Abstract
Understanding the pain points in the conversational AI ecosystem and overcoming the chasm leading to contact center modernization.
Rise of chatbots
The concept of chatbots dates back to the 1950s when Alan Turing first proposed the idea to label a system as sentient if it could act, react and interact like a sentient being. The advent of messaging apps and improvement in technology led to chatbots becoming more robust and efficient.
Post 2015, chatbots evolved from a niche technology piece to key technological capability that every business wanted to try. Many chatbots were being rolled out and shut down during between 2015 and 2018, and by 2019, they had already secured a place in major communication channels such as web chat, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Facebook messenger. It is estimated that in 2020 that value of chatbot marked was 17.17 billion USD, which will reach 102.30 billion USD by 2026.
A key chatbot that was developed during the initial days of COVID-19 was the Government of India’s MyGov Saathi (Meaning, companion, in Hindi) was built to cater to a population of 1.3 billion. This chatbot can handle up to 300,000 users a day and 20,000 concurrent users per minute. It is evident that chatbots were one of the ‘frontline’ workers in the Covid-19 pandemic with a substantial impact.
When the pandemic struck, governments around world and organizations such as WHO and CDC suddenly felt an urgent need to roll out virtual assistants, which could help curb the spread of misinformation and provide an empathetic response to users on behalf of a human.
The growth in the chatbot market has left people wanting for more. Now, chatbots are not being treated as an automated system (IVR for example). Rather, they have transitioned into the role of a partner, a pseudo-human, who provide a similar experience as talking to a human being.
The Taxing Triad
The advent of chatbots paved the way for their incorporation into different channels and platforms and henceforth, their exposure to end-customers. Chatbots are a key component in the conversational IVR ecosystem. According to a Gartner report, 40% of chatbots/virtual assistants which were built in 2018 would have been abandoned in 2020.
Why did this happen? What are the problems that lead to renunciation of a chatbot/ conversational IVR?
When looked at through the eyes of a customer / IT service leader, the problems that the current conversational IVR industry face, can be attributed into three broad categories – Cost, Capability and Experience. Let us look at these in detail.
Cost
Any system’s development and maintenance incur costs. The customer / IT service desk is no exception to this. The recurring cost a service desk incurs can be either due to many agents needed to cater to people; a Gartner report says that on an average a cost per call around $8.0; or it can be due to longer release cycles of conversational IVR.
Capability
Capability is an important aspect of the service desk. Enabling the conversational IVR/voice bot to perform multiple functions is the key aspect to success. If customers are not getting what they expect and are regularly redirected to an agent, they would gradually start avoiding it and would like to jump to an agent directly. To avoid this, a periodic (and preferably in short span) feature/capability addition must be made to voice bot.
This, however, is not the end. The customer/IT service desk leader must take into account that every capability addition to the voice bot requires a certain degree of research and development. This leads to longer release cycles and not only increases the costs, but also impacts the user expectations.
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