“Hey Siri, write an article on Artificial Intelligence for me”

Siri- “sorry, you’d have to do this by yourself.”

Clearly, that isn’t happening sooner but with the way artificial intelligence tools are hustling, the day isn’t far when they’d be the cornerstone of our lives. Of the many great gifts of AI, Chatbots and Voice Assistants are two such technologies that are striving to make our days so much better and easier with their efficiency and smartness(built-in, of course). Clearly, we are going to dive into the diurnal conundrums that these mind-blowing tools help us deal with and how one is better than the other.

Wikipedia defines a Chabot as “a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner”. From Facebook Messenger to WeChat, not forgetting food delivery apps like Zomato, corporates have incorporated the use of chat-bots and I don’t think we have lived better than this. Chatbots are computers that can communicate instantly and are cost-effective. They make use of machine learning and Natural Process Learning (NLP). Chatbots look for certain keywords in a conversation and deliver the closest and the most relevant information to the user.

Now the question is why chat-bots would be preferred to websites and apps. What caliber do they have to replace them completely in the future? Let me get this together for you.

1. Chatbots are way faster than mobile apps and websites as they don’t need to be downloaded or loaded. Although, right now, chatbots are more of lightweight apps than AI personalities.
2. Every website is created differently making it necessary for the user to understand its visual interface. On the contrary, bots use the language interface which is the most convenient and approachable.
3. The constraint of human limitations is removed because of the fact that a bot can deal with many people at once and bringing about a revolution in the customer service industry. Chatbots are hence, the future of customer service and management.
4. In the future, talking to a bot will be like talking to a person who has access to entire information databases and can process one’s thoughts and desires.
5. Chatbots are easily accessible and readily available all the time to assist the users and cater to their needs.

While chatbots are a great tool to form a B2C relationship, there is still a lot of work needed into their development as they are still unable to comprehend everything the user has to say as they work on a set of questions and can give limited answers in a limited scope. Well, virtual assistants like Siri (Apple Inc.), Alexa (Amazon), Cortana (Microsoft) and Google Assistance have got you covered. Let’s get on with it already.

When it comes to Virtual assistance, Voice Assistance is a little up the ladder with more machine learning and Artificial Assistance involved. There is a smarter way of prediction along with providing a more precise response based on whatever the input is. Voice Assistants provide the customer the extra perk of having a conversation by asking questions back and forth, hence enabling the user to get to the desired space and potential resolution in a quicker and more effective fashion.

Let’s get to know why more businesses should make use of Voice Assistants in their operations.

1. Unlike texting, voice exchange creates a long-lasting bond with the customer and gives rise to an intimacy between the machine and human.
2. The experience becomes more fun and insightful for the customers making helping them explore a plethora of options suitable for the customers’ demands.
3. The responses are rapid and there is no physical touch required.
4. The technology is meant to satisfy the customer helping them make decisions with the stamp of voice assistance, which has a strong impact on the human brain.
5. It requires no set keywords to be looked for in order to provide assistance as it has a solid base of NLP.
6. Voice helps create the value of the business in customers’ eyes giving them exactly what they ask for in a more precise manner.

Comparing the two technologies, a lot of people often say they are same. Well, Voice Assistance has got an edge in that respect.

1. Chatting and texting require a lot of time, patience and effort and it tends to get boring too. Voice Assistance gives you the convenience to verbally express your intent.
2. Due to a very strong and concrete base of NLP, it becomes very easy for the customer to explain to the Assistant what the want is which is a major advantage over chatbots that make use of open-source NLP Libraries that are not customized. An automated virtual assistant, on the other hand, uses advanced NLP, natural language understanding and dialog management techniques to achieve high levels of automation without sacrificing accuracy.
3. Chatbots often lack an advanced dialog management engine and instead rely heavily on the structured dialog. In case a bot isn’t able to understand the context of the conversation, the flow is broken and the user has to start answering the same questions from the scratch making it a bit of an inconvenience. While with Voice Assistants, the power may lie with the user at his/her discretion.
4. One thing that’s increasingly important for brands is to not only be present on multiple channels but also to maintain consistency across those channels. So when a customer starts a conversation over the phone, they can pick it up again via chat, or email, or text. Chatbots don’t maintain this context, so customers have to start over again when they interact with a brand on another channel. This can be very damaging to a brand’s reputation because it doesn’t provide a seamless experience for the customer.

To conclude, both the tools are pre-loaded with expertise in the respective business and specific knowledge and get smarter with more interaction by leveraging on past experiences to deliver output with a wide range of knowledge upon deployment. With the help of Virtual assistants, businesses would be able to give customers the self-service experience with efficiency and accuracy and receive faster ROI. A quality and accurate response to questions resonating with the understanding of customers’ intent is what users want and businesses are working towards.

Winding up, I’m glad that I pulled off the article without much assistance. Phew! ☺