Today, the smartphone is the most important means of personal communication, and it is transforming into an identity-verification tool because every consumer owns a mobile device.
Everything Has Changed
We have an app for pretty much anything we do: using the bank, renting cars, booking planes, browsing hotels and parking your car — you name it. It has led some people to feel a bit of app burnout. This fatigue of applications has urged companies to look for alternatives for their customers. One of the most adopted solutions for this problem is a digital assistant or a voice assistant.
The growth of digital assistants (chatbots included), which are programs designed to simulate a conversation with humans, give companies the option to make customer interactions more attractive. Some researches are finding that users prefer using voice-activated digital assistants because they don't need to use their hands, and the spoken language interface feels natural.
In my company, we've implemented a series of solutions for our IT department where system administrators can interact with a bot through Slack to get information on users or even reset a password. In finance departments, we see chatbots used for payables. These bots work for vendors to check the status of an invoice. In HR, they're used to create absence requests or obtain the details of a payslip.
In many corporate environments, we spent quite some time (and money) on self-service applications, but these solutions still lack adoption. The problem is that self-service solutions tend to be interaction-less, generic, rigid and only accessible via screens. Digital assistants, on the other hand, simulate human interaction, are personalized, have multiple available channels and have many opportunities for added functionality.
In light of all of this, per Gartner, we can expect that almost half of U.S. companies will use digital assistants in the form of a chatbot or similar tool by 2019.
How To Get Started
Once you've decided to implement a digital assistant, consider these five steps for success:
1. Choosing The Right Platform: In a corporate environment, you have to focus on selecting the right tool that meets security and governance standards. It also has to provide capabilities for integrating with your multiple existing channels, which will differentiate your digital assistant in the long run.
2. Define Your Goals: Do not try to build Genie from Aladdin as a digital assistant — it will be practically impossible to answer every request. Develop it so it can master a single task to its fullest capability.
3. Integration Is Key: This is where you'll have to contact your IT team. You'll be pulling and pushing data to your corporate applications, and there are many caveats to this related to security, compliance and governance.
4. Optimize Your Digital Assistant Frequently: In my experience with digital assistants, you need to pull data to know how your bots are behaving and answer various questions. Which channel is being used the most? How do interactions with chatbots compare on mobile? Do customers have any time-of-day preferences? For example, do they use an Alexa skill at home and chatbots while at work?
5. Develop A Continuous Innovation Program. Your digital assistants are new, which means you have lots of time to help them grow into your outlined goals.
Are Digital Assistants For You?
It is essential to understand that there's a lot to learn when it comes to digital assistants, but the best way to do that is through early adoption.
Even still, there are cases when a digital assistant does not provide a suitable solution — or where it may not have the depth to actually help users. You may not want to implement voice assistants when dealing with sensitive information that could cause security issues if it's overheard, for example.
If you do decide to go with a digital assistant, listen to your users. Even further, it's important to try to predict what they need and what will be their most used feature. After you have that knowledge, you can plan recurrent iterative tests. I would suggest starting with a narrow use case, then slowly building up from there. Of course, always keep in mind that this is just the beginning of a journey through multiple variables that can be adjusted along the way.
In a world that requires innovation at the speed of the light, we must constantly evolve. By combining the right platform with the right goals, you could see a return on your investment with a digital assistant.
