Intuitive customer journey using off-the-shelf AI solutions – Contact center AI and TensorFlow

AI-First based approach is the theme driving many organizations. Even though we are at a very beginning stage of AI, there is almost every product which has AI touch in it. This initial stage in AI is ANI(Artificial Narrow Intelligence). These type of AI’s specialize in one thing they do and they are not specialized or trained to excel in a variety of domains. The advancement in ANI is helping companies to realize the potential in building off-the-shelf AI solutions targeting specific use cases.

Before we get deeper on to off-the-shelf AI solutions, let’s see some common use cases and the challenges across industries –

Retail – Retail industry is completely moving towards ‘at-home’ shopping experience.

Banking – Planning for your financial needs considering your lifestyle and the market trends.

Insurance – Life, Home, Auto, etc. all need a better understanding of customer to provide the right choice of plans.

Healthcare – Personalized digital assistant for both doctors and patients based on the health record.

Above are some of the day to day scenarios across domains.

So, what are the key challenges here? – When we look deeper all of these needs a custom agent who can address the needs of the individual customer. 24*7*365 customer support and availability.

How can the latest technologies address these key challenges? – I do not want to simply say AI for the sake of it. There were technical solutions available earlier and today as well. Say for instance – 1) IVR, 2) Live chats, 3) Customer centric websites and mobile apps, and so on.

But what is lacking in the existing solutions? – There was custom personalization through simple optimization and recommendation in the backend to support the customer. However, a well-guided customer journey and support were not up to the extent of what customers would want.

What solutions do we have now? AI-based solutions are changing the way the applications are working now. One way is to use off-the-shelf solutions like contact center AI to create a better customer journey.

What is contact center AI? Contact center AI provides a more intuitive customer experience using google’s artificial intelligence. Google helps companies modernize their call centers with the help of this. There are 3 main actors involved –

1. Customer – Customer gets intuitive experience using the virtual agent and also better quality support from live agent
2. Live Agent – Live agent gets to know the context of the customer call and supports it with relevant information from the knowledge base
3. Virtual agent – This is the intelligent actor who understands the customer needs and provides intelligent user experience by referencing training libraries

Now that we know about contact center AI, what are some of the implementation techniques?

1. Contact center AI can receive inputs using chat or phone. The solution should be input medium agnostic.
2. Google’s contact center AI is all about the backend infrastructure. The most predominant front-end devices that the customer use would be –
   • Website over a desktop/laptop –
   • Mobile app or web app on a mobile device –
3. Also, more importantly determining the point of decision making –
   • In-app intelligence engine using tool like TensorFlow lite
   • Cloud-based intelligence engine using contact center AI
4. Determining the medium of communication to the customer for active engagement with the product –
   • Notifications
   • Chat
   • Call, etc

AI makes the interactions smoother and valuable by understanding the context of the customer and by providing relevant information. Even though there are many ways to achieve intelligent solutions, off-the-shelf AI solutions provide a quick working AI solutions and seems promising as it matures.

Let me know your thoughts!

Happy learning!