They solve a huge number of requirements in just seconds, they never get tired, they attend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, they can deal with several claims or requests simultaneously and, best of all, they learn from each interaction in order to offer a better service.

Chatbots and virtual assistants (robots based on artificial intelligence and machine learning that are capable of understanding the needs of users and even anticipating their needs), continue to gain ground in companies of all sizes and from all industries.

The benefits exhibited by various market studies range from greater customer engagement to significant savings for the companies that apply them, going through the need to generate better experiences in this omnichannel era. The market consultant specializing in technology, Juniper Research, estimates that organizations will be able to save no less than 5,000 million hours by 2023 thanks to these technologies. 

Industry by industry

One of the best qualities of chatbots is that they apply to practically any business sector. And they are no longer used solely to handle claims, redirect complaints or answer simple questions.

Retail applies this technology to understand consumer behavior to then deliver not only a better quality experience, but also precise offers tailored to their tastes and recent searches.

And while the manufacturing sectors take advantage of them so that employees can follow the status of orders, geolocate in real time or obtain data on a machine to be repaired; financial services companies are already training them to advise clients in terms of investments.

Even in the public sector, chatbots have proven extremely effective in managing massive operations, such as assigning shifts for COVID-19 vaccination, just to name one example.

From tourism to healthcare

In the world of tourism, progress is also being made in the use of robots responsible for customer service: in some cases, such as the Henn Na hotel in Japan, physical bots (some shaped like dinosaurs) are used to manage check-in. In others, the “waiter” robots that take orders to the room are reminiscent of science fiction movies.

Without going to those extremes, chatbots and virtual assistants have proven to be excellent for speeding up check-in and check-out processes, but not only that: they can also give details about points of interest in the city they are visiting or produce an immersive experience during an excursion.

In the health industry it is estimated that, if they are well trained, they could speed up diagnoses.

Zero intermediation

As seen in the examples mentioned from different types of industries, virtual assistants and bots are incorporating new functions within companies as they evolve.

They advise, help, suggest… It is estimated that in the medium term, they could be used to eliminate complete intermediation situations: for example, they will be able to sell a getaway package to a tourist with all its options -flights, hotels, transfers, excursions- according to its needs. The same applies for a bank checking account, a car or a property.

The qualitative leap

The power of chatbots and virtual assistants grows as new AI technologies are incorporated into them, especially the so-called «cognitive» ones.

Increasingly, these solutions are capable of understanding natural language, to the point that in many cases they could carry on a conversation without the person realizing that there is no human on the other side. In many cases, they can even contextualize a conversation, so that if the client «changes the subject», the assistant manages to continue with both conversations simultaneously.

But they also exhibit abilities to “read” a document and determine where the important data is (even when the document is on paper), understand what a photo shows, or interpret a map.

The ability to predict

The smartest bots will have a key capability to transform the customer experience: predictability. Based on consumer behaviors, their historical records and unstructured data taken for example from social networks, will allow them to anticipate the needs of customers and even contact them to offer what they need.

Whatsmore, numerous investigations point that the assistants of the future will be able to generate greater empathy with customers through a true understanding of their emotions.

Perhaps, little signs of «attended by their own robots» will begin to appear to assure the consumer that he is about to live a brand new experience.