Automating conversations seems a no-brainer if you want to stay competitive. Your customers have high expectations, so you spend significant resources on customer support. Automating a high percentage of those conversations can significantly reduce costs. And the more conversations you automate, the greater your savings over time. Right?
Every company is unique
What conversations to automate is different for every company. You need to understand where you can best deploy them, which conversations are eligible for automations, and what level of adoption you’re aiming for.
It means you have to meet your customers where they are. You might want to start with a single-channel deployment that gives you the highest volumes. Next to that, you need to have a thorough understanding of what your customers are asking for – what are their underlying wants and needs? If you have no data on this, you first need to start collecting that data or talk to the people that communicate directly with your customers. Lastly, you’ll need to calculate how much adoption you need before you make a real impact with your AI Assistant, and of course, lay out an actionable plan on how to achieve those goals.
A strong business case is no guarantee
Organizations are racing to leverage conversational AI technology, yet some see better results than others. Even some who started with a strong business case have failed to deliver. So, what’s happening?
There are many causes. Building AI Assistants is not easy. Over the years, CDI Services has worked with hundreds of organizations. With big and small teams. In corporate-heavy and less corporate environments. What we learned is that one of the key predictors of success is a multidisciplinary team.
Your products and services are only as good as the people. And due to the highly innovative (and complex) nature of the product you are building, you need people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets who learn fast and are highly adaptable.
Several other key predictors for success that we observed:
- Talent development. Top performing companies nurture talent through training and coaching programs, giving their employees the opportunity to develop themselves and become experts at what they do.
- Dedicated workflows. Successful conversational AI operations have dedicated workflows and well documented processes. It enables teams to efficiently design, implement and maintain conversations and mitigates the risk of losing knowledge in case of employee turnover.
- Broad support. Great conversational teams benefit from broad support and alignment between departments. A culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration is key. A cross-functional organizational structure ensures conversational teams aren’t siloed off – rather, they share common goals across departments and are well-integrated into the organization.
The value of an outside perspective
There are a few questions that you could ask yourself as a conversation designer, AI trainer, team lead, or manager:
- Do we foster an innovative and collaborative work environment?
- Do our conversational products leverage the power of human conversation?
- Are our departments aligned and is there enough support amongst stakeholders?
- Are we adequately measuring business performance and ROI?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, chances are you are not seeing as much value as you anticipated. Chances are you are not delivering the experiences customers want and, possibly, leaving money on the table.
An outside perspective can help. CDI Services has had the unique opportunity to work with organizations in virtually every industry. We have seen it all before. We can help you build your team, upskill you people, set your organization up for success, or consult on how to best measure and track the performance of your AI Assistant.
Feel free to reach out and get in touch with one of our experts. We’re always happy to share our thoughts and take a look at your specific situation.
