated with information. There is so much information around us they coined a special term - Big Data. To emphasize the sheer size of it.

It is, of course, a problem - to deal with a large amount of data. Various solutions have been created to address it efficiently.

At nmodes we developed a semantic technology that accurately filters relevant conversations. We applied it to social networks, particularly Twitter. Twitter is a poster child of Big Data. They have 500 million conversations every day. A staggering number. And yet, we found that for many topics, when they are narrowed down and accurately filtered, there are not that many relevant conversations after all.

No more than 5 people are looking for CRM solutions on an average day on Twitter. Even less - two per day on average - are asking for new web hosting providers explicitly, although many more are complaining about their existing providers (which might or might not suggest they are ready to switch or looking for a new option).

We often have businesses coming to us asking to find relevant conversations and expecting a large number of results. This is what Big Data is supposed to deliver, they assume. Such expectation is likely a product of our ‘keyword search dependency’. Indeed, when we run a keyword search on Twitter, or search engines, or anywhere we get a long list of results. The fact that most of them (up to 98% in many cases) are irrelevant is often lost in the visual illusion of having this long, seemingly endless, list in front of our eyes.

With the quality solutions that accurately deliver only relevant results we experience, for the first time, a situation when there are no longer big lists of random results. Only several relevant ones.

This is so much more efficient. It saves time, increases productivity, clarifies the picture, and makes Big Data manageable.

Time for businesses to embrace the new approach.

Interested in reading more? Check out our other blogs:

Artificial Intelligence Chat Is Evolving Faster Than IVR

Although it doesn’t feel like all that long ago, way back in the 90s one of the most important factors to a call center’s success was the ability to route a customer to the right support agent with the IVR (Interactive Voice Response). Countless hours were spent identifying the most efficient call routing patterns and expert agent capabilities to ensure that your request reached the right person quickly. This technology is still widely used today and there are still teams in the largest companies programming IVR systems to accomplish pretty much the same goal.

As the standard for customer support evolved there have been many attempts to improve the function and the customer experience associated with IVRs to reduce hold times and provide more relevant support faster. Even today some companies will use their IVR system as a way to keep a customer on hold, rather than provide a solution, when agents are inundated with calls.

For those of us who’ve worked in the voice industry for some time, we’ve seen first-hand the attempts to accomplish a customer’s need before reaching an agent. First there was expert agent routing that delivered your call to the agent most qualified to help you. Then came advances in voice recognition, which today has evolved to be a very effective tool to increase containment rates and deflect calls from reaching a live agent. My two favorite examples of the power of voice recognition are Cox Communications and Capital One, two examples of great voice recognition and routing.

Our memory, however, is short. It wasn’t so long ago that we were all pulling our hair out punching digits into the phone or constantly repeating “agent”, “Agent”, “AGENT”, AGENT!!!!!”.

Whether it was a limit of computational power or the sheer cost of developing and implementing advanced call center technology, it took decades for phone systems to be able to front end the customer support process as efficiently as they do today. Thankfully we all survived to see it without boiling over from the hypertension usually associated with calling with a customer service department.

Bad customer experience is definitely not the case with Chat Artificial Intelligence (Chat AI). While we seem to hear about the shortcomings of Chat AI like the disconnected conversations and the robotic like responses, these experiences are usually the product of Chatbots with limited AI functionality or early stage deployments. The increases in both computational power and the massive advancements in machine learning are driving excellent customer experiences that improve over time.

When was the last time you heard of technology actually performing better, on its own, without a ton of additional development work or continuous updates? Well, that’s the case with Artificial Intelligence. Like a person, the more experience it has interacting with customers and information, the better it performs with little need to be manually improved or fine-tuned.

Today, AI Chat can be used to answer a large majority of customer requests and because Artificial Intelligence learns as it is used, customers prefer to interact through AI chat to avoid all of the frustrations commonly associated with calling a contact center agent.

3 ways AI will increase your sales

Many of us get the understanding of artificial intelligence from the film industry. It creates an image of smart, humanized machines that are helpful, efficient and omnipresent. It is true that AI has seen rapid advances in the past several years, to the point that it became an integral part of our everyday life. In real life, however, AI is far away from the level portrayed in sci-fi movies. And yet there are affordable AI tools and solutions that can make a significant impact on your business.

Here are three main reasons why a company, especially if it is a B2C company, should consider integrating AI into their business process.

AI makes your sales process scalable

AI solution dealing with your prospects and customers works 24/7 without sick days, holidays and breaks. It can handle any level of traffic, incoming inquiries and conversations. It does not need to be trained. It does not have personal issues or bad days. It is always polite and uses professional jargon. It is fast.

AI creates better user experience

Some might find it surprising but this is only because they have experienced low quality AI solutions. A professional AI solution makes customer experience better primarily because it delivers the results with a minimum of fuss and maximum efficiency. A good AI eliminates bureaucracy, makes customer experience speedy and seamless, and that’s what consumers are looking for today.

AI offers sustainability

Adding AI to your business model creates long-term sustainability for the business. It allows your business to grow while controlling, or even minimising the costs. More importantly, it ensures that the business remains competitive in providing the level of customer service consumers became accustomed to. Lastly, it creates platform for future technical improvements and integrations which, without a doubt, will be based on Artificial Intelligence components.