What Is Conversational AI

sasha uritsky

Dec 30, 2017

Conversational Artificial Intelligence solutions can communicate with people in their natural languages. The interactions happen via speech or text – our most common forms of interaction.

The most popular example of a conversational AI solution is chatbot.

The chatbot popularity began in 2016 with Facebook’s announcement of a developer-friendly platform to build chatbots on Facebook messenger. Soon, chatbots became the buzz of the technological community and spread across various industries. As a next step, toolkits that helped build a bot in five minutes grew popular, companies raced to the market with new bot announcements and the world woke up to a new chatbot-based reality.

A well developed conversational AI chatbot is able to interact on a near-human level. If we think about it, most companies’ customer service and sales centers deal with a core of 6-12 repeating issues. conversational AI software allows companies to develop an intelligent response channel that can cover the most common customer interactions.

Another advantage in using Conversational AI is in the marketing and branding domain. Chatbots allow the companies to stay on their message without veering off course . With AI, the scripts are all written and approved in house. Even when the AI system learns, when the appropriate training techniques are implemented, the system will adhere to the required profrssional verbiage.

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Social Marketing is Simple

In its very essence social marketing is based on one simple foundation - give first, take later.

This concept of giving to the community is hardly possible to overestimate. It defines the way social networks operate and goes even deeper, to the basic principles of social interactions among humans.

In fact it is a much healthier foundation for business than traditional one, based on advertising.

Yet it runs contrary to what many entrepreneurs and business people perceive as a proper marketing approach.

Traditional marketing, such as billboards, radio ads, posters, banners, emails blasts, etc is based on two principles, a) the statistical law of big numbers, aiming to reach out to as large audience as possible while knowing that only a small percent would become interested, b) message of self-promotion and self-advertisment.

Social marketing negates both of these principles.

Social marketing is personal, it operates individually, and in a personalised way. Which makes perfect sense from a common perspective. Would you rather be bombarded by the generic ads that in most cases have nothing to do with your interests and desires, or approached on a one-on-one basis with a chance to discuss your specific needs?

Social marketing is directed towards promoting the interests of others, not yours (or your business). Again it makes sense as we are a social species, we live in societies and rely on communication. The most successful communication strategy is the one that takes care of the needs of your communication partner.

And so, opposing the traditional marketing approach, social marketing is based on the idea of giving to the community. Which makes it more efficient than traditional marketing, if measured against the effort applied. In other words, taken 100 random prospects, we are more likely to convert them into customers if using social marketing than traditional marketing.

But is it scalable?

(to be continued)

Travel Chatbots Update

These are early days for travel bots. They mostly specialize in customer service, customer information and sometimes online booking. Advanced AI technology is good and getting better by the day, but it does not replace a person. And that's unlikely to change for a while.

In order to create a positive and enjoyable experience it is imperative to have a clear understanding of what bots do well and what they don’t.

One area where they have clear advantage over humans is response speed. Using bots makes your travel business scalable. Bot can handle mutlple user conversations simultaneously and replies instantly.

The part of the bot technology that needs significant improvement is understanding of the meaning of what customer said. The solution is to take the user off the bot when this stage of the converastion is reached. One of the popular techniques is to redirect the user from bot to the website when the questions get complicated. The majority of users are at ease with website navigation where they find themselves in the familiar environment.

This approach allows to utilize the scalability of the chatbot while maintaining the high level of customer service.