Conversational AI: A Comprehensive Dive

Synopsis

• Rapid Growth of AI: The AI industry, particularly conversational AI like ChatGPT, is expanding rapidly, impacting businesses globally by increasing accuracy and efficiency for non-technical users.

• What is Conversational AI?: Conversational AI is a subset of AI technology enabling machines to understand and respond to human communication in multiple languages via text and speech.

• Evolution of Conversational AI: Starting with decision tree-based chatbots, conversational AI has evolved to use advanced neural networks for understanding context and user intent without fixed responses, demonstrated by tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Grok.

• Components of Conversational AI: Key elements include Natural Language Processing (NLP) for understanding human language, advanced speech recognition, machine learning for continuous improvement, and dialogue management for coherent conversations.

• Applications Across Industries: Conversational AI is used in customer service for efficient, human-like interactions, in healthcare for patient care and advice to professionals, and in business for tasks such as HR screening and operational automation.

• Best Practices and Future Outlook: Implement conversational AI with a user-centric approach, keep it updated with current language and events, ensure privacy and security, and anticipate future enhancements like understanding complex nuances and conveying empathy in synthetic voices.

A Deep-Dive into Conversational AI

The AI industry is expanding at a rate never seen before, and this has the potential to impact every business in the world. Early-adopting companies were already implementing AI into their operations to increase accuracy and efficiency, but now conversational AI tools like ChatGPT have brought it into the mainstream and made it accessible to non-technical people.

Today, we’ll take a deep dive into exactly what conversational AI is, how it can affect certain businesses, and what the future looks like for its development.

What Is Conversational AI?

AI technology is often thrown into a single box, but there are many different types of AI, with even more algorithms and models based on each. Conversational AI is one form of AI that allows machines to understand, process, and respond to human communications. Depending on the conversational AI solutions you are using, it can understand input from text and speech, often in multiple languages.

Evolution and Current State of Conversational AI

The first stage of conversational AI was chatbots. In their first iteration, chatbots would use decision trees to answer people’s questions. This is when the customer is given a set of responses to choose from, and the chatbot responds according to the previous answer given. Decision tree chatbots certainly automated the customer service process, but as they used a fixed set of rules, it is questionable whether they could really be called AI.

This has raised the argument of using a chatbot vs conversational AI. In practical terms, they can be considered the same thing. Just be careful to define the functionality you are looking for clearly.

Advanced chatbots and virtual assistants now use neural networks instead of decision trees. These are much more advanced systems that can understand context and user intent without providing a choice of fixed responses. They can still be trained on a specific set of rules to behave as the company wishes, but the customer can freely input any information they want to. 

The most advanced public-facing conversational AI comes from ChatGPT, Bard, and Grok. These are extremely powerful tools that demonstrate conversational intelligence. They are trained on vast amounts of data and have access to real-time information, allowing them to provide answers on an almost limitless range of topics. They also utilize user-friendly interfaces, allowing entirely non-technical people to interact with them.

Conversational AI algorithms can be trained on specific company data to give business insights and predictions. They can also be used to speak directly to customers to reduce the burden on service staff. When trained correctly, they will act just as a human agent would, only more efficiently and accurately.

Key Components of Conversational AI

Conversational AI is just one area of artificial intelligence, which is also broken down into sub-categories. Each of these areas contributes to making fully-formed conversational AI technology. Here are the main elements that go into conversational AI software.

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP is fundamental in conversational AI by allowing software to understand human language in written or spoken form. It can perform sentiment analysis to understand user intent in context. Once it has understood what the user wants, it can reply with a relevant response, making the conversation flow naturally.
  
  
• Speech Recognition: Speech recognition software converts voice to text, allowing the software to analyze what has been said. Speech recognition software has developed to the point where it can recognize different accents, intonations, and emotions. This is crucial in contextualizing what has been said, allowing for more accurate responses.
  
  This detailed understanding of human speech patterns provides a fantastic level of accessibility for users. It is great for understanding non-native speakers who may have a strong accent and opens the door for the visually impaired to interact with conversational AI fully.
  
  
• Machine Learning (ML) Algorithms: ML algorithms continuously learn from past conversations and inputs to adapt to user preferences and improve the accuracy of responses over time. They recognize patterns in speech and can keep up with the latest words and phrases, understanding what language usage is trending. They also learn about the world as a whole, meaning they consistently add more context to the answers they provide.
  
  Machine learning can train a virtual agent on a specific data set. This allows the software to perform certain business tasks with in-depth procedural knowledge. Once trained, the software can perform these repetitive operational functions more accurately and efficiently than even the most experienced employee.
  
  
• Dialogue Management: Dialogue management is vital to having a coherent and continuous conversation. It enables the AI to remember previous interactions within the same conversation to keep it contextually relevant. Not having to repeat the context over multiple interactions saves vast amounts of time compared to asking a search engine individual questions, for example. It also makes it feel much more natural, as if you were conversing with a human.
  
  Dialogue management also helps identify misunderstandings and guides the AI to seek clarification. This is an integral part of conversational AI, as it helps to improve the algorithm continuously and stops the AI from producing answers it is unsure of. 

Practical Applications of Conversational AI

The practical applications of conversational AI go well beyond individuals asking ChatGPT questions. Conversational AI can create new or enhance existing software to improve operations within almost any industry. Here, we will highlight several conversational AI examples in customer service, healthcare, and business more generally.

Conversational AI in Customer Service

Conversational AI lends itself to customer service incredibly well through chatbots and virtual assistants. Even the most primitive decision tree chatbots helped answer simple customer queries. Now that conversational AI is powering the chatbots, no question needs to go unanswered.

A conversational AI bot allows you to solve issues with human-like customer interactions efficiently. Modern virtual agents are so well-trained that it is difficult to tell them apart from human workers, particularly when communicating through text. While the customer experience is very similar, the difference to a business’s bottom line can be huge.

Virtual agents can deal with many customers simultaneously, and they run 24/7. Once you have trained a single agent, it can deal with as many customers as your bandwidth allows. You can also easily create multi-lingual bots without retraining them on procedural considerations.

These bots can collect feedback from customers and detect trends throughout conversations. This means they can tailor conversations based on individual customer preferences. This information allows businesses to personalize recommendations and marketing materials for each customer journey.

Conversational AI can also look for patterns within the entire customer base to anticipate issues and changes in tastes. Combining this information with broader market data produces accurate strategy insights and predictions. 

Conversational AI in Healthcare

Natural language generation is used in healthcare to create conversational AI platforms that perform tasks similar to generic AI chatbots. They can be used to answer general questions and set appointments. Beyond these generic functions, conversational AI can be used more specifically for patient care.

Conversational AI can be used to create personalized care plans for patients. As the AI can be trained on an enormous dataset of medical journals, it can accurately detect patterns in patient diagnosis and recommend the most appropriate course of treatment. It can also be used to spot more subtle conditions, such as mental health worries, that may go unnoticed by a human.

While we may not be ready to trust medical recommendations from AI fully, they provide an excellent tool to advise medical professionals. It helps streamline the diagnosis process and clearly explains why it has come to its conclusion. Because AI can analyze infinitely more data than a human, its recommendations will likely be more accurate than humans' once the medical AIs have been trained for long enough.

Conversational AI tools can also be used in the healthcare industry to make services more accessible for everyone. Language translation allows patients who don’t speak the local language to accurately explain their symptoms to healthcare professionals. 

Conversational AI in Business

Almost any business can use conversational AI for chatbots and market analysis, but several other applications can be broadly used within companies. As an extension of chatbots used for customer service, virtual assistants can be used internally within companies to answer questions more quickly than asking a team leader or supervisor. 

There are several ways that conversational AI can benefit a company’s human resources (HR) department. AI can help screen job applicants and accurately perform the first assessment stages. It can then be used to schedule interviews for successful applicants. Finally, it can help streamline new employees' onboarding and training process.

Regarding staff training, conversational AI is excellent at producing up-to-date training materials much faster than manually making them. It can also personalize the training procedure for each new hire. This helps improve staff performance and retention as they more comfortably fit into their new job role with a tailored training method. 

Conversational AI’s ability to understand large datasets also makes it ideal for automating repetitive operational tasks. This can be scheduling appointments, monitoring stock levels, or processing documents. AI can perform these tasks more quickly and accurately than humans, which frees up staff for more engaging work.

Best Practices for Implementing Conversational AI

• Given the popularity of AI systems, it is understandable that people feel the pressure to include it in their operations and don’t thoroughly consider its purpose. Don’t do this. Any changes to your internal software or operations must be implemented with a user-centric focus to ensure they help address users’ pain points. When upgrading internal business operations, user-centric and process-centric often go hand-in-hand.
  
  
• When training your conversational AI, it is essential to have it speak at an appropriate language level. This is true when training your human customer service agents, too. You need to understand your audience and use language that appeals to the broadest portion of them. 
  
  
• Ensure your AI stays up-to-date with changing slang terms and broader current events to be able to put conversations into context. While conversational AI tools can be largely self-learning, it is still important to regularly analyze conversations to find any errors that can be used to train the algorithm more rapidly. Check compatibility if your system is used across different platforms, devices, or browsers to ensure all users get the same experience when interacting with your software.
  
  
• In customer service, there will be situations when a customer wants to speak to a real person, even if you are using the best conversational AI. Ensure you have a seamless handoff between virtual and human agents to maintain customer satisfaction. Guaranteeing a secure connection during this handoff is crucial in protecting people’s data.
  
  
• Privacy and security should be at the core of everything you do. If you intend to use customer conversations to train your AI or for market research, you have to be transparent and receive informed consent. Different regions have different data protection laws, so do your research to ensure you are compliant with handling data gained from your conversational AI.

The Future of Conversational AI

As natural language understanding develops, software will be able to understand deeper nuances within language. They will then be able to reply with more advanced language like idioms, sarcasm, and dialectic language. These developments in output make for more personalized and human-like interactions with users, improving customer experiences.

AI voice technology is also developing to the point where synthetic voices can speak with emotion and convey empathy. These advancements will take customer service to the next level, as empathetic interactions can be automated. 

Leverage Technology To Get Things Done Faster

If you have seen how conversational AI can be integrated into your current business operations to improve output, get in touch with BP3 today. We have already provided tailored digital process automation solutions for hundreds of the world’s most respected companies and proudly boast a 99% success rate. When you make contact, one of our experts will discuss exactly how conversational AI can improve your business processes.