The application of conversational in Europe is lagging far behind the rest of the Western world – especially in the field of chatbots and voicebots. According to Farrukh Iftikhar (sales director for Verint's intelligent self-service portfolio for EMEA), the European market is mostly saturated with first-generation chatbot technology. This does not contribute to higher acceptance by consumers and better adoption by companies.

First-generation chatbot technology is like “automated Q&As or search engines, which present information based on search terms from customer input,” says Iftikhar. “These chatbots present search engine results, they are not engaged in conversations. Sometimes there is a workflow behind it, which gives you the impression of a conversation, but often not. You can recognize this by the fact that customer answers are not saved for subsequent steps.”

Understanding the 'intent' determines the quality

One of the characteristics of a real chatbot dialogue is that questions are listened to and that the relationship between questions also plays a role in the answer. Iftikhar: “Ask Google or Siri what the weather is like in Amsterdam and ask 'And tomorrow?' after the answer. Both answers are about the weather – today and tomorrow. However, many chatbots treat both questions as separate questions and will therefore be unable to answer a follow-up question such as 'and tomorrow?'. In that case, the customer must formulate his question again and with sufficient precision.”

Although Google and Siri have a better sense of the relationship between questions, they take little or no account of the context or the intent of the questioner. “This is where the difference with real AI-powered chatbots becomes visible,” says Iftikhar. “Verint's technology has been built over 20 years and one of the results is that the IVA enterprise solution is able to recognize 90.000 different intents – with each intent being pronounced dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different ways.”

European companies lagging behind

The backlog of European companies in chatbot applications is largely due to the early investments in the first generation chatbots, says Iftikhar. It is difficult to have to free up budget again a few years after the first start because the current generation is better - and more expensive because it really needs to be trained, something that is kept to a minimum with generic chatbot solutions. In some cases, conversational solutions are even part of a larger suite for free, such as with Teams. “Then why would you look further,” says Iftikhar. “But anyone who has opted for such a free platform still invests a lot of time and money in implementing it. Before you know it you've invested tons in a solution that can't handle real conversations. That makes it difficult to switch to a better solution from a niche player.”

JustEat has understood

Iftikhar adds that consumers are not really enthusiastic about the simple chatbot solutions that companies offer - something that is also apparent from research among Dutch consumers by Teleperformance's CX Lab, for example. "Add it up and it's clear why the European region is lagging behind with real chatbot technology." That is why there are not many examples of successful and high-quality conversational chatbots in the Netherlands. The chatbot that JustEat – part of Thuisbezorgd.nl – deployment in the UK, Iftikhar is pleased with that. “With the web chat it is not clear whether you are dealing with a bot or an employee. That is already a step in the right direction. When it comes to a full-fledged dialogue, with the best enterprise solutions in terms of technology on a scale of 1 to 10, we are probably now around seven – the standard solutions do not go beyond a four.”

In other words, the development of chatbots is not yet finished – the text-driven chatbots in particular still have difficulty with emotion recognition. When that technology functions well and can be added to the chatbot, we come close to ten.

AmTrak

Another example that Iftikhar is excited about is the application of chatbot technology at AmTrak (American National Railways). AmTrak has linked the search function on the website to the chatbot, so that the customer no longer receives a list of search results. Instead, 'multiple intents' are taken into account – this is the case when you ask about a 'ticket for a one-way ticket from New York to Washington DC next Saturday morning'. What this has brought AmTrak – and AmTrak customers – will be explained by Farrukh Iftikhar on September 23 during the sixth edition of the Conversational Conference of Frank Watching. (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

 

Do you want to optimize and digitize your organization's conversations with customers or citizens? Visit Conversational Conference (with a special discount for readers of Customercontact.nl!). With, inter alia Vattenfall, local authority Goes, Central management, Hans van Dam, Brian Manusama, Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Phoebe Ohayon and more. Also something for you? Check here the program and the discount for readers of Customercontact.nl.

Featured, Technology Verint