CONVERSATIONAL

Driving Customer Experience Conversational AI Driving Customer Experience

Home in 2015. Manufacturers combined voice search with IoT for applications to control security systems, lighting and home remotely. With a new era of (AI) dawning upon us, it’s an incredible time for customer experience, with humongous Today, whether it's a digital personal assistant on your At the heart of our omnichannel operating ecosystem is the benefits to the customer and ultrafast customer service. smartphone or a on your , idea of instant gratification. With the attention span, less than According to a study by Oracle, nearly 8 out of 10 businesses conversational AI is a trend for digitally empowered consumers. that of a goldfish (8.25 second), customers get real-time have already implemented or are planning to adopt AI as a Most of us use bots quite often -- 55% of us use voice assistant solutions to their challenges or questions from AI-powered bots customer service solution by 2020. technology, for example, on a daily or weekly basis. via a messenger platform like Facebook.

As AI technology matures, forward-thinking enterprises are Early this year, another personal assistant bot, Olly was 2016 has proved that bots are here to stay and they have made plugging in conversational AI in their strategic investment launched, that has similar capabilities as the Echo and Google a bigger impact on customer service in the first half of 2017 too. roadmaps to leverage it for their customer service function. In Home, but has a more advanced personality – that of the user. Gartner predicts that an average person will have more fact, Gartner predicts that “conversational AI-first" will It’s true! This bot observes your behavioral patterns and conversations with bots than with their own spouse! supersede "cloud-first, mobile-first" as the most important, imitates those. So all the science fiction aura that intrigued you high-level imperative for the next 10 years. has now translated into reality. At the recently held F8 developer conference, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg introduced a chatbot application in partnership with Over the last several decades, customer service and customer The main theme of AI, and intelligent assistants have 1800FLOWERS. A consumer could speak to a virtual agent via experience had been all about customers seeking help from become service. Today bots are not just being looked upon as Facebook messenger window and order flowers. The call centers, websites, emails, applications, and so on. personal assistants; brands that want to turbocharge their interesting thing to note here is that the bot will detect However, in the last couple of years, the way we interact with customer experience and engagement are increasingly conversational cues to recommend arrangements that address technology has changed incredibly, and the good old days of adopting NLP-infused chatbots. These offer a conversational customers’ preferences and needs. Clearly, this is a win for mouse-icon-click are now coming to a close. experience between the customer and the brand, bypassing customer service as well as the brand. the tedious path of emailing or dialing up the customer service department. The chatbot uses Natural Language Processing Closer to home, CSS Corp recently launched Yodaa, a (NLP) technology to ask questions or give answers to 'Cotelligent' platform where human and machine intelligence customers and make them feel understood in real time, thereby converge to provide a sophisticated, automated solution. effectively improving the customer assistance process. Yodaa integrates with all customer channels like voice, email, chat and website across devices, giving a consistent customer To the brands, these NLP infused chatbots provide business experience. Yodaa is designed to offer personalized and intelligence about customers’ preferences, opinions, purchase context-driven support, with a human-like interaction. It aims to behavior and human sentiments, in general. With their proven resolve a customer's needs at first interaction by using NLP, AI, efficiency in handling customer questions without human machine learning and deep learning techniques. intervention, it helps brands with huge cost and time savings. With the explosion of smartphone usage in the last decade, it NLP technology infused in chatbots addresses the growing Yodaa has the ability to constantly learn from a customer's can be conjectured that voice search has introduced AI-based needs of digitally empowered consumers with 24*7 assistance. interactions, and build on its ever-growing knowledge base. personal assistance, and has given rise to the meteoric growth Chatbots never sleep and do not keep you waiting for The understands a customer's intent and of bots among consumers. resolution. responds to their queries in real time. Incredibly, Yodaa remembers facts, learns from previous conversations, and can Let’s face it – our machines are learning to talk. Three years access online information by integrating with enterprise after Apple’s Siri made a grand debut, Amazon released its systems. Its ability to troubleshoot, answer complex questions, Echo, a black, cylindrical speaker that was connected to the and engage in interactive dialogue makes it a third-generation cloud and provided information, music, news, weather, and virtual assistant. more, whenever you asked for it. Google then released Google

2 Conversational AI Driving Customer Experience

Home in 2015. Manufacturers combined voice search with IoT for applications to control security systems, lighting and home remotely.

Today, whether it's a digital personal assistant on your At the heart of our omnichannel operating ecosystem is the smartphone or a chatbot on your Facebook messenger, idea of instant gratification. With the attention span, less than conversational AI is a trend for digitally empowered consumers. that of a goldfish (8.25 second), customers get real-time Most of us use bots quite often -- 55% of us use voice assistant solutions to their challenges or questions from AI-powered bots technology, for example, on a daily or weekly basis. via a messenger platform like Facebook.

Early this year, another personal assistant bot, Olly was 2016 has proved that bots are here to stay and they have made launched, that has similar capabilities as the Echo and Google a bigger impact on customer service in the first half of 2017 too. Home, but has a more advanced personality – that of the user. Gartner predicts that an average person will have more It’s true! This bot observes your behavioral patterns and conversations with bots than with their own spouse! imitates those. So all the science fiction aura that intrigued you has now translated into reality. At the recently held F8 developer conference, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg introduced a chatbot application in partnership with The main theme of AI, chatbots and intelligent assistants have 1800FLOWERS. A consumer could speak to a virtual agent via become service. Today bots are not just being looked upon as Facebook messenger window and order flowers. The personal assistants; brands that want to turbocharge their interesting thing to note here is that the bot will detect customer experience and engagement are increasingly conversational cues to recommend arrangements that address adopting NLP-infused chatbots. These offer a conversational customers’ preferences and needs. Clearly, this is a win for experience between the customer and the brand, bypassing customer service as well as the brand. the tedious path of emailing or dialing up the customer service department. The chatbot uses Natural Language Processing Closer to home, CSS Corp recently launched Yodaa, a (NLP) technology to ask questions or give answers to 'Cotelligent' platform where human and machine intelligence customers and make them feel understood in real time, thereby converge to provide a sophisticated, automated solution. effectively improving the customer assistance process. Yodaa integrates with all customer channels like voice, email, chat and website across devices, giving a consistent customer To the brands, these NLP infused chatbots provide business experience. Yodaa is designed to offer personalized and intelligence about customers’ preferences, opinions, purchase context-driven support, with a human-like interaction. It aims to behavior and human sentiments, in general. With their proven resolve a customer's needs at first interaction by using NLP, AI, efficiency in handling customer questions without human machine learning and deep learning techniques. intervention, it helps brands with huge cost and time savings. With the explosion of smartphone usage in the last decade, it NLP technology infused in chatbots addresses the growing Yodaa has the ability to constantly learn from a customer's can be conjectured that voice search has introduced AI-based needs of digitally empowered consumers with 24*7 assistance. interactions, and build on its ever-growing knowledge base. personal assistance, and has given rise to the meteoric growth Chatbots never sleep and do not keep you waiting for The virtual assistant understands a customer's intent and of bots among consumers. resolution. responds to their queries in real time. Incredibly, Yodaa remembers facts, learns from previous conversations, and can Let’s face it – our machines are learning to talk. Three years access online information by integrating with enterprise after Apple’s Siri made a grand debut, Amazon released its systems. Its ability to troubleshoot, answer complex questions, Echo, a black, cylindrical speaker that was connected to the and engage in interactive dialogue makes it a third-generation cloud and provided information, music, news, weather, and virtual assistant. more, whenever you asked for it. Google then released Google

3 Conversational AI Driving Customer Experience

Home in 2015. Manufacturers combined voice search with IoT for applications to control security systems, lighting and home remotely.

Today, whether it's a digital personal assistant on your At the heart of our omnichannel operating ecosystem is the smartphone or a chatbot on your Facebook messenger, idea of instant gratification. With the attention span, less than conversational AI is a trend for digitally empowered consumers. that of a goldfish (8.25 second), customers get real-time Most of us use bots quite often -- 55% of us use voice assistant solutions to their challenges or questions from AI-powered bots technology, for example, on a daily or weekly basis. via a messenger platform like Facebook.

Early this year, another personal assistant bot, Olly was 2016 has proved that bots are here to stay and they have made launched, that has similar capabilities as the Echo and Google a bigger impact on customer service in the first half of 2017 too. Home, but has a more advanced personality – that of the user. Gartner predicts that an average person will have more It’s true! This bot observes your behavioral patterns and conversations with bots than with their own spouse! imitates those. So all the science fiction aura that intrigued you has now translated into reality. At the recently held F8 developer conference, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg introduced a chatbot application in partnership with The main theme of AI, chatbots and intelligent assistants have 1800FLOWERS. A consumer could speak to a virtual agent via become service. Today bots are not just being looked upon as Facebook messenger window and order flowers. The personal assistants; brands that want to turbocharge their interesting thing to note here is that the bot will detect customer experience and engagement are increasingly conversational cues to recommend arrangements that address adopting NLP-infused chatbots. These offer a conversational customers’ preferences and needs. Clearly, this is a win for experience between the customer and the brand, bypassing customer service as well as the brand. the tedious path of emailing or dialing up the customer service department. The chatbot uses Natural Language Processing Closer to home, CSS Corp recently launched Yodaa, a (NLP) technology to ask questions or give answers to 'Cotelligent' platform where human and machine intelligence customers and make them feel understood in real time, thereby converge to provide a sophisticated, automated solution. effectively improving the customer assistance process. Yodaa integrates with all customer channels like voice, email, chat and website across devices, giving a consistent customer To the brands, these NLP infused chatbots provide business experience. Yodaa is designed to offer personalized and intelligence about customers’ preferences, opinions, purchase context-driven support, with a human-like interaction. It aims to behavior and human sentiments, in general. With their proven resolve a customer's needs at first interaction by using NLP, AI, efficiency in handling customer questions without human machine learning and deep learning techniques. intervention, it helps brands with huge cost and time savings. With the explosion of smartphone usage in the last decade, it NLP technology infused in chatbots addresses the growing Yodaa has the ability to constantly learn from a customer's can be conjectured that voice search has introduced AI-based needs of digitally empowered consumers with 24*7 assistance. interactions, and build on its ever-growing knowledge base. personal assistance, and has given rise to the meteoric growth Chatbots never sleep and do not keep you waiting for The virtual assistant understands a customer's intent and of bots among consumers. resolution. responds to their queries in real time. Incredibly, Yodaa remembers facts, learns from previous conversations, and can Let’s face it – our machines are learning to talk. Three years access online information by integrating with enterprise after Apple’s Siri made a grand debut, Amazon released its systems. Its ability to troubleshoot, answer complex questions, Echo, a black, cylindrical speaker that was connected to the and engage in interactive dialogue makes it a third-generation cloud and provided information, music, news, weather, and virtual assistant. more, whenever you asked for it. Google then released Google

4 Conversational AI Driving Customer Experience

While Echo is popularly used for playing music and controlling home devices, Alexa (the default name for the device) can peep into Amazon’s complete product inventory as well as your shopping history. The device even smartly obeys your commands to purchase products online. You can have Alexa take you on a virtual tour of products that might interest you or even help you in reordering the previously purchased items. Chris Messina of Uber recently coined the term “conversational commerce” that he defines as: An interesting aspect of conversational commerce based apps when compared to traditional apps, is the use of verbiage. In “…utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language traditional apps, you commonly see the usage of “buy”, interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or “download”, “install”, and so on. However, in conversational services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the commerce powered by chatbots and AI, you see more social bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context. The net result and humane verbs such as “message”, “invite”, “add” or is that you and I will be talking to brands and companies over “block”. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, , Slack, and elsewhere before year’s end, and will find it normal.”

It’s no secret that millennials prefer silent communication over verbal. is more convenient and time saving than queuing up to get your phone call answered. The convergence of these key trends, such as the spurt in the use of mobile messaging applications, advances in AI and NLP, growing use of wearables and sensors, self-assisted payment model integration into mobile devices, and contextual notifications - have driven the movement of conversational commerce.

Let’s take Amazon Echo for example. The device sold 3M+ units in less than 2 years.

How consumer use Amazon Echo (multiple responses allowed, percentages sum to over 100%)

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0% Information Audio Speaker Control other

5 Conversational AI Driving Customer Experience

While Echo is popularly used for playing music and controlling home devices, Alexa (the default name for the device) can peep into Amazon’s complete product inventory as well as your shopping history. The device even smartly obeys your commands to purchase products online. You can have Alexa take you on a virtual tour of products that might interest you or even help you in reordering the previously purchased items. Chris Messina of Uber recently coined the term “conversational commerce” that he defines as: An interesting aspect of conversational commerce based apps when compared to traditional apps, is the use of verbiage. In “…utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language traditional apps, you commonly see the usage of “buy”, interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or “download”, “install”, and so on. However, in conversational services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the commerce powered by chatbots and AI, you see more social bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context. The net result and humane verbs such as “message”, “invite”, “add” or is that you and I will be talking to brands and companies over “block”. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, and elsewhere before year’s end, and will find it normal.”

It’s no secret that millennials prefer silent communication over • Improved customer experience: AI reaches wider audience verbal. Instant messaging is more convenient and time saving and stores critical data points that companies can leverage than queuing up to get your phone call answered. to personalize the offerings and also the buying experience “For people and machines to work together, they need to be The convergence of these key trends, such as the spurt in the of the digitally empowered customers. AI also helps brands able to interact in a much more natural way, and conversation use of mobile messaging applications, advances in AI and NLP, optimize their product development with improved customer is our go-to way of exchanging information.” - Murray growing use of wearables and sensors, self-assisted payment intelligence, which in turn delivers delightful customer Campbell, IBM Distinguished Researcher and architect of model integration into mobile devices, and contextual experience. With IoT predicted to cover 50 billion connected DeepBlue notifications - have driven the movement of conversational devices by 2020, conversational AI helps customers with Advances in artificial intelligence have led to the emergence of commerce. voice navigation for wearables, smart cars and other sophisticated conversational capabilities and enabled internet-enabled mobile devices. machines in taming one of the most important aspects for Let’s take Amazon Echo for example. The device sold 3M+ intelligent interactions – context. units in less than 2 years. • Reduced human assistance: Until the arrival of AI, we had been largely depending on human efforts to produce goods Though chatbots and virtual assistants can rarely pass as or services of varying quality. And, this used to be a human conversationalists, here are some of the potential time-consuming and labor-intensive affair. With AI business benefits that conversational AI can offer: revolutionizing all walks of business and life, consumers aspire to seamlessly interact with multiple apps rather than •Reduced Cost: A recent BI Intelligence report suggests that multiple layers of real human assistants thereby leading to businesses can cut labor cost by 29% when chatbots and other reduced reliance on human assistance. AI are deployed. Though complete automation is not feasible, automating a percentage of customer success and sales • Augmented productivity: Intelligent virtual assistants can positions can result in significant savings. work safely alongside humans and can easily handle tasks that humans otherwise find difficult or repetitive, thereby increasing the productivity manifold. Conversational AI automates a lot of repetitive tasks and completes those with higher satisfaction. It frees up the workforce to focus on other more important tasks that entail more complex problems.

6 Conversational AI Driving Customer Experience

Customers’ Preferred Method of Communicating with a Business Potential Savings 29% US Annual Salary Savings ($bil)

46% 36% 37% 60% E-MAIL $23 $15 $15 $12

Insurance Sales Financial Services Sales Customer Service 17% Source: Datafrom BI Intelligence, The Chatbots Explainer, 2016 FACE TO FACE

• Improved customer experience: AI reaches wider audience and stores critical data points that companies can leverage 15% to personalize the offerings and also the buying experience WEBSITE “For people and machines to work together, they need to be of the digitally empowered customers. AI also helps brands able to interact in a much more natural way, and conversation optimize their product development with improved customer is our go-to way of exchanging information.” - Murray intelligence, which in turn delivers delightful customer Campbell, IBM Distinguished Researcher and architect of experience. With IoT predicted to cover 50 billion connected DeepBlue devices by 2020, conversational AI helps customers with 12% CONTACT CENTRE Advances in artificial intelligence have led to the emergence of voice navigation for wearables, smart cars and other sophisticated conversational capabilities and enabled internet-enabled mobile devices. machines in taming one of the most important aspects for intelligent interactions – context. • Reduced human assistance: Until the arrival of AI, we had 9% been largely depending on human efforts to produce goods WEBCHAT Though chatbots and virtual assistants can rarely pass as or services of varying quality. And, this used to be a human conversationalists, here are some of the potential time-consuming and labor-intensive affair. With AI business benefits that conversational AI can offer: revolutionizing all walks of business and life, consumers aspire to seamlessly interact with multiple apps rather than 6% •Reduced Cost: A recent BI Intelligence report suggests that multiple layers of real human assistants thereby leading to MOBILE businesses can cut labor cost by 29% when chatbots and other reduced reliance on human assistance. AI are deployed. Though complete automation is not feasible, automating a percentage of customer success and sales • Augmented productivity: Intelligent virtual assistants can 3% positions can result in significant savings. work safely alongside humans and can easily handle tasks SOCIAL MEDIA that humans otherwise find difficult or repetitive, thereby increasing the productivity manifold. Conversational AI automates a lot of repetitive tasks and completes those with 2% higher satisfaction. It frees up the workforce to focus on other LETTER / FAX more important tasks that entail more complex problems. Source: Myclever Agency 2016

7 Conversational AI Driving Customer Experience

Context is critical. AI, therefore, needs to be built with a purpose – a context – to deliver value. AI leverages human intuition rather than replacing it. By combining it with machine learning to reduce human workload, it accelerates opera- tions and creates more measurable results. AI augments human capabilities and helps us do things we could never do on our own, both at work and at home, given the overwhelming scale of data we have today. It not only shapes the way data analytics is done, but also unlocks doors to incredible opportunities for humans in the near future. From virtual personal assistants such as Siri, Google Now, and Cortana to Google's ambitious project of self-driving cars, Amazon’s anticipatory shipping project and Fox's/Yahoo's use of AI to write financial summaries, sports recaps, and fantasy sports reports - AI is everywhere in our day-to-day lives, making it simpler and better.

Sunil Mittal, EVP & CSMO, CSS Corp Sunil is a passionate sales executive with more than 18 years of IT industry experience and spectacular track record of partnering with clients, creating & winning advisor led deals and building teams & businesses. He is an expert in developing new markets, selling new service lines in existing accounts and winning new logos. As the CSMO at CSS Corp, Sunil is responsible for driving business growth focusing on Technology Support Services, Application Services & Infrastructure Management Services.

@ 2017 CSS Corp is a global leader in providing IT Services and Technology Support solutions.The company harnesses the power of automation, analytics and digital technologies to address specific customer engagement needs. The company partners with Fortune 1000 companies to help realize their strategic business outcomes and be future-ready. The company’s team of 5,500 technology professionals across 16 global locations are passionate about helping customers succeed in their businesses. For more information, contact [email protected]

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