AI-powered personal assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant have been steadily gaining in popularity in recent years. According to Statista, 132 million people in the US will use a virtual voice assistant at least once a month in 2022. So it’s no wonder that businesses are now thinking about how they can employ this technology for their benefit.
One of the core benefits of virtual assistants is that they take on recurring tasks and thus, free up time and effort for employees to focus on strategic goals. Cutting-edge conversational AI technology is already sophisticated enough to quickly determine the intent of the user and respond to their requests.
Today, we’ll overview possible scenarios of how you can use virtual assistants in your business workflows.
Responding to incoming requests
One of the most common applications of AI-powered virtual assistants is using them in contact centers to answer incoming requests. Modern AI agents are capable of handling a full-fledged discussion and are almost indistinguishable from humans. They can cover most standard conversation scenarios, and even if they cannot solve the customer’s problem themselves, they will transfer the call to a free operator.
The best thing about using virtual agents in contact centers is that they are available round the clock, can handle dozens of calls simultaneously, are multilingual, are always in an excellent mood and don’t diverge from the script. Besides, you can easily scale up virtual agents, which makes them a perfect solution for customer service.
For telecom companies, introducing a virtual assistant option for their subscribers might help attract new clients and improve their loyalty. Such an assistant can handle customers’ incoming calls for them, detect spammers and send transcripts of calls to the messenger, which is really convenient.
Launching marketing outreach campaigns
Virtual assistants can also be used to empower your sales and marketing campaigns. The conversational AI technology enables you to enhance customer engagement by automating communication throughout funnel stages — which usually requires much more time and effort when done manually. Today’s marketing tools and data-driven approach allow for highly-personalized campaigns, and with a virtual assistant on hand, your marketers will be as powerful as never before.
What’s more, conversational AI solutions open up endless opportunities for multichannel interaction with customers. No matter what device or platform your clients prefer — you will be able to reach them anywhere. Virtual assistants can handle cold calls, send special offers and updates by email, cross-sell and upsell in messengers, and more.
Screening job candidates
HR managers are often loaded with routine, repetitive tasks such as sifting CVs, calling candidates and arranging interviews, filling in documents, onboarding newcomers, etc. At least part of these tasks can be successfully handled by an AI-fueled virtual assistant.
For example, by delegating the initial screening of candidates to virtual assistants, companies can close open vacancies two times faster! Besides, HR managers will no longer have to spend their time on routine tasks and can concentrate on more important things, such as interviews.
Conducting polls and surveys
One of the effective strategies to reveal the weak points of your product or service and to figure out what can be improved is to collect customer feedback. This can be done online and by means of telephone polls. However, such polls require additional time spent by your managers, which can place certain restrictions on their regularity.
With a virtual assistant, you can convey surveys or polls as often as you need — for instance, every two months or even after each interaction with a customer. Conversational AI makes it possible to reach out to thousands of customers and speed up your poll by up to three times!
Automating order processing
Virtual assistants are also good at guiding customers through the entire purchase process — from order confirmation and negotiating shipment date to notifying them about delivery status, responding to frequently asked questions and handling possible returns. Most of these operations are standardized and, therefore, can be automated.
Virtual assistants can interact with customers on multiple platforms and devices, making the purchase process more enjoyable and convenient for them. This helps you improve customer experience, increase their loyalty and reduce churn. Besides, your employees will get free from routine tasks since virtual agents can easily take them over.
Final thoughts
Virtual assistants powered by conversational AI technology can benefit your business in plenty of ways. A lot of repetitive tasks that eat up your employees’ time can be easily automated: screening candidates, responding to calls, confirming orders, reaching out to customers, providing support, collecting feedback and many more. This helps you cut costs, easily upscale, improve customer experience and increase the overall efficiency of operations.
