By Jonathan Elcock
In late April, an advertisement billboard went up in San Francisco featuring an inconspicuous phone number and an ominous question: “Still hiring humans?” The billboard quickly went viral on social media when a man recorded a video of himself calling the number, with the billboard in the background.
The call was answered by a surprisingly human-like greeting: “Hey, um this is Bland AI, I’m an AI agent that makes millions of phone calls for businesses and in any voice.” The man in the video went on to have an interactive conversation with the voicebot, which had the uncanny intonations and other speech dynamics of an ordinary human being.
This latest trend in artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated the break-neck speed at which this technology is developing. While the human-like agent from the AI start-up Bland AI has raised a new debate around its ethical use, it does raise other questions for business owners on how they are integrating various facets of this technology into their own company’s operations.
To employ a practical metaphor, AI technology can also be best understood as a concierge service, especially when it comes to your customer journey. Just as a concierge anticipates a guest’s needs ensuring a seamless and pleasant experience, AI technology can be used to predict preferences and offer tailored solutions, creating a personalised experience for each customer. It also offers companies a versatile tool to enhance their market position by automating mundane business processes and providing a multifaceted approach to improve and streamline countless other operational ones too.
However, many businesses have not dedicated the time to understand and appreciate the extent of what AI can do to improve several operational capabilities, including the automation of business functions in marketing and sales. By automating purchase instructions specifically, customer queries can be answered by generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) machine-learning algorithms, long before they need to be escalated to a human for further action. This can improve profitability for businesses by increasing conversion rates.
A February, 2024 study by Tel Aviv-based software company Glassix, revealed that websites that use an AI chatbot see a 23% higher conversion rate, an 18% faster query resolution, and a 71% successful resolution rate. These figures cast a clear binary compared to the 20% to 30% drop in contact rates for South African call centres where agents are engaging customers over live phone calls.
Nonetheless, what hampers the wide-scale adoption of this AI technology is that many businesses still cannot distinguish between pre-GPT era chatbots and AI chatbots of today. The difference nonetheless is very straightforward: AI chatbots provide an intelligent, interactive conversation with a user, just like the conversation you have with ChatGPT, while pre-AI chatbots are limited to the predefined scripts and keyword recognition that are programmed into their system.
Think about those chatbots you have interacted with on websites that have a predefined list of questions for you to click on without the option of typing anything. With AI chatbots, the quality of engagement is better, the chatbot is always available, more knowledgeable, and can respond to a specific problem more timeously than a human.
While the new technology can be scary and overwhelming, businesses cannot ignore the versatility and multifunctional nature of AI, especially when the outcomes of chatbots hold significant potential for future-proofing businesses for long-term, sustainable success (in an environment where consumers continue to demand instant gratification, and expect online business to be available 24/7).
The consequence of failing to shift from pre-AI chatbots to mainstream technology is fast becoming equivalent to expecting customers to interact with an encyclopaedia at a bookstore instead of providing them access to Google.
Besides the advantages of instant responses, resolutions, and a high-quality customer journey, AI technology further offers South African companies significant opportunities for growth. This especially applies to those with customer relations management (CRM) systems already in place.
Contextualise this with a real-life case study of what solar panel companies experienced at the height of Stage 6 load shedding last year and faced a torrent of customer leads that were impossible for humans to manage on their own in an eight-hour work day. Throwing additional bodies at the problem was not going to cut it and would only lead to further overhead costs.
The solar panel companies that chose to automate the onboarding of new customers online (by offering an end-to-end application and fulfilling user-journey) with a chat bot to do the heavy lifting certainly reaped the rewards of locking down customers faster, without unnecessary costs or human intervention.
The rewards included increased profits and a steady stream of satisfied customers, which could be seen in the improved conversion rates. Customers were spellbound by the seamless efficiency of their interaction with the automated and interactive customer service, even when it may have been outside working hours, and perhaps even when the power was out.
South African businesses should not resist the shift that is at play here, and rather think practically: the early bird will always catch the worm, and consumers will continue to drive the need for efficient solutions in technology from the companies they purchase from.
As cliché as it sounds, time is still money, and consumers are being driven to spend their money on services that are convenient and efficient. This is arguably the investment that counts, because customers will keep moving until they find a provider that will give them the information and service they need.
When it comes to AI, there are still many unanswered questions, but one thing is for sure, AI is here to stay. The question is whether companies will take the jump to leverage it proactively or lose valuable growth and profit to competitors who operate with little fear.
Jonathan Elcock is the CEO at rather.chat.
BUSINESS REPORT