Customer relationship management is one of the most important functions of modern-day businesses and can greatly influence the success of the company. The developments in technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing have made it very simple for enterprises to automate their customer service operations. The use of chatbots has emerged as a promising solution in this regard. This is because businesses now realize that bots can perform a greater range of tasks and integrate various back-office actions to serve customers in a much better way.
As per a recent Gartner report, “Sixty-eight percent of service leaders indicate that bots and VCAs will be more important in the next two years. Service centers should seriously be considering how this technology could be integrated into current operations, in both customer-facing and rep-facing systems.” Besides, it is also seen that customers find chatbots quite intuitive and easy to communicate with and get their queries answered quickly. A study by Salesforce even found that around 70% of customers prefer interacting with chatbots for speedy communication.
Integrating Chatbots and RPA for Seamless Customer Service
Managing customer grievances and offering prompt solutions have always been pivotal for businesses across all industries. An American Express study highlighted that consumers are willing to pay around 17% more to do business with a company that offers excellent customer service. The study also highlighted that around 33% of consumers are likely to switch companies in case they experience poor service ever. This means that the stakes are very high for ensuring appropriate customer service.
Incorporating chatbots and Robotic Process Automation tools can be beneficial in many ways to transform the way customer service centers interact with the users. For instance, AI bots can reduce customer wait time significantly and be available to address consumer grievances round the clock. Besides, a chatbot can respond to a query within 3-5 seconds, which would have taken around 45 seconds to 1 minute for a human customer service agent.
Chatbots can also be scaled to solve simple customer issues. This helps to free up the resources for addressing tasks that are more complex in nature and need manual intervening. What’s more, AI bots can also help to serve the growing customer base without having to employ more customer care service personnel. This makes using chatbots and RPA tools a cost-effective investment and can even help to manage the company finances well.
Conversational AI and RPA
Conversational AI is a type of Artificial Intelligence that uses the Natural Language Processing technology to allow bots to understand and simulate human conversation. RPA or Robotic Process Automation, on the other hand, allows bots to emulate and integrate human actions within a digital system to execute a process. Chatbots can combine both these technologies to serve customers in a more advanced way.
According to UiPath, “RPA robots utilize the user interface to capture data and manipulate applications just like humans do. They interpret, trigger responses, and communicate with other systems in order to perform on a vast variety of repetitive tasks.” This means that where conversational AI helps chatbots to engage through a conversational interface by interpreting the user intent, RPA can extract data from non-conversational communication like forms and documents to trigger the right response.
Both conversational AI and RPA can help to automate repetitive tasks in a digital environment. This means that using chatbots also helps businesses to streamline their digital transformation journey. Conversational AI and RPA allow chatbots to understand the voice and text responses by customers and follow up with precise automated action to resolve their grievances quickly. Further action by a live customer support agent will be required only when the chatbot cannot manage a situation on its own. This way, the efficiency of customer service can be improved greatly, which leads to better customer experiences.
RPA and Chatbots Use Case
To understand the use of RPA in Chatbots, consider an example. A customer reports an accident to an insurance company via a web form, call, or text messaging. The AI bots used by the insurance provider will extract the required data from the communicated message and assist in gathering more details about the incident, such as photo and video uploads, to help in subsequent validation and claim processing. The data collected by chatbots can also be used to gain valuable insights into the customer’s needs, which can, in turn, help to deliver a personalized experience.
The AI bots will also communicate with the back-office claims management systems to access the customer’s insurance policy information and inform them about the eligible services, their deductibles, and other details relevant to the claim. As the interactions between the customer and the insurance company are managed by conversational AI-powered chatbots, it makes the procedure much faster and efficient. At the same time, RPA tools will help to process the claim faster by extracting the required details from the claim submission.
As soon as the claim is filed, the RPA bots will log it into the appropriate system based on its category and type without the need for any manual entry. The RPA bots will then review the policy status, run the validation checks, and verify entitlements and eligibility. The chatbot can also access this data and update the customer about the status of their claim or their policy limits when the customer calls to inquire about it.
The RPA bots can be configured to follow certain rules and workflows depending upon the type of insurance claim as well. This can help to make the procedures around adjudicating the claim, approving the damages and compensation amounts, as well as making a payment to the customer much simpler. Where using legacy workflows and accounting systems can take a significant amount of time to process the claim, RPA bots can speed up the procedure greatly while also eliminating the chances of manual errors.
Conclusion
There is no arguing that AI-powered chatbots and RPA tools are redefining the customer service industry. These advanced digital tools are constantly raising the standards with efficient customer engagement, quick problem solving, and seamless back-office integration. With all the various processes they can automate, utilizing chatbots and RPA software is surely going to thrive in the future.
