Wynand Smit, CEO of INOVO.
According to Accenture's digital consumer survey 2018, a third of people online in China, India, the U.S., Brazil and Mexico plan to buy a stand-alone voice assistant by the end of the year. The prevalence of such devices in homes is becoming so apparent that it’s likely that many homes will have one in due course. Interacting with these voice assistants, at one time a novelty, as time goes on becomes a natural evolution, one that’s driving consumer perceptions in how they prefer to do business. This trend is also reflected by the rate at which companies are adopting chatbots as a means of interaction.
From information to action – facilitated by robots
The global chatbot market grew from $113m in 2015 to $703m in 2016 and is projected to grow in value to $1.23bn by 2025, according to Grand View Research. Already, 96% of businesses believe that chatbots are here to stay, and 67% believe that chatbots will outperform mobile apps within five years. This has led to 80% of businesses stating that they either already have chatbots in operation or they plan to have them by 2020.
A brief retrospective is a reminder of how dramatically the consumer-to-business communication landscape has changed within less than twenty years. From an almost exclusively voice-dominated channel in the contact centre environment, the shift to digital has seen the inclusion of a myriad of channels – email, text, online chat, social media and more all offer your customers the chance to conduct interactions their way. From simply gathering information through technology, technology is now prompting action.
It’s essential that your company recognises this shift in how customers want to do business. Since most companies are seeking ways to scale to as great an audience as possible, it makes sense to be prepared for growth in different channels. As an indication of this, according to research 47% of customers said they’d buy items from a chatbot. In fact, the 26-36-year old market segment said they’d spend up to $675 via a chatbot interaction.
Despite companies offering a wide range of interaction options within a multi-channel contact centre environment, consumers are favouring chatbots: 48% would rather connect via (a chatbot-enabled) live chat than via any other form of contact. Your marketplace is both getting used to this form of interaction and expecting it to be available.
The primary sectors making use of chatbots currently are online retail, healthcare, telecommunications, banking and financial services, with consumers saying that they treat chatbots like health care coaches, travel agents, tutors and advisors. It has been estimated by Frey and Osborne, in an Oxford University study, that within ten to twenty years, 58% of financial advisors will be replaced by robots and AI.
Adapting roles
This dictates that how humans are deployed in companies will evolve apace; rather than simply replacing human agents in the contact centre environment, companies will see a change in roles, skills and responsibilities, as humans can be used in jobs that require analysis, empathy and creativity, among other human qualities. Besides the separation of roles, it must be acknowledged that among the customer base, there will be those who prefer to interact with humans, so in this case, a contact centre offering a multitude of communication options can serve this preference.
Central to this expansion of channel options is the need for channel integration to ensure that within the multi-channel environment, all data produced by interactions across a variety of customer channels must be centralised and accessible to provide a single view of the customer. This will subsequently inform data analysis, providing the ideal platform for generating strategic insights that benefit both the business and the customer.
Companies are already developing interactive solutions that are being implemented in those home-based voice assistants – a well-known whisky company has already set out a guided tasting course using one of these assistants, so the customer not only gains information, but the company can access more details about customer preferences, allowing for enhanced service delivery and customer experience.
What would have seemed far-fetched only a decade ago is now becoming commonplace – now is the time to ensure that your company is readying itself for the assistance revolution.
By Wynand Smit, CEO of INOVO