Artificial Intelligence in Contact Centers

Overview
The AI technology in the coming years would be highly adopted across various industries. Currently
we are seeing the self-driving cars; houses which are able to sense the temperature; gardens that
are watered with suitable amount. More than this AI helps the companies to interact with customers
by learning, predicting and anticipating their needs and desires. The usage of AI can impact the
contact center industry heavily as it is already in the transition phase. A customer expects their
problems to be solved instantly the movement they call from their mobile or text via a message, or
email to a contact center. The major problem faced by the contact centers currently is the
availability of too much of data. The companies may be able to improve the quality of the call by the
recordings but it would be tough to check what kind of problems customer are facing using their
product. Artificial intelligence would be a solution to the contact centers as it helps in intelligently
leveraging large amounts of data to build a better and more continuous experience to the
customers. Artificial Intelligence with help of well-designed data pipeline, can identify complex tasks
and provide insights that would smooth the customer’s experience without any delay, and
preventing the errorprone work by human beings. With the help of AI technologies the contact
centers are able to bridge data, information and context gaps, by allowing employees, and their
virtual assistant colleagues, to deliver a seamless customer experience.

The chatbots which are currently in usage in the contact centers are an application of artificial
intelligence which may use both natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning. The
customer queries from a mobile phone, email or chat are taken care of by NLP whereas machine
learning a solution for this problem. The chances of chatbots replacing the humans in near future is
high as they are highly cost effective and provide accurate solution to the problem. For instance in
February 2018, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines introduced a chatbot named as BlueBot via Facebook
messenger. This bot helps the customer in booking tickets and also provides updates about their
flight status, gate changes and many more. This bot is designed to assist their contact center team
which handles more than 16,000 customer queries weekly. It sent around two million messages to
500,000 customers.

Definition
Artificial Intelligence is a set of technologies which when combined together can automate the tasks
reducing the time and making them economical. These technologies are divided into two groups:

 Technologies that improve perception

 Technologies that improve cognition

Both of these functions are important for the proper functioning of AI. The perception group
includes natural language processing which is being used for identifying various forms of
communication. The cognition group includes machine learning. The heavy volumes of consumer
interaction in contact centers implicates the need to check on the importance of which tasks to act
upon first. The usage of NLP and machine learning helps in delivering insights quickly for the most
important customer queries.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The main purpose of this technology is making human language interact with the computers both
with voice and text. This technology primarily works on a set of software based algorithms which
analyse and produce human speech samples and are used in chatbots. These algorithms minimize
the ambiguity of language making the computers understand context of the communication and the
intent of the speaker for determining the right meaning. NLP helps in picking multiple points
preventing the contact center employee’s bias and in improving the quality of feedback. The contact
center employees can’t take calls for long time as they would be penalized and end-up missing some
important information or feedback from the customer whereas NLP reduces the time of call by
transcribing conversations. The NLP tracks the emotion of the customer and the severity of the
emotion. The data gathered from NLP can be sent for further analysis and can be used by the
company for analysing their brand value.

Machine Learning (ML)

This theory explains statistically based predictions which are derived from large sets of data and by
recognizing different sets of pattern. The accuracy of these models depends on availability of the
data. The increasing usage of cloud networks has been an advantage for machine learning technique
as by analysing large chunks of customer data contact centers can groom their employees in making
a better decision makers. The contact center is one of the fastest growing industry in terms of
adoption of machine learning techniques in their business. The major reason for this would be to
reduce the invaluable insights which companies get through contact centers. The following are the
advantages with implementation of machine learning techniques:

 Reducing the number of calls and increasing the quality of call in turn improving the
customer satisfaction.
 Increasing revenue with improving customer satisfaction
 Reducing call duration and increasing first call resolutions

Chatbots
The chatbots are similar to NLP and are can be used as both voice-based and textbased devices.
These devices are not always fully automated and involve a degree of human involvement. The
chatbot value is defined based on whether they are AI based or not. However if it is an AI based
chatbot it would require NLP and ML. The chatbots are further classified based on type of platform
and type of developer.

Type of Platform

Query-based
These bots respond to the customer queries and doesn’t possess any conversational talent. These
bots can be used a form of self service. These bots can be developed very quickly and are cost
effective. These bots can delivery basic kinds of information like FAQ forms etc.

Learning-based
These bots have the capability of understanding both commands and language. With the help of NLP
they can make a conversation with the customers and by using ML they can handle more complex
queries. They can handle both open ended and close ended queries. They are used for complex
forms of self-service and helps the contact center agent in an effective manner.
Type of Developer
Self-serve
These developers design the chatbot from existing software and often created by in-house IT team
for the company’s own usage. The effectiveness of the chatbot depends on creation of a good UX
and its integration with contact center platform. These type of chatbots are ideal for small and mid-
sized business as they are cost-effective and fulfil the basic problems. The self-serve chatbots
generally come of two types one with simple GUI and other with API, SDK or library which involves
NLP and ML.

Full-serve
Chatbots designed by third party developers who also can customize the chatbots based on
requirement. The other type of developer designing a chatbot would be based on an AI platform
such as Alexa or Siri. This version of chatbots are a bit costlier when compared with the self-serve
version and provides a better customer service experience.

Driving Factors for using Chatbots (Contact centers and Customers)

 Usage of chatbots increase the work efficiency reducing the operational cost
 For improvising the customer experience contact centers require a better automation
 Increasing pain points from the side of customer whereas the contact center agent is able to
solve only a few
 Increasing expectation of service (i.e. 24/7)
 The current trend of messaging as most of the population is using it widely as a means of
communication and usage of chatbots would be more effective

Key Players
This part of the study covers the key players which consists of major tech giants such as IBM,
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and also the start-ups which provide all type of AI technology
for contact centers.

Company Location Year Platform UX Bot

Name Founded Capabilities Communication
Amplify.ai USA 2016 Chatbot GUI Text
Beep Boop USA 2015 Chatbot GUI Text
Botsify Pakistan 2017 Chatbot GUI Text
Bottr USA 2015 Chatbot GUI Text
Chatfuel USA 2015 Chatbot GUI Text
ChatScript N/A N/A NLP Engine Programmable Text
ChatterBot N/A N/A NLP Engine Programmable Text
ChattyPeople India 2017 Chatbot GUI Text
Clustaar France 2018 Chatbot GUI Text
Cognigy Germany 2016 Chatbot GUI Voice /Text
Engati India 2017 Chatbot Programmable Text
Enterprise Bot Switzerland 2016 NLP Engine Programmable Text
FloatBot India 2017 Chatbot Programmable Text
FlowX0 UK 2014 Chatbot GUI Text
 Google USA 2010 NLP Engine Programmable Voice/ Text
(Dialogflow)
It's Alive France 2016 Chatbot GUI Text
(Baidu)
KITT.Al USA 2014 Chatbot GUI Text
ManyChat USA 2015 Chatbot GUI Text
Meya.ai Canada 2015 Chatbot Programmable Text
Microsoft USA N/A NLP Engine Programmable Voice/ Text
Mindmeld USA 2011 Chatbot Programmable Voice/ Text
(Cisco)
Morph.ai India 2016 Chatbot Programmable Text
Motion.ai USA 2015 Chatbot GUI Text
(Hubspot)
Octane.ai USA 2016 Chatbot GUI Text
Pandorabots USA 2008 Chatbot Programmable Text
Pypestream USA 2015 Chatbot Programmable Text
Rasa NLU Germany 2015 NLP Engine Programmable Text
Rebot.me N/A 2014 Chatbot GUI Text
Recast.Al (SAP) France 2015 Chatbot Programmable Text
Recime USA 2017 Chatbot GUI Text
Reply.ai USA 2016 Chatbot Programmable Text
wit.ai USA 2013 NLP Engine Programmable Voice/Text
(Facebook)
Yekaliva.ai USA Chatbot GUI Text

Source: https://blog.aimultiple.com/chatbot-companies/