How delightful is it that there is someone who cannot say “No” to you? Yes, no one but an intelligent virtual assistant is available 24*7 to assist you. Virtual assistants have changed the game of work by replacing human beings. Virtual assistants are not only serving you as your assistants but also improving customer service.
The role of intelligent virtual assistants is critical in improving customer service through chatbots. Although “chatbots” and “intelligent virtual assistants” are often used interchangeably, these technologies share a commonality. These differences lie mainly in complexity, scope, and skills, which intelligent virtual assistants possess more than chatbots.
Intelligent virtual assistants are AI-powered software designed to communicate with customers in a human-like way. With the help of this advanced technology, businesses can ensure that they are providing a world-class, highly personalized customer experience.
How Is An Intelligent Virtual Assistant Different From Chatbots?
People often misunderstand that intelligent virtual assistants and chatbots are available, but this is not true. Though their purpose and roles might be similar, there is a difference between these two based on their technologies.
Additionally, Intelligent Virtual Assistants are more sophisticated than chatbots; there are three significant differences:
| Intelligent Virtual Assistants | Chatbots |
| Intelligent virtual assistants consist of language processing and neural networks to know the customers’ needs and respond accordingly. They can understand misspelled words, synonyms, plurals, casual language, etc., allowing them to provide precise answers even to those questions that haven’t been specifically programmed. | Chatbots respond through rule-based algorithms, meaning they can identify a few keywords or predefined questions and answer those questions. |
| Intelligent virtual assistants can give accurate answers to customers’ questions. They provide natural and personalized solutions using artificial intelligence to collect historical data to respond to future responses. Just like chatbots, they can also sometimes escalate queries to human agents, if required. | Chatbots are working as question-and-answer machines. They can provide programmed or predefined answers to the questions or direct the customer to FAQ pages/knowledge base. When chatbots do not provide correct answers, the questions are escalated to the human agents in that situation. |
| Intelligent virtual assistants are well equipped to learn independently with the help of deep learning. So, the more data you provide, the more efficient your IVA becomes by recognizing the customers’ needs and giving precise answers. With time, intelligent virtual assistants become better at answering personalized and accurate solutions. | Chatbots are rule-based; the only way to ‘learn’ more is when more human rules are built into their systems. Chatbots cannot retain any previous information to use for future answers. |
The Benefits of Intelligent Virtual Assistants
IVAs dramatically improve customer service processes. Here are some ways IVAs benefit both the customer and the company.
#1 Scalability
Scalability is one of the most significant benefits of intelligent virtual assistants. It makes sure that it remains efficient without compromising its services. For example, intelligent virtual assistants can offer fantastic customer service to 100 customers simultaneously and quickly scale up to provide the same level of service to 1,000 customers without making any significant changes to their setup. So, this is the most considerable benefit of intelligent virtual assistants, especially for businesses that wish to scale their customer service within a short period of time.
#2 Availability
Another benefit of intelligent virtual assistants is their all-time availability. Customers nowadays have become used to receiving immediate responses to their queries, irrespective of the time of day. Whether during regular business hours or in the middle of the night, with the help of IVAs, businesses can enjoy the convenience of answering their customers’ queries at any time. Also, IVAs are programmed to offer a more personalized conversation, allowing companies to enhance and maintain their brand image.
#3 Improve Efficiency
One more benefit of the intelligent virtual assistant is that it helps to increase efficiency. The brilliant virtual assistant addresses repeating requests and saves the customer care team time and energy. With an IVA as the primary security line, client requests are diverted through phone, email, and live chat channels. Support tickets are consequently tagged, diminishing the overabundance, and agent time is used where human interference is needed. This decreases tight hanging times for everybody and recovers the expense of employing and training live agents.
#4 Improve Your Agents’ KPIs
Average handling time (AHT), the first response time (FRT), the customer satisfaction score (CSAT), and the net promoter score (NPS). What do all these acronyms have in common? These key performance indicators (KPIs) evaluate customer success and performance.
Organizations involving IVAs frequently see upgrades in the entirety of the above measurements. Virtual agents resolve requests or forward the issue to an expert with suitable tags and settings to fix the problem quickly, bringing about low AHT. In addition, bots welcome clients instantly, prompting a very quick FRT.
Furthermore, as IVAs increment generally increase overall efficiency, the CSAT and NPS likewise increment after some time.
#5 Reduce Agent Frustration and Churn
A load of time handling recurring requests like order tracking returns and cancellations on agents in traditional contact centers usually frustrates people. In addition, people get fed up with managing more complicated issues and maintaining the age-old stereotype of call centers and customer service as temporary jobs.
Assuming an IVA handles these regular tasks, such as checking dates, names, and order numbers, your live agents can focus more on settling other complex issues. This can make customer service a fulfilling and pursued profession, decreasing employee wilfulness.
#6 Provide Global, 24/7 Customer Support
Another benefit of intelligent virtual assistants is that they can always work. This fantastic support is a significant resource for organizations working across time zones. Rather than recruiting workers in different time zones, IVA can give day-in and day-out help and accelerations during standard business hours.
Finally, a few IVAs provide multilingual support. This multilingual enables organizations to work in different business sectors without hiring as many bilingual or multilingual agents as they would without IVA’s assent.
Conclusion
The IVA industry has seen a few productive benefits throughout the long term. Moreover, the future outlook for technology appears to be positive, with numerous additional interesting possibilities. As a result of the year’s progress and AI specialists’ research into the possibility of improving the emotional intelligence of assistants.
The capacity to comprehend the client’s inclinations and emotions would reform how customer service is delivered, consequently positioning AI assistants as a critical part of the future virtual assistant to the customer experience scene. Considering these benefits of AI virtual assistants, you should implement intelligent virtual assistants like HCL Clara for your organization.
