By: Al Balasco

Today, technology has changed the way we shop, learn, and connect. Yet, it can be argued that technology has sanitized many of our interactions of the human touch. To win and retain customers in today’s hyper-competitive market, customer experience needs to take back some personalization. Digital video assistants offer new tools to do just this.

According to a recent Facebook survey of users in 13 global regions, more than 70 percent of consumers today across all generations favor instant messaging apps as their primary communication method. And, more than half of these consumers prefer businesses that they can communicate with via chat. Businesses can use messaging-based communications to answer customer service questions and to build brand loyalty by informing customers about new products or sales promotions.

Businesses have moved to automate these chat-based interactions as a cost-effective alternative to more expensive live chat engagements. In addition, customers are increasingly comfortable using chatbots for customer service interactions. However, dramatic improvements in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, natural language processing (NLP) and advanced speech recognition (ASR) capabilities are taking digital communications with customers to the next level with video bots. These video bots can deliver virtual customer assistance services for customer service, digital marketing, brand loyalty, and sales enablement—and can bring the “human touch” back to the customer experience.

Figure 1: The Evolution of Customer Engagement from the Yellow Pages to Video Digital Assistants

New Technologies are Changing CX

When linked together, these new technologies can dramatically improve the digital customer experience and reinforce customer loyalty:

• Artificial Intelligence: Enables computers to interpret and to leverage data to make decisions based on their findings.
  
• Natural Language Processing: Computer processing of large datasets of human speech so that the compute can understand what is being said.
  
• Advanced Speech Recognition: Allows computers to convert speech to text.
  
• Computer Vision: Uses software processing of video streams to “see” in real-time.

While voice-enabled services and chatbots have played a critical role in the evolution of customer service, interactive and realistic video bot services are even more attractive to the customer. Video call bots that leverage all of these technologies—and that can be accessed by dialing a regular phone number (no app download required) via a 4G/LTE phone—allow businesses to automate customer support while still creating a personalized experience for customer service, sales and brand engagement.