The rise of voicebots has changed how we use conversational AI through advanced AI and NLP technologies. These AI-powered assistants allow users to communicate naturally, understand, and respond like humans. By interpreting the language and intent of the users, voice bots provide accurate responses, whether it is answering questions or accessing important information.
According to Statista, the global voice recognition market is also expected to grow from 10 billion USD to 50 billion USD from 2020 to 2029, at a CAGR of 23.7 percent. This quick growth highlights the potential of AI voicebots in different fields, including empowering the workforce. According to a recent study by Gartner, by the end of 2023, 25 percent of employee interactions with applications will be via voice, up from less than 3 percent in 2019. This surge reflects the increasing reliance on AI-driven solutions to enhance productivity and streamline operations.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the top 9 ways AI voicebots can empower your workforce, increasing productivity and improving employee experience.
Understanding AI voicebots
An AI voicebot is software that uses conversational AI to interact with callers through voice commands. It makes it easier for callers to navigate an interactive voice response (IVR) by allowing them to speak naturally without the need to listen to menus or press numbers on a keyboard. It is like communicating with a human operator, though the callers interact with AI-powered bots.
Types of AI voicebots
AI voicebots can be categorized depending on how they interpret speech, interact with users, and specific applications.
- Rule-based voicebots: They use predefined rules to answer queries or execute tasks. For example, a customer service voicebot for an ecommerce company might help with tasks such as tracking orders, processing returns, and exchanges.
- Conversational voicebots: They engage in discussions using natural language and are useful in applications that require a more interactive and human-like conversation. Unlike rule-based voicebots, conversational voicebots can understand and reply to open-ended queries.
- AI-assisted voicebots: They use machine learning to interpret natural language input. They understand the context of a conversation and answer queries depending on the user’s intent. This makes them a better choice to handle complex queries as compared to rule-based voicebots.
- Voice-activated assistants: They use natural language to help users with their everyday tasks. These AI voicebots are more flexible and versatile than personal voicebots and can help with a wide range of queries, such as setting reminders or controlling smart home devices.
- Personal voicebots: They can handle a predefined set of inquiries and are typically used to improve customer service. They answer frequently asked questions and provide specific information but don’t have the flexibility of AI-assisted or conversational voicebots.
Importance of AI voicebots in the workplace
Voicebots play an important role in increasing workplace wellbeing, offering multiple benefits. Some of them include:
- Customer service representatives can handle a few chats simultaneously, however, AI voicebots can handle multiple chats, ensuring round-the-clock support.
- Though voicebots give straightforward answers to customer queries, some situations need human intervention. In such cases, the voicebots transfer the call to human agents to solve the query.
- It is easy to integrate AI voicebots into customer support technology and automate repetitive tasks, freeing human agents to focus on more important tasks.
- Voicebots are trained with all important information. Therefore, they serve as knowledge repositories, allowing employees to access relevant information instantly.
- Voicebots offer quick responses to queries, lowering wait times and increasing employee productivity.
Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales and Services improved its customer experience by moving to Genesys Cloud™. Voicebots identify and route more than 80 percent of the calls, leading to a 12 percent increase in the fixed rates and a 50 percent reduction in the total cost of ownership.
“Our voicebots have been a huge win, correctly matching from a list of 30 different intents in over 80 percent of cases. Now, our agents spend less time on the phone and resolve more queries the first time. We’ve already saved nearly $5,000 and expect that figure to reach $20,000 by year-end.” — Nicole ThomasVP, Customer Care Center, Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales and Services
9 ways AI voicebots can empower workforce in 2024
1. Offer exceptional customer service experience
Voicebots enhance customer service experience, which is a big pain point for organizations. Poor customer service fades customer loyalty and affects brand name. Around 80 percent of consumers say they prefer to do business with a competitor if they have one bad experience with the brand.
Since voicebots respond instantly to customer queries, they work as great solutions to reduce customer frustration by minimizing wait times. With these issues handled by AI, employees can solve more complicated problems, preventing stress and burnout among the customer service staff.
2. Language translation
Using voicebots for real-time language translation allows companies to tap into a broader workforce. These bots allow employees to communicate and get responses in their native language, ensuring clarity and accuracy.
When employees speak in their native language, AI voicebots translate their messages in real-time, ensuring no loss during translation. This helps teams communicate and collaborate without language barriers, leading to flexible workflows. Also, companies can hire employees from different linguistic backgrounds without worrying about communication issues.
3. Streamline recruitment operations
Conversation Design Institute states that conversational AI can help organizations enhance the efficiency of their hiring process by 32 percent. AI voicebots streamline the recruitment process by automating mundane tasks that don’t need human intervention. Conversational AI agents engage candidates in human-like conversations to analyze their resumes and check if they fulfill the eligibility criteria. They filter details and screen applicants for the next round, freeing the HR department to focus on core tasks.
Also, the self-service tools enable candidates to access relevant information, track application details, and get updates on interview schedules. When implemented effectively, AI voicebots remove barriers in recruitment processes, enabling quick, data-driven decisions. Further, it ensures you hire the right people for the role and build a workforce of talented professionals.
4. Automate business operations
AI voicebots allow organizations to enhance their productivity by automating business operations. We all get disappointed when put on hold while calling customer support. Thus, customers prefer self-service over calling customer support. AI voicebots can prevent these situations by answering calls immediately, cutting wait times, and lowering frustration. If AI voicebots can’t solve customer queries, they transfer the call to human experts for further help.
Organizations use AI voicebots to automate sales calls and improve the efficiency of the sales team by allowing them to focus on selling. Also, your sales team might spend time and effort to call people who aren’t keen on your offer. Voicebots help them overcome this situation by calling prospects and finding out if they are a good match for your offer. If the prospect is interested, they transfer the call to the salesperson to take it ahead. That’s how voice bots are essential website marketing strategies, from acquisition to lead retention.
5. Training and development
AI voicebots are now being used in the training and development of employees to improve learning and boost employee engagement. They provide personalized learning experiences for employees by tailoring content according to their learning needs. By including gamified elements, voicebots make training more engaging and improve knowledge retention.
Organizations can use AI voicebots for different types of training, such as customer service training, sales training, employee training, compliance, and security training.
6. Efficient task management
AI voicebots help employees schedule tasks and manage calendars. For example, making voice requests can help you get appropriate time slots, send invitations, and set reminders. Employees can use AI voicebots to assess the urgency and importance of tasks and identify the ones that need immediate attention.
It also becomes easy to track task completion and find out delays, if any. You can integrate AI voicebots with project management tools such as Basecamp, Asana, and Clickup to get real-time updates. It also becomes easy to delegate tasks by sending reminders and follow-ups.
7. Workflow automation
Repetitive tasks such as account verification, processing invoices, updating records, and customer follow-ups take a lot of time and may stress out your employees. AI voicebots automate all these tasks, enabling your team to work on important tasks. They integrate seamlessly with CRMs and ERPs to access data in real-time and answer customer queries simultaneously without asking them to wait. You can also use them to manage lead verification by automatically verifying the lead’s information and instantly updating the data into CRMs.
8. Data collection and analysis
With the help of AI voicebots, employees can quickly collect and analyze data from customer interactions and identify patterns and trends, giving insights into customer pain points, inquiries, and satisfaction levels. They can create targeted campaigns to attract more sales and calls. The better the lead connection and follow-ups, the higher the scope for employees to convert leads into customers.
AI voice bots also benefit product developers by helping them make informed decisions about packaging, testing, and launching successful products in the market. This results in higher employee motivation and the ability to deliver superior quality work even during high-demand periods. Simply put, AI voice bots empower the workforce by improving their decision-making, time management, planning, and marketing skills.
9. Improve financial reporting and accounting
AI voicebots provide real-time data about market trends, risks, and anomalies, helping employees make informed investment decisions and become better investors. Employees can use AI voice bots to confirm and execute financial transactions much faster, significantly reducing error rates and payment delays. Finance employees can now quickly provide personalized financial advice to customers and improve their debt management and overall client experience. They can get better at sentiment analysis, portfolio rebalancing, and adhering to regulatory compliance.
To sum it up, AI voicebots play an important role in the modern workforce. They help you automate your tasks, improve customer service, and minimize costs while giving you a competitive advantage.
