Customer engagement

20
Sep
Featured Articles  ·  Main Display  ·  Main Posts  ·  Talkbot Basics  ·  Voice AI Technology
How Voice AI is Rapidly Driving Customer Growth

As digital transformation reshapes industries, companies are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to reimage their business operations. Among various AI technologies, voice AI-powered omnichannel engagement solution stands out as a powerful tool, as it enables businesses to automate huge amount of phone conversations while delivering hyper-personalized communication based on customer reactions. Today’s customers prefer this kind of direct human connection to address their queries and concerns in real time. In this article, we’ll delve into how Voice AI, particularly WIZ.AI’s TalkGPT, is revolutionizing customer engagement, leading to rapid customer growth for businesses.

The power of voice AI for customer growth

Nothing beats a human voice conversation when it comes to engaging customers and driving growth. Telemarketing has been a classic yet popular marketing choices for many busienesses. It delivers instant interactivity and feedback that emails, ads, messages, or website visits simply can’t match. Customers tend to give phone conversations their full attention. They listen to brands’ offerings, ask questions, and provide valuable intent signals, allowing for personalized follow-ups. It’s these real-time insights into customer needs that enable impactful conversations and drive greater customer growth.

Voice AI solutions can mimic this kind of natural and real-time human interaction well. Utilizing Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Text to Speech (TTS), voice bots can really understand how people talk and stimulate human-like interactions based on customer reactions. They respond appropriately to questions and objections, capturing key insights and identifying high value leads for human agents to follow up. More importantly, voice AI allows companies to engage audiences on a massive scale, i.e. millions of calls in a few hours. The bots can work around the clock to spread out time-sensitive promotional offers and filter high-potential leads.

This perfect balance of automation and personalization empowers businesses to scale their outreach and create human connections that is critical for gaining trust and buy-in.

Introducing TalkGPT: a game changer for customer engagement

TalkGPT is a self-service generative AI-powered talkbot by WIZ.AI. It is a game-changer in proactive outbound customer engagement. With zero set-up cost and quick deployment, businesses can build and launch customized Talkbot campaigns that provide human-like and automated phone conversations at scale, in just a few minutes.

Tired of relying on professional support for every script tweak? With TalkGPT, you are in complete control. Quickly tailor conversations to your branded voices and optimize results, no code or AI experience needed. Such rapid adaptability is crucial in situations that require constant iterations in marketing messages or during A/B testings to identify the most effective approach.

High scalablity with human touch

The power of TalkGPT: real-life use cases

TalkGPT provides conversation templates based on known best practices. Businesses can leverage these handy templates and quickly draft campaign messages. Companies can also add a FAQs list. With the list added, TalkGPT can smartly pull answers from FAQs during live conversations, when asked relevant questions.

Based on our conversations with clients, we found TalkGPT is particularly effective in two main scenarios: running promotional campaigns and filtering leads.

Scalable promotion campaigns

Capitalizing on flash sales and limited-time offers is key for boosting conversions. But ensuring your time-sensitive promotions reach customers quickly at scale remains a challenge. TalkGPT delivers targeted promotional messages on scale(up to 1 million in an hour), based on purchase history and CRM data. Real-time intent collection allows for tailored follow-ups to interested prospects.

The bot also handles hesitant customers well. By probing why these people are undecided, TalkGPT uncovers key insights to further define them with a “neutral” or “not interested” tag. The insights can be leveraged to refine future campaign targeting and messaging.

Conversation script between a TalkGPT bot and a human customer in more detail. The car insurance company also added FAQs for the bot to handle customer queries.

Lead filtering

TalkGPT can be a powerful ally for human agents when selling high-value products such as property or insurance. By making initial calls and asking qualification questions, TalkGPT can identify high-value customers and pass them to human agents for follow-up via calls or WhatsApp.

Overwhelmed by too many leads? TalkGPT provides fast, intelligent lead filtering to focus on what matters. With advanced natural language capabilities, our bots conduct personalized conversations to qualify prospects in real-time. They can engage up to 1 million leads in an hour, capturing key details like budget and transaction intent to instantly categorize hot, warm and cold leads. This takes the manual grunt work out of lead analysis while reactivating warm leads. With voice AI handling initial outreach, human agents can follow up on qualified, sales-ready leads.

Language support and data analytics

TalkGPT offers multilingual support, including English, Bahasa, Taglish, Thai, Australian English and more to come, making it a versatile tool for local enterprises as well as businesses operating in multilingual markets.

The product isn’t just a communication tool; it’s also a data powerhouse. It offers insights into call data, customer behaviors and intentions. Businesses can find out insights such as how many people picked up the calls, how many showed interest, and when customers are most available for calls.

Elevate TalkGPT’s outreach impact on WhatsApp

Seamlessly blending AI conversational ability with instant messaging, TalkGPT’s integration with WhatsApp provides businesses with an omnichannel solution to engage and convert modern customers. Here are a few ways businesses can integrate TalkGPT with WhatsApp to offer nuanced, personalized interactions on a large scale.

Trackable campaigns for maximizing conversions

TalkGPT calls allow interactive introduction of brand offerings, such as membership benefits. WhatsApp messaging then delivers the direct membership registration link. When a potential customer clicks the link to register, this action will be calculated as a successful conversion. This end-to-end experience creates a seamless journey for customers, from initial awareness to final conversion, thereby optimizing campaign performance.

On-demand details via WhatsApp

For complex products like credit cards and investment plans, TalkGPT provides a consultative overview over phone calls. Customers can then request full details sent via WhatsApp for later review. This caters to different consumers’ preferences while capturing every potential lead.

Automated information collection

Customers can ask queries during a TalkGPT call. Subsequent follow-up will then continue on WhatsApp. Questions and responses on WhatsApp are automatically compiled into an organized sheet, ready for businesses to review.

Act now for our time-limited offer

You’ve seen the power of our voice AI-powered omnichannel engagement solution to transform customer engagement. Starting today through September 30th, we’re providing 500 minutes of FREE calls plus a no-obligation free trial of our full service!

Don’t wait – this unprecedented offer does not last long. Click here to register immediately and unlock voice AI capabilities that will revolutionize your businesses.


29
Mar
Talkbot Basics  ·  Voice AI Technology
How to choose the right conversational AI solution for your business
Jennifer Zhang

Jennifer Zhang

CEO & Co-Founder

As businesses strive to improve customer experiences and streamline their operations, many are looking towards artificial intelligence (AI), specifically conversational AI solutions. Because conversational AI leverages natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and voice recognition technologies, it’s especially powerful for companies that want to adopt proactive customer service. But even for typical customer service calls, advanced voice AI technology can be a gamechanger. Voice AI bots can provide human-like interactions, helping businesses scale operations exponentially.

But not all conversational AI solutions are created equal. Different features and factors can define the success of your AI adoption. Let’s look at these in two parts – information processing and workflow integration.

Start with language understanding and dialogue

The fundamental features that can make or break a voice AI solution is how the machine processes and responds to information, which in this case, is spoken language. There are multiple factors to look into here, which are listed below.

Natural Language Understanding

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) enables machines to process and comprehend human language and respond appropriately. Without NLU, machine-powered conversations would be limited to predefined answers, almost like recordings made for interactive voice response (IVR). NLU enables conversational AI solutions to accurately interpret the intent behind customer requests, regardless of how they are phrased. NLU capabilities also enable machines to gather insights into customer needs and preferences by analyzing conversations, helping businesses understand their customers better.

Dialogue Management

Dialogue Management enables the smooth and natural flow of conversation between callers and the automated system. This involves keeping track of the conversation’s context and guiding the dialogue towards a resolution. Without effective Dialogue Management, a voice conversation with an AI engine may become disjointed or repetitive; the machine may end up providing unrelated comments or repeating itself unnecessarily.

A well-designed dialogue management enables AI to provide a natural, human-like experience for customers. For example, a customer may start a conversation with a chatbot to report an issue with a product. The bot then guides the customer through a series of questions to determine the root cause of the problem. Once in a while, the customer might interrupt with a seemingly related detail. The bot, if designed with good Dialogue Management like WIZ Talkbots, will be able to determine if this is something to explore further or if it needs to redirect the conversation to the previous point. As the conversation progresses, the bot may suggest a solution or escalate the issue to a human agent for further assistance.

Voice Capabilities

Voice Capabilities refer to a conversational AI system’s ability to accurately recognize and interpret voice input and respond through natural-sounding speech. Well-developed technical features like automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) language capabilities are critical in this area. High-level voice capabilities are needed to provide a natural and human-like customer experience.

 

Talk about integration and escalation

The next set of factors to consider affect operations – how well the solution integrates with your existing technology stack, and how it works with humans. Below are some of the operational considerations for selecting a voice AI solution.

Channel Integration

Channel Integration determines where and how your AI solution will be used – the touchpoints that customers will encounter it. In today’s digital age, customers expect to communicate with businesses through a variety of channels, including web, mobile, messaging apps, and voice assistants. A conversational AI solution that is not integrated with one or more of these channels may be challenged to deliver a seamless customer experience. Customers may If handoffs are not easy, customers may abandon interactions instead of completing a transaction. A conversational AI solution that offers a wide range of channel integrations provides customers choice – enabling end-users to go through their preferred channels. Because of these factors, the fewer channels a voice AI solution can accommodate, the potentially less powerful the solution can be.

Back-end Integration

Back-end Integration ensures that the system can seamlessly interact with a company’s exisiting business systems and processes. New solutions are taken up because they promise to make things better – either improve efficiency, save costs, or other optimizations. When a solution can’t mesh well with what’s already there, then the experience becomes more frustrating and troublesome than the original setup.

One of the systems that conversational voice AI may need to integrate with is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution. The new AI solution may need to access the CRM database to initiate customer outreach. Without effective back-end integration, the conversational AI solution may not be able to do what it was designed to do. Robust back-end integration ensures effective and efficient interactions with other business systems and processes, helping things move along smoothly.

Agent Escalation

Agent Escalation is what enables the AI bot to seamlessly transfer a conversation to a human agent when necessary. Conversational AI solutions can handle a wide range of customer requests and inquiries, but there may still be situations where human intervention is required. If the customer’s request is too complex for the system to handle, or if the customer is expressing frustration or dissatisfaction, it may be appropriate to transfer the conversation to a human agent. Effective agent escalation systems ensure that the customer does not have to repeat their request or context to the agent once the call is handed off. A robust hand-off system ensures that the agent taking over has access to all relevant information from the conversation so far. This helps reduce frustration and improve the overall customer experience.

So which conversational AI features are most important?

There are other factors or features that determine the performance of a conversational voice AI solution. The list of features provided here is not exhaustive, but can serve as a quick checklist to see if a product meets your requirements.

To come up with a more structured way of evaluating your options, we suggest taking the above factors and assigning a weightage to them. Then rate the voice AI solution against each factor from a scale of one to four. Multiply each rating against the weightage then add the scores together to get the final rating of the solution being considered. Do this for every option you are considering. Below is our suggested weightage for each of the features or factors discussed, based on how easy it is to get right.

Feature
Weightage
Natural Language Understanding
20%
Dialogue Management
25%
Voice Capabilities
25%
Channel Integration
15%
Back-end Integration
10%
Agent Escalation
5%

Bear in mind that each business will have specific priorities when it comes to choosing a voice AI solution. You may want to adjust the weightage according to what you believe to be important in your operations. If you need a solution that can work across all your customer communication channels, then Channel Integration must have a higher weight in your evaluation. If all six factors seem to be equally important, then divide the scoring equally.

By carefully assessing factors that are critical to your business success, you can select a conversational AI solution that offers the right mix of capabilities to meet your requirements. The right conversational AI solution will help you transform your call operations and differentiate your brand from competitors in today’s increasingly digital and customer-focused marketplace.

Conversational voice AI may be the solution you need to optimize your call operations. Speak with one of our business executives to find a tailor-fit solution.
Contact us

15
Feb
Talkbot Basics  ·  Voice AI Technology
Compete – and win – by delivering amazing customer experiences
Jennifer Zhang

Jennifer Zhang

CEO & Co-Founder

In today’s competitive landscape, customer experience has become a key differentiator for businesses. Customers now have access to more options than they had in all of history – and they’re mostly available at their fingertips. Companies must now work harder than ever to stand out, and part of that differentiation is through crafting a memorable customer experience.

Customer experience (CX) encompasses all interactions a customer has with a business, from researching products to post-purchase support. By providing a positive customer experience, businesses can increase customer loyalty and retention, improve their brand reputation, and drive revenue growth. On the other hand, a negative customer experience can lead to a loss of business and harm to a company’s reputation. In a PwC report, we read that 59% of consumers in the United States will walk away after several bad experiences, 17% after just one bad experience.

In addition, customer experience has become a key factor in purchasing decisions. The same PwC report indicates that 73% of consumers consider experience as the third most important factor in purchasing decisions, after price and quality. Multiple surveys in the past ten years have also shown that customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. That trend is unlikely to change course; in fact, it will only accelerate. Businesses that invest in creating a seamless, personalized, and consistent experience across all touchpoints are more likely to delight customers and keep them loyal. With customer experience becoming increasingly important, businesses need to focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Creating better experiences with AI technology

One way to compete – and gain advantage – in the CX space is through the smart use of technology. AI-powered solutions have the potential to significantly improve customer experience in a number of different ways. Here are some of them.

  1. 24/7 support: Voice AI solutions can provide 24/7 support to customers, without the need for human intervention. This can help improve the customer experience by providing instant and efficient support, reducing wait times and improving response times. According to a report by Salesforce, 64% of customers expect companies to respond in real-time.
  2. Improved customer insights: AI-powered voice solutions can help businesses gather valuable customer insights, by analyzing voice interactions and identifying patterns and trends in customer behavior. This can help businesses improve their products and services, and tailor their marketing strategies to better meet customer needs.
  3. Personalized interactions: With deeper customer insights, brands can better provide personalized interactions based on unique customer preferences and behavior. A more tailored and relevant experience to each individual customer creates a sense of being valued, and increases appreciation for the brand.

As AI technology continues to advance, businesses that prioritize the use of AI in their customer experience strategies are likely to see increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue growth.

Investing in customer experience creates win-win scenarios

Focusing on CX can increase brand loyalty and customer retention. Customers who have a positive experience with a company are more likely to return and do business with that company again. By making the effort to provide a consistently positive experience at every touchpoint, businesses can build trust with their customers and foster long-term relationships that are crucial for sustained success.

Prioritizing customer experience can also improve a company’s brand reputation and generate customer advocacy. Happy customers are more likely to recommend a company to their friends and family, leading to an increase in word-of-mouth referrals and organic growth. A strong brand reputation and positive customer reviews help attract new customers and build trust in the marketplace.

The benefits of focusing on customer experience are clear. By prioritizing customer satisfaction and delivering a consistently positive experience at every touchpoint, businesses can build customer loyalty and retention, improve their brand reputation, and drive revenue growth. The investment in delivering a high-quality customer experience can pay dividends in the form of increased customer lifetime value and a stronger competitive position in the marketplace.

AI Talkbots can empower your enterprise to execute and reap the benefits of exceptional CX. Find out how we can help you achieve CX excellence by scheduling a call with one of our consultants
Contact us

09
Feb
Talkbot Basics  ·  Voice AI Technology
Elevate customer experience through smart design, not just technology

Last 08 February 2023, we concluded our successful webinar “Customer Engagement Strategies for APAC Leaders in 2023 and Beyond” – done in partnership with Microsoft and Whispir. Speakers Shuh Hun Tan (Commercial Business Lead at Microsoft) and Andrew Fry (Global Vice-President for Strategic Partnerships at Whispir) shared their insights on customer experience (CX) within the region, alongside our very own Allan Ong (Head of Business Development and Partnerships). Below is a summary of key points discussed during the event, as well as some additional insights around the topic of customer engagement.

The CX landscape is changing rapidly. While companies are benefitting from the growth of their customer base, the ratio of service agents to customers subsequently gets stretched. This means customers may not get the kind of service or attention that they need, when they need it. There’s also a growing mismatch between how customers want to be served and the channels that are available to these customers. This further adds to the frustration that customers feel when they are trying to resolve an issue.

Smarter use of technology for enhanced CX

The answers to these issues lie not simply in technology, but the smart application of relevant solutions at the right stages. The foundation of any CX strategy should be the customer journey map. A well-thought out map includes customer touchpoints and the channels that can best serve customers at those points. Only then should brands start thinking about how they can craft messages that are relevant and meaningful – interactions that will build brand strength and recall.

Critical to informing the design of customer conversations and interactions are the data collected from past interactions. Voice data is often difficult to leverage because in its raw form, it is unstructured and disparate. But voice AI technology can bridge that gap, enabling companies to draw insights from a wealth of data that was previously untapped. The new challenge is making sure that the right people get access to this data in a secure manner, so that customer communications can be refined and personalized.

Forces of Customer Experience (CX)

Status – make customers feel valued, respected, and worthy of special treatment
Certainty – design communication to be clear, transparent, and working as expected
Control – prompt response, help customers feel in control of the situation and feel they are in the driver’s seat
Localization – speak or communicate in the customers’ language; create a sense of familiarity through language and tone

The need for seamless, omni-channel communication

One key issue plaguing CX professionals these days is the fragmentation of customer journeys. This is often the result of siloed activities and a hard separation between channels. FAQs might be answered on the website or through chat or messaging apps; service or technical issues might be handled by a hotline or voice channel. A customer might come to your help site looking for assistance, only to be told that they need to call a helpline to address their issue.

What if, from the automated chat, the bot recognizes the need for a live agent and automatically connects the customer to a live agent via voice call? How delighted would that customer be? And yet customers today don’t expect that kind of seamless handoff and omni-channel communication, because companies have yet to offer that level of service. We need to be able to deliver connected conversations across channels and this starts from making sure our customer journeys are no longer fragmented. We need to join things up better with the help of smart tools.

Rising customer expectations

Fry also mentioned how expectations of customers are now higher than ever. Post-pandemic, after a boom in digital transactions, expectations of immediacy, personalization, first-time resolution, and respecting consent have risen to all-time highs.

Against this backdrop, customer engagement is now even trickier. There is so much more pressure for organizations to get things right – to respond in time, through the right channels, with targeted messaging and quick resolution while respecting the customers’ preferences in terms of being contacted.

This is where technology comes in. Technology can help businesses better understand their customers, empower their employees, and optimize their operations. Solutions like voice AI-powered automation can help enterprises reach individual customers with targeted, personalized messages at scale. AI technology can empower brands to answer specific needs more efficiently or offer relevant services in a way that is secure, respectful of consent, and regulatory-compliant.

Future-proofing your CX operations

Even as new solutions are introduced into the CX toolkit, the fundamentals remain the same. Brands need to develop content that resonates with their audience, independent of specific channels or touchpoints. Doing this enables companies to continue delivering personalized experiences to customers regardless of how devices or channels evolve.

Understanding how technological solutions interface with human workers is key to long-term success. As Ong points out, companies need to leverage human-machine collaboration to increase overall productivity. Identify what machines are good at, and what people can do better – creating a customer experience that is both efficient and human.

Whether you’re a cutting-edge fintech or a well-established traditional, AI solutions should be in your future-proofing arsenal. And adopting a pre-built solution is one of the easiest ways to get started on your AI journey.

Looking to optimise your CX operations using voice AI technology? Speak to one of our consultants today.
Contact us

26
Jan
Talkbot Basics  ·  Voice AI Technology
Creating authentic connections to engage customers in the digital age
Jennifer Zhang

Jennifer Zhang

CEO & Co-Founder

The rise of e-commerce and social media have given businesses new opportunities as well as challenges when it comes to connecting with their customer base. Brands are now able to reach and engage with customers in innovative ways through channels like Facebook, WhatsApp, and even TikTok – and customers expect them to. In the State of the Connected Customer report by Salesforce, 88% of customers surveyed expect companies to accelerate their digital initiatives. And in that same report, 80% of customers say experiences are as important as a company’s products and services. Customer engagement has become more important than ever.

With technology, it’s become increasingly easy to automate interactions and rely on machines rather than humans. This may lead to colder, more sterile communications. On the flip side, more data enables brands to create more personalized experiences, which can build brand loyalty. Businesses need to find a balance between using technology to enhance customer engagement and maintaining the human element that is essential for building authentic connections.

Using artificial intelligence to bring that personal touch

One of the key areas where technology can bridge technology with personal connections is through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI technology can be used to create personalized, authentic connections with customers through well-designed interactions. With conversational AI, these interactions – whether text-based or voice calls – enable customers to connect with business in real-time. Thanks to natural language processing and machine learning, AI bots can be the first point of contact for common customer queries, reducing the frustration of long waits. And when fed with localized data, AI-powered voice bots like the WIZ Talkbot can adopt local accents and expressions, creating a more human-like engagement.

AI technology can also be used to improve customer service by analyzing customer feedback and providing insights into customer sentiment. This can help businesses identify and resolve issues more efficiently. And when issues are spotted before they gain mass scale, brands can take a more proactive approach to problem resolution by sending updates even before a customer calls or sends a message. All these help build an excellent and memorable customer experience.

Another way AI can be used to improve customer engagement is through personalization. AI-powered algorithms can analyze customer data, such as browsing history and purchase history, to create personalized recommendations and offers. This not only improves the customer experience but also increases the chances of conversion and repeat business. By tailoring the customer experience to the individual, businesses can create a sense of relevance and value for the customer.

Connected omni-channel interactions to delight customers

Recently, Zendesk has coined a new term – immersive customer experience (CX). The concept is anchored on something many marketers already strive for, which is seamless omni-channel communications. When brands give customers a consistent experience even when they switch channels, that’s part of building an immersive experience. It’s about building a customer support environment that’s accessible, engaging, and connected – something that would make customers want to stay.

Part of creating that immersive experience is making interactions less rigid and more natural. Customers are now looking for more conversational brand communications across the entire journey – from marketing to support. This means customer touchpoints also need to be more integrated so that brands provide one consistent message, regardless of the channel or the topic. A solution like WIZ Engage enables brands to design fluid, connected interactions across voice and text, walking alongside the customer on their journey.

The quality of the experience matters; 73 percent of customers say they will leave for a competitor after multiple poor interactions. Even after just one bad experience, more than 50% of customers will consider another brand. The pressure is on companies to provide the kind of service that customers now expect – seamless, proactive, and personalized.

Moving beyond business as usual

In Forrester’s Predictions 2023: Customer Experience report, the research firm suggests that context – more than channels – will drive experience in the coming year. This means brands will have to think harder about how and when their customers engage with them. Businesses will need to know how best to meet customers where they are, regardless of channel.

Customer engagement is a vital aspect for any business. By prioritizing authenticity and personalization through the use of AI technology, businesses can build trust and loyalty with their customers, leading to long-term success.

Wondering how AI Talkbots can boost your customer engagement efforts? Schedule a call with one of our consultants to explore the possibilities
Contact us