Intelligent Digital Avatars Are Raising The Stakes For Customer Service
Do you remember the last time you called a company’s customer service hotline or interacted with a company over a messaging channel? If the last time you did that wasn’t very long ago, there’s a good chance that it was a pretty positive experience, and you likely came away with the impression that you were dealing with an efficient and knowledgeable customer service agent.
But in fact, there’s a high chance that you weren’t interacting with a human at all, but rather a next-generation artificial intelligence-powered digital assistant. The technology is evolving fast, and these days the best AI assistance excel in aspects like natural language understanding and voice generation, and leverage advanced algorithms to solve extremely complex problems.
These AI chatbots “feel” as if they are human, and because they learn from each interaction they have with a human, they’re constantly improving their capabilities, getting smarter over time.
The Limitations of Traditional Chatbots
In the customer service industry, chatbots have been around for quite a few years already, and it used to be that most people could recognize when they’re dealing with one. But these early chatbots, while useful, came with some serious limitations.
The problem with first-generation chatbots is they’re built using a rules-based architecture. It’s a basic conversational system that operates with predetermined rules, and the bots can only interact using a series of scripted responses. Moreover, compared to today’s more sophisticated models, they have a limited grasp of natural language, which limits them to handling only the specific task they’re built to deal with.
Traditional chatbots use decision-tree structures or diagram-based systems to channel user interactions. So when a customer sends a message or question, the chatbot will proceed to scan its database to try and find the most appropriate reply to the user’s query. They use pattern recognition techniques to identify certain keywords or phrases within the user inputs, and try to locate the best possible match. Once done, they’ll issue a predetermined response to the user’s question.
Over time, traditional chatbots have improved, and they will often ask for more details, following a scripted conversation that helps them to gather all of the information they need to deliver a suitable response.
These chatbots can be useful in some scenarios, but there is a lot that they cannot do. For instance, their inability to adapt means that they struggle to understand user’s questions that go beyond their pre-programmed parameters, which can result in them providing a less-than-helpful response.
Rules-based chatbots may also get confused by multi-layered conversations, as they have no real ability to respond to users based on the earlier context of what has been said. They struggle with a lack of personalization too, which can give a bad impression to consumers. Moreover, they’re unable to learn from their interactions, which means they can only be improved through manual updates to the underlying code base.
How Digital Avatars Change The Game
The limitations of early chatbots are why many customers are ultimately handed off to a human agent, especially if they have a more complex problem or question, but increasingly, this is becoming less common.
Thanks to the rapid advances in “agentic AI”, chatbots have gained the ability to operate with much greater autonomy, to the point where they can make decisions and take actions without any human intervention. The most advanced chatbots today can perform tasks like processing refunds, altering a customer’s booking, and so on.
What’s more, these new-generation chatbots can even sound and look much more human than before. The next evolution of customer service chatbots being developed by companies like Antix are more like “digital avatars”, and they’re capable of displaying human-like emotions and even showing empathy towards customers, significantly improving their experiences and outcomes.
With Antix’s Avagen platform, it’s possible to create digital avatars that are based on real humans. It utilizes the powerful Unreal Engine 5 graphics platform to make its avatars appear lifelike, while the advanced AI algorithms under the hood can dramatically improve their problem-solving abilities.
One noticeable difference is how Antix’s digital avatars handle complex interactions. Because they have a better grasp of context, they can respond similar to how a real human would in almost any situation. If a fan of Taylor Swift is crying because they have lost their ticket to see her next concert, these intelligent AI agents can immediately recognize her upset and try to respond in a more sympathetic tone of voice, even using words such as “oh, that’s such a shame, but please don’t worry we can fix it”, in order to reassure them. It’s a far cry from the robotic style of first-generation, scripted chatbots.
This is why it’s quite likely that you may not have realized you were dealing with an AI chatbot during your last customer service interaction.
More Efficient Customer Service Operations
The emergence of digital avatars promises to transform the customer service industry, and it will result in significantly improved experiences across almost every industry.
Because these advanced AI chatbots can handle even routine calls with greater empathy and friendliness, more consumers are reporting positive interactions with the brands they deal with. Meanwhile, those who have more intricate problems to deal with are finding that they’re rarely put on hold these days. Because AI can do so much more, the human agents are able to jump in the moment they’re needed, should the chatbot be unable to resolve any customer’s issue.
In time, these digital avatars are expected to become even better, as they learn to understand when it becomes appropriate to hand over a customer to a real human agent. Improvements in techniques such as voice and sentiment recognition mean they are getting better at recognizing when a customer becomes frustrated or angry or upset. When they recognize a caller is becoming dissatisfied, they can immediately bring in a human agent, before the experience turns sour.
The handover process is also much smoother, as digital avatars possess the ability to quickly summarize their interactions, so the human agent has all of the case details at their fingertips the moment they connect with the caller. This means the agent doesn’t have to repeat any questions, and can immediately start trying to resolve the problem at hand.
Human agents can leverage AI in other ways too. As they’re discussing the problem with a customer, AI can listen in and provide helpful recommendations based on what’s being said. For instance, an AI agent can look at the caller’s profile and consider other information, such as their earlier interactions and purchases, and come up with an appropriate solution based on that history. So not only are the AI agents getting better, but so are the humans themselves.
The Customers Win
The biggest winner will be the customers themselves. As digital avatars become more commonplace in company call centers, they’ll increase their collaboration with human agents to create better outcomes in less time than it took before.
AI is dramatically increasing the efficiency of customer service operations, and the improved outcomes will translate to a much more positive experience, leaving customers much happier than they were prior to calling. By solving problems more satisfactorily, faster and with greater empathy and friendliness, the combination of real human agents and lifelike digital avatars leads to much happier customers, and that can only be good for business.
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