But the good news is, you have a solution!

The answer is hyper-automation. This technology enables enterprises to delight their customers with an interactive, immersive, and personalized experience.

What is hyper-automation?

Hyper-automation is the planned application of a wide range of tools, platforms, and technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), etc., to expedite operations and improve their effectiveness. It enhances business processes and integrates functional and process siloes.

Benefits of hyper-automation in the hospitality industry

Streamlined Reservation Procedure: Every customer wants a simple and quick booking procedure, especially in the travel industry. At the same time, customers also look for discounts on different portals and book the hotel that offers the best deal. Additionally, when there is a mass cancellation ( it happened during the pandemic years) making a refund to each customer was a huge task All these together have made hotel reservations a cumbersome process for hotel owners.

All manual repetitious operations, such as bookings and cancellations, can be automated with rule-based configuration and intelligence-based automation. Additionally, the technology enables instant refunds following cancellation.

Improved management of hotel tasks: When you go to a hotel and place your first order, the staff who takes your order is the first touch point where a brand impression is created. The first interaction can make or break the reputation of the hotel.

But a hotel owner can completely mitigate this risk by leveraging a hotel job management system.

For example, if a wrong staff member is given a task, they only need to immediately enter the information into their task management software on a handheld device. A prompt response will result from the automated rules and alerts notifying the affected party or department.

Contactless and simple check-in and check-out: The COVID-19 pandemic has created a demand for contact-free services. Customers can check into their rooms by simply arriving at the hotel using their smartphones thanks to automatic check-in software. This means the customer doesn’t need to wait at the reception to get their room keys. Additionally, it enables the hotels to clear the headspace for their staff and lowers the operational cost.

Respond in a timely manner to consumer queries: Nine out of ten times, customers who call or send an email with a question must wait for sometime to hear back. Longer wait times can negatively impact a customer experience.

The use of chatbots and voice bots have evolved as a crucial channel of communication for the hospitality sector. If a customer’s question can be answered right away, the system processes their emails and chat requests, analyses them, and responds appropriately. If not, the Chatbots/voice assistants forward the inquiries to a live agent, who is now free because there are fewer demands for answers.

Improvements in Customer Feedback Management: When consumers have a negative experience with a brand, they typically write online reviews about it. There are considerable chances that you might lose a sale if there are many negative reviews or if they are not addressed right away. This can be detrimental to your online reputation.

A hotel task management system comes with a built-in automated feedback management system. The customer support team is automatically notified whenever there is a negative review to take appropriate measures.

Are you ready to embrace hyper-automation technology?

Hyper-automation is the future of the hospitality business. It enables business owners to fully refocus their attention from mundane data-oriented duties to more crucial functions that enable them to provide superior customer service.

Author:
Vitesh Kohli is an Intelligent Automation thought & execution leader with a track record of setting up CoE, best practices, robot delivery, managing change and extensive program and project management experience with a strong entrepreneurial background. Have strong expertise in leading Transformation -Intelligent Automation across industries. Strong knowledge of planning big robotics set-ups, cognitive-based chat products, multi-components automation and multi-product Tech solutions. He is a domain Expert and Hands-on Technologist using Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Automation and Conversational Commerce to solve business problems in large enterprises.

Source: Gartner

The post Hyperautomation: How can it help the dynamic Hospitality Industry? appeared first on IGT Solutions.

Chatbots are helping airlines communicate effectively with passengers and provide phenomenal experiences.

Virtual Assistants / Conversational Bots in Airline Industry Today

Virtual assistants help airlines improve their pilots’ productivity and efficiency by reducing repetitive tasks, such as changing radio channels, reading wind forecasts, and providing on-demand position information. Virtual assistants handle these repetitive tasks. Companies such as Garmin (USA) offer AI-enabled audio panels that are useful for pilots.

Airlines also use these assistants to improve customer service. For example – Virtual assistance with AI provides quick responses to simple questions (FAQs). These FAQs include flight status or services/offers (audio, video, Wi-Fi), reservations, baggage queries, seat availability, etc. This allows customer service representatives to attend to and respond to more critical questions than simple and recurring FAQs. These virtual assistants help passengers book tickets and plan trips, too. Almost all airlines have created apps to help customers across various travel-related tasks.

Conversational Bots in Customer Service and Retention:

Today, AI is helping airlines to optimize pricing strategies, raise customer satisfaction rates, customer retention & engagement, and improve the overall flight experience. Below is a list of potential AI use cases for the Airline industry:

Chatbot software and customer service automation: Kayak, a famous American travel booking agency, lets you plan your next trip directly from your Facebook Messenger app. The Chatbot understands simple questions and responds conversationally like human agents.

Conversational IVR: Enables calls for automation or semi-automation of the contact center’s processes, thereby increasing the agents’ efficiency.

According to Gartner, Advanced Virtual Assistants (AVA) are the next big step in today’s chatbots. AVAs are powered by natural language processing (NLP), generating conversational and intuitive sessions and semantic and deep learning techniques such as deep neural networks (DNNs).

Benefits of Conversational Bots in the Airline Industry:

AI chatbots are an innovative technological breakthrough that is gaining popularity worldwide. Userlike conducted a survey where 80% of the respondents confirmed that they had interacted with chatbots. Airlines are investing in chatbot development to address their critical operational and service-related issues. Below are some ways chatbots are making airlines smarter, better, and more efficient.

Improved customer service: Chatbots can handle customer inquiries 24/7 and provide real-time information in an emergency to the customer. At the same time, chatbots don’t have time zone and language barriers as they can be programmed to work according to your customer’s needs.

When customers have a chatbot that answers all their questions, it results in a better customer experience that strengthens the brand image.

Higher engagement: Chatbots can improve customer engagement by providing information, helping customers book airline tickets, fulfilling customer requests, and gathering all the information in one place. This engages the customer better than waiting a long time to contact an airline representative over the phone.

Revenue growth opportunities: Chatbots are increasingly evolving from customer support intermediaries to flexible solutions that can take advantage of sales opportunities. Airlines have increased conversion rates and sales by adding payment gateways, offers, and transaction capabilities to chatbots.

According to Juniper, 47% of consumers are open to using a chatbot to make a purchase, and chatbots will account for $112 billion in retail sales by 2023. This creates a tremendous opportunity to sell more in-flight services/other services to airlines.

Streamlined and integrated data access: Chatbots can collect all flight-related information and data and make it available on the platform that customers can access from anywhere and anytime. Chatbots can record all customer conversations and provide airlines with helpful information about their preferences, booking history, issues, etc. Optimized data access for end customers and airlines can make the industry more efficient.

Saves time and efforts: By integrating an omnichannel conversational bot, airlines can save time and effort handling customer inquiries. Because chatbots can continuously respond to simple and recurring requests 24/7, businesses can hire staff for more valuable tasks, activities, and issues. This saves time and energy and ultimately leads to efficiencies in customer service and engagement processes.

Economical query resolution solution for airlines: Developing a chatbot that works 24/7 is a much more cost-effective option for airlines than hiring and paying staff. Once set and implemented, chatbots can automate the request resolution process. This reduces the need to refer customer inquiries to a maintenance center, which reduces operational costs.

Conclusion

With the increasing investments by airlines in conversational AI, IGT Solutions has partnered with platform providers, such as Uniphore, and LivePerson, amongst others, that provide chatbot platforms along with intelligent insights and analytical capabilities, which IGT can further offer to their clients. These partnerships help IGT Solutions to create a base conversational platform for all existing and opportunistic clients and offer better and customized solutions. IGT has developed 12 different chatbots for a leading American Airline, improving customer satisfaction for the client. If you want similar results for your business, contact us today!

Author:

Apurva Sale is a Lead Business Consultant at IGT Solutions’ Intelligent Automation and Conversational Analytics Practice. She is an Analytics expert with 8 years of experience across Travel, Telecom and Retail domain. With a strong background of Business & Data Analytics, Apurva has extensively worked on elevating customer experience with Insights & sentiment analysis, Social Media Analysis & Insights. She can be reached at Apurva.sale@igtsolutions.azurewebsites.net

The post Revolutionizing Engagements by Conversational Bots in Airline Industry appeared first on IGT Solutions.

What is Computer Vision and what is CX?

Computer vision is an AI capability that allows IT solutions to extract data from digital images, videos, and other visual inputs, understand it and take or recommend action. It uses cutting-edge ML and AI capability to replace the human eye.

As per Annette Franz, founder, and CEO of CX Journey, “Customer experience is the sum of all the interactions that a customer has with an organization over the life of the relationship with that company or with that brand”

Why is Computer Vision enabled CX important?

As consumers are increasingly embracing digital, many of their transactions and interactions are getting digitalized and personalized. Computer Vision is one of the technologies that enable this personalization, and the possibilities are immense.

What are some of the use cases of improving CX through Computer Vision?

The most common use cases these days are in the retail and fashion industry.

Effective CX in a retail store nowadays depends on hassle-free availability, quick checkouts, and customized offers. This may seem to be difficult to achieve especially during periods of high footfall. Retail Stores can use Computer Vision for quick self-checkout, automatic refilling alerts for empty shelves, monitor customer activity for suspicious behavior, measure footfalls, and do customer traffic management in real-time.

It can reduce waiting time in long shopping checkout queues by automatically alerting the activation of more checkout nodes seamlessly. It can also provide accurate footfall analytics with data on repeat customers in the store etc.

The Fashion Industry is leveraging Computer Vision to create image-based searches for design availability, virtual trial rooms for e-commerce to give a look and feel or to generate new ideas and provide intelligent recommendations. Similarly, it can also be used for the furniture, home décor, and eyewear industry to name a few.

Parking management in large shopping malls can be another use case. Computer Vision can be used for occupancy detection and management based on visual data inputs. Hassle-free parking will optimize the shopping traffic and improve the CX of customers shopping there. This can be extended to many other applications of parking management such as – at airports, public transport parking, or large trade shows or concerts.

 How can you apply Computer Vision to improve the CX of customer support?

Customers need a quick and effective resolution of their needs when they connect with a support center. The optimal CX here would mean minimal waiting times and minimal steps in an effective resolution process.

Customer Care centers can be upgraded with Computer Vision enabled Virtual Assistants. It can extract details, authenticate customers and automatically fill details based on visual data inputs of the customer or the product. It can zero in on objects in stills or videos provided by customers and recognize details like category, model no., and manufacturer.

Advanced solutions also have the capability of detecting the operational status of components of a device and detecting faults with high accuracy even for poor-quality images provided by customers.

 How can you apply Computer Vision to improve the CX of air travel industry?

Air travel passengers choose an airline based on the CX offered, besides cost and convenience. Computer Vision can help provide a better CX with intelligent baggage handling, quick check-ins, advanced airport security capability, better aircraft traffic management with the least delays, real-time snag detection of aircraft and in the airport infrastructure. It can also pull up details of repeat passengers for in-flight staff for a better and more customized flight experience. A customer would be delighted with the more customized, hassle-free, delightful, and on-time experience.

Do you think the time has come for Computer Vision to transform CX across domains?

The applications of computer vision are endless and can be used at every node of customer interaction that involves vision to create a better customer experience. It generates a large amount of accurate data for optimization of the experience with analysis and insights in real-time. Businesses that care for their customers want to provide a high customer experience that CX enabled with Computer Vision can provide.

Computer Vision-enabled CX is happening now!

Author:

Nitin Rai is the Vice President of Marketing and Growth Initiatives at IGT Solutions. He has spent over two decades working with leading information technology service providers and is currently enabling various aspects of Marketing, Demand Generation, CX, Digital, MarTech deployment, PR, and Communications at IGT Solutions. He aims to help the organization attain an enviable position as a leading Digital CX, Data, and Digital services provider in the chosen industries, globally.

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Conversational automation can be experienced in broadly 3 forms. These are chatbots, voicebots, and voice assistants.  Let us study them in detail.

• Chatbot: These are software programs that interact with human users over chat platforms using natural language processing(NLP) and artificial intelligence(AI) in order to understand questions put forth by the user and provide relevant answers. The initial chatbot was text-based and was programmed to reply to a limited set of simple queries. Answers had to be hardcoded by the chatbot developers, and the bot would only be able to answer questions for which it was trained.  However, today, chatbots are able to learn through repeated interaction with human users and can dynamically provide responses by integrating with knowledge bases.

There are multiple approaches to building chatbots that are used in the market today:

1. Menu based: These are the most basic type of chatbots. The user may have to choose one among multiple options to finally reach an answer. These type of chatbots are best when the intent is to strictly navigate the user through pre-decided offerings and limited and fixed FAQs
2. Keyword recognition based: These chatbots listen to what users type and respond appropriately. They are trained to capture relevant keywords associated with the service being offered. However, they tend to fail when questions asked are similar in nature but not an exact match to the keywords.
3. Rule/Linguistic based: These are intent-driven chatbots that are trained on recognizing the purpose of a user’s enquiry. This type of chatbot is best implemented when there is a clear demarcation of customer query type. It can catch any intent put forth by the customer that it has been trained for.

At IGT, we have created multiple chatbots for various clients across the globe. For example, we have developed a keyword based chatbot for a leading retail company specializing in health self-test kits. The chatbot answers basic queries related to the product sold, such as product usage eligibility, cancellation, refund policy etc.

• Voice Assistant: Voice Assistant is a type of Virtual Assistant. Voice Assistants make use of voice recognition, speech synthesis and natural language processing and help people by doing some basic tasks. There are multiple voice assistants like Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant. Voice assistants make use of certain wake words like “Ok Google” or “Hey Siri” in order to start performing the task assigned. Voice assistants don’t really understand what a human says, they only recognize wake words and communicate with a server to complete the task.  Voice assistants can be deployed on the phone and even at home. Voice assistants for phones perform tasks like setting alarms, scheduling a meeting, taking photos, or accessing other apps on the phone. Voice assistants in homes can be used in the form of smart speakers to get information on weather or news, finding a recipe, or controlling smart home devices.

IGT has built integrations into some of its chatbots so they can be triggered by the use of voice assistants such as Google assistant.

• Voice Bots: Voice Bots are also a type of conversational Assistant. The voice bots make use of artificial intelligence and natural language understanding for communication. It converts speech to text and passes on the query to the NLU engine, and once the relevant response is generated, converts it back from text to speech and parses it back to the user. In effect, they are used either as a complement or as an alternative to traditional IVR in the Contact Centre space. Voice bots respond to how human agents would respond to queries, and not only determine what a customer wants but also guides them to an effective resolution.

IGT is involved in the deployment of voicebot at the contact centre of a leading global online travel agency and a large hospitality group. With the help of voicebot deployment IGT has helped its clients to improve its efficiency by achieving up to 35% containment of volumes within the BOT and improvement in CSAT by 15% and NPS by 25%.

In conclusion, while there are multiple approaches to implementing conversational automation within an enterprise, the decision of which type of conversational automation should be made depends on factors like the business problem statement, customer engagement channel, breadth and depth of offering, and service level agreements in place.

Author:

Ayushi Jain is a Module Lead in RPA at IGT Solutions. She has 8.5 years of experience in the IT industry and has rich work experience in the Travel and HealthCare domains. Ayushi has obtained various certifications in UiPath and Automation Anywhere. She loves to travel and explore the untouched beauty of nature and enjoys reading fiction in her free time.

The post Revolutionize Customer Engagement with Conversational Automation Solutions appeared first on IGT Solutions.

Capturing Data to Facilitate Learning

With the ongoing use of Conversational AI, currently, customers have multiple channels of engagement to connect with a brand, thereby ensuring the generation of enormous volumes of unstructured data every moment through a multitude of platforms, including:

• Social Media – Facebook, Messenger, Twitter and other Engagement Channels
• Web & Mobile apps – Web and App for Sales and Service
• Voice Devices – Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Siri etc.
• Contact Centre – Dial in for Contact Centre Support

Leveraging Data to Derive Learning: Transforming this unstructured data into valuable and actionable business insights is a tedious process. This, especially without the right tools and platforms in place, becomes an impossible task. Therefore, the use of various text / speech analytics tools such as LivePerson, Verint, Clarabrigde, Nice, Lexalytics, etc. helps in analyzing the conversations, spot keywords, build rules, identify real-time customer sentiments, categorise conversations into positive or negative type, and analyse customer feedback and surveys. These tools are best leveraged combined with business intelligence experts, thus helping the companies derive actionable insights to improve:

• Customer Satisfaction
• Customer Service
• Operational Efficiencies
• Brand Campaigns
• Provide Personalised Offers, and
• More Insightful Customer Behaviours.

Social Media is a giant where we see comments and trolls; airline companies among many others receive millions of mentions each day. These mentions/comments range from traveler enthusiasts posting photos of clouds outside their windows to angry customers complaining about the service. Social media analytics (text analytics) helps the airline industry to gain real-time insights.

Amongst all comments/mentions around airline companies, the U.S based airlines are the ones that are usually discussed and have many mentions, however, they are mostly are negative. People complain about delayed flights, missing baggage, inflight & overall services. Winning this battle against the top competitors of the brand, while providing the best customer service can be challenging. Social media analytics, therefore makes the job easier.

Real-Time Feedback: Text/Speech analytics helps by alerting the management about all online events/talks. Passengers are online and are constantly talking about their experiences on various platforms. This data helps the team to analyze the information & dive deep into action with an emergency response arrangement. This is exactly how Southwest Airlines is using their social media listening command centre to overcome any crisis situation and deliver excellent customer service

Spotting trends: Like every other industry, the Airline industry also needs a loyal customer base and a strong online reputation. However, managing the business while keeping up with the constant online chatter and trends is tricky. Currently, the airline industry witnesses such patterns and trends.

For instance, looking at the current pandemic scenario and listening to the chatter online, there has been a lot of concern among the passengers with regards to safety measures/arrangements. In response to this trend, Delta Airlines has been announcing about safety protocols quite often over SMS, Emails, Chat & Voice, and Social media platforms.

The use of relevant and trending content is the most attractive tool to improve visibility of a brand. That’s how the giants in airline industry are making a difference and creating their niche

Handling the Crisis or Negative Feedback: Of all the chatter around in the airline industry, a predominant section is filled with negative comments. In the current digital age, one negative comment can cause a ripple effect to the brand’s image, this in-turn can cause considerable damage to the business. Especially with people keep complaining about poor service quality, boarding facilities, baggage queries etc.

Today, passengers also use third-party apps or agencies to book their travel plans & flights. Therefore, it becomes of utmost importance to please the customers through these third-party apps. Speech, text and voice analytics teams analyze the data generated through these channels as well for their business improvement insights.

Conclusion

This digital age has made the world more connected than ever: it has brought customers and companies closer. Every other company across the industries is using digital platforms along with Text Analytics, Speech Analytics, Social Media Analytics to stay relevant, stay connected, and offer maximum value to their customers and build brand image. Customers expect the same from the airline industry. Writing an update on Twitter about a delayed flight or upgraded safety measures goes a long way in building a trustworthy relationship with the customer. Additionally, Conversational Analytics helps the airline industry to stay focused on every important consumer insight in the most effective way possible.

Looking at the immense scope of speech & text analytics in the Airline industry, IGT has partnered with Nice – Nexidia to quantify the business problems and offer apt solutions.  Nexidia is an interaction analytics software that offers a one-stop solution to organize, analyze and transform the unstructured data from various data pools / databases into actionable insights for a brand. IGT is fully equipped with the right tools and business intelligence resources to provide intelligent insights to our clients. Amongst many projects, IGT is currently working with one of the leading American travel companies by providing a quantified and calculated statistical approach to pursue their business goals. Data mining & structuring, customer verbatim analysis, customer sentiment evaluation, root cause analysis of a business problem to improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) & metric driven operational efficiencies and inferential insights are few areas of IGT’s expertise.

Author:

Apurva Sale is a Lead Business Consultant at IGT Solutions’ Intelligent Automation and Conversational Analytics Practice. She is an Analytics expert with 8 years of experience across Travel, Telecom and Retail domain. With a strong background of Business & Data Analytics, Apurva has extensively worked on elevating customer experience with Insights & sentiment analysis, Social Media Analysis & Insights. She can be reached at Apurva.sale@igtsolutions.azurewebsites.net

The post Leveraging Conversation Analytics to derive Actionable Business Insights in the Airline Industry appeared first on IGT Solutions.

To facilitate more seamless and effective recruitment, to get recruiters their time back, so that they can put more effort in interacting with candidates and acting as strategic thinkers in their roles, many organizations are focusing on technology that supports intelligent automation, especially interview platforms that leverage conversational AI. Beyond bringing upon a cost-friendly and, efficient solution. Many deem AI as an important factor in creating fair, and diverse hiring channels, along with resolving troubles around scheduling interviews, maintaining documents, and storing records.

According to some studies, the proportion of companies using or planning to use conversational AI solutions in the recruitment space jumped from 7% to 47% in just the last 3 years.

Companies today are not restricting conversational AI to just sourcing or applying, are instead allowing it to be a vessel of value throughout the entire talent acquisition journey; even extending core HR tasks.

12% of organizations are now using conversational AI for internal mobility as per these studies, while

19% of organizations are using it for onboarding.

Conversational AI can also impact diversity in a good way. The research found improvements in recruitment-essential factors such as time-to-fill (+33%), conversion rates (+36%), quality-of-hire (+35%), quality of applicant (+33%), and diversity of hires (+27%) within the first year of using it.

Working of conversational AI

Various technologies are used in conversational AI: Natural language processing, Automatic speech recognition, Machine learning, and advanced dialog management are used to understand, react to, and learn from each interaction.

Components:  

Challenges:

• Changing communication: Due to constant change in communication, various factors may influence communication between humans and machines. Factors such as languages, accents, dialects, emojis, slang, etc.
• Security and privacy: Conversational AI applications need to be designed with utmost safety to maintain the security and privacy of sensitive personal information which might get stolen.
• Restrictions: Resistance and mindset of few managers who reply on traditional methods are not flexible with new technologies. Some countries might even place restrictions on technologies.
• Cost: Initial investments are a little high which might become a challenge to even get started with conversational AI.

Conversational AI in recruitment

Conversational AI is the set of technologies behind automated messaging and speech-enabled applications that offer human-like interactions between computers and humans. Conversational AI recruiting bots are so popular because, unlike a human recruiter, they can answer questions 24×7. The plus point for candidates is that the bot’s instant response time eliminates the wait time of hours or days for answers to the simplest of questions. These bots not only help job candidates at the pre-application stage, but they can also schedule any phone or screen-based interviews, gather information, and update candidates on the status of their application. That adds up to a much better candidate experience, results in saving the recruiter’s time, and provides analytical insights that lead to more effective talent acquisition.

AI bots are highly versatile in how they interact with candidates, communicating by email, text message, and even by voice over the phone. Some companies are using AI bots to help users complete a job application entirely using voice responses on their mobiles. Today, with enhancements in natural language processing, or NLP the value of conversational AI is even greater. It helps mine the conversation’s theme or speaker sentiment. These features benefit a recruiter or a hiring manager to deliver impactful interviews.

Conversational AI types

Use cases of conversational AI for recruiting:

• Prescreen candidates: The ideal solution for pre-screen recruiting automation is conversational AI. It drops off candidates less qualified for the position in the hiring process compared to forms, pre-assessment, or chatbots. Covers necessary and basic screening questions of a candidates’ qualifications, skills, and experiences. Various platforms such as text messages, emails, Facebook, or any other messaging applications can be used for pre-screening. With the help of conversational AI, the productivity will increase by 144% and the time required with the traditional method which is approximately 70-80% will be saved.
• Coordination in scheduling interviews: Conversational AI helps set up calls or meetings with the candidates who are qualified, and acts as a point of contact for rescheduling or canceling the interview calls, hence helping lower the tedious administration work and giving the recruiter ample amount of time to have a meaningful conversation with candidates. All that is to be done is just connect Conversational AI with the recruiter’s calendar.
• Refresh the profiles: Conversational AI helps reach out to passive candidates, engages with them, checks where they are currently in their career, their career interests, and other details and updates the information in the candidate’s profile data.
• Job requisition and FAQs: Conversational AI can create a talent pipeline for new job opportunities in lesser time and during this process, it ensures timely and consistent communication with candidates. Provides a human-like conversation compared to a typical chatbot. And will answer basic questions of applicants which saves the recruiters time.
• Valuable and unbiased insights of a candidate: Conversational AI has the ability to sort out and interpret data from a candidate in an unbiased manner and processes the information of a candidate based on their answers to close and open-ended questions. It masks any personal information related to candidates to enable unbiased hiring based only on merit. The results are handed over to HR teams in real-time. It also eliminates information about a candidate that is prone to biases such as language accent, gender, age, etc.
• Analyze and interpret key behavioral traits: Conversational AI has the ability to optimize the discovery of a candidate’s behavioral traits and capabilities. This unique ability will help generate and ask within-context questions based on the candidate’s responses and fulfill the interest by getting to know the candidates better. Additionally, conversational AI stores and archives record for easy access and analytics.

Why Conversational AI? 

Reductions in dependency on agency decreased, 3X-increase in finding the right candidates, reduction in the cost of hiring as well as time to hire which lead to freeing up time for HR professionals, 2.2X more qualified candidates, scalability, improving efficiency, improving the candidate experience, diversity inclusion, etc.

In one survey, (mention source) around 96% of recruiters agreed that conversational AI enhanced the recruiting process, as well as improved the interview process. How at one point the hiring process used to feel like searching for a needle in the haystack, conversational AI has transformed that experience. Finding the right candidate becomes less of a tedious task and more of an intuitive way to build connections. It creates an experience that is healthy, positive, and efficient, for both candidates and recruiters.

IGT has been providing conversational AI solutions across domains such as airline, hospitality, and retail alongside enterprise functions such as procurement, finance, human resources – helping deliver improvements in customer satisfaction scores by 20%, and achieve operational efficiencies by 35%.

Source: Hirevue

Author:

Ramani Giri is the Senior Business Analyst at IGT Solutions’ Intelligent Automation Team. She has an overall experience of 1.75 years in intelligent automation and the hospitality industry. Outside of work, Ramani likes to swim, travel and read.

The post Conversational Automation and Transformation in Recruitment appeared first on IGT Solutions.

During the guest stay, however, the industry for the most part depends on human interaction to provide the customer delight element. While this has worked well over the years, with the onset of the Covid pandemic era, these same human interactions have become challenges – both for guests and the hotels in question. The first wave of the pandemic saw the shuttering of many properties as part of government initiatives to minimize the risk of Covid spread. While the realities of the situation are not lost on anyone, it did pose a challenge for the hospitality industry as a whole, which has huge overheads, and often not enough liquidity to afford to shutter properties for months on end.

While sanitization and spacing measures have brought a bit of parity to the equation, the challenges that come with face-to-face interactions do continue. Looking beyond the Covid aspect of things, many business guests prefer to minimize the waiting period they have to endure at the front desk, and the tedious procedure of raising complaints when something is not right in their rooms. Conversational automation tailored for the ‘In-room’ stay of guests can help solve these issues and help improve guest experiences across the board.

Most leading hospitality companies have mobile apps, loyalty programs, and virtual assistants in some shape or form. Many of these mobile apps have quick links to FAQs, can provide directions to the property, and help with check-in. Adding conversational automation to the mix can ease the guest experience on these apps. When a guest is at the hotel the Virtual Assistants can answer any questions that come in: What time is breakfast? What time does the pool open? Can I have a late checkout? Virtual Assistant answering these queries can provide guests with an instant and reliable medium where they can fire off these questions and get the details they need at the moment – alleviating the strain of searching through a mobile app or website for answers, or the load on call centres where any guest calls would land, or even the in-house staff who can instead focus on providing greater service experience at other touchpoints.

The scope of guest experience that can be delivered by these conversational assistants – either as chatbots, mobile applications, or voice assistants on Alexa or Google devices in the rooms – is quite varied. Listed below are some ways that conversational assistants can help during the stay of the guest at the property:

• Guest Stay Management: Just imagine being a guest arriving at the hotel lobby post a long flight, and being able to check-in on your phone without the hassle of stopping at the front desk. Similarly, a chatbot can speed up any updates related to a guest stay, such as notification that the room is available, or reminders about the property’s check-out policy.
• Cross and Up-selling: Piggybacking conversational assistants with machine learning algorithms and integration with guest loyalty profiles can allow them to cross and up-sell services to the guests. Through the analysis of previous interactions with a guest, a chatbot could send relevant offers at the right time, such as special offers at the restaurant or spa.
• Ordering and Tracking: Chatbots can also be used to order room service meals – all the way from providing the food menu, to enabling guests to click and order with integrations to the hotel’s systems and payment gateways to accept payment. The chatbot can also update the guest on how long the meal order will take and proffer custom recommendations.
• Special Requests: Chatbots can be trained on the amenities provided by the property so they can receive and pass on special requests from guests to the relevant staff – from extra pillow requests to anniversary special arrangements in the room. Chatbots can even be used to set wake up calls or notify guests of any spa, golf, or dinner reservations they may have made.
• Complaints and Ticketing: Guests often have complaints about their rooms or some aspect of their stay. Chatbots can be integrated within the back-end systems so that maintenance is receiving those complaints about leaky showers, or lack of toiletries.

Responding to guest requirements in real-time, while the guest is still on the premises to benefit, boosts satisfaction and creates great experiences. Conversational automation, either through voice assistants or chatbots can provide hospitality companies with the perfect vessel to ensure these improvements in guest experiences.

IGT Solutions has a robust Intelligent Automation Practice with over 4 years of delivering excellence in process and conversational automation, with a special focus on enhancing customer experience. The practice has deployed solutions around bookings and cancellations in the hospitality space, alongside FAQ chatbots. The team has also partnered with hospitality clients to build voice bot solutions for guests calling in to the contact centre. Through the delivery of conversational automation, IGT has helped clients achieve 35% channel deflection, 15% IVR containment, 20% increase in CSAT and 25% improvement in Net promoter scores.

Author:

Nandhagopal Muralithar is a Senior Business Consultant at IGT Solutions’ Intelligent Automation and Analytics Practice. With specialized experience of 7 years in Digital Transformation Consulting across Travel, Hospitality and Retail domains, Nandh has worked extensively on the front edge of process and conversational automation technologies, designing and delivering innovative back and front office automation solutions.

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Before Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Depending on the procedures, protocols, and infrastructures of each institution, steps to process debit or credit card fraud significantly varied. Still, certain steps used to be followed, namely, collection of disputed transaction data from the web-based core banking system; gathering and investigating of information associated with the claim; and processing of the debit/credit card fraud disputes via CMS – card management system.

Without the help of technology or automated solutions, every single step would be conducted manually, from data gathering and data processing to decision making. For some banking institutions, transactions could be handled by batch, while for others, they needed to be resolved separately. This traditional method was not only time-consuming, discouraging, repetitive and overwhelming for workers but was also prone to more errors. Given the fact that there were thousands of card fraud claims per day, it was a challenging task for financial institutions to ensure accuracy and speed through conventional techniques, most of which were based on human intervention.

After Robotic Process Automation

Data Gathering: Collecting information on disputed transactions is the first and foremost step bank employees have to follow. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions can help navigate and log into the web-based system of the bank, select a date range, and export the transaction data. To gather additional information from numerous internal databases or public domains to give a holistic view of customer data for fraud analysts robots can be utilized.

Data Processing: After relevant data is captured, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can assist bank employees in removing duplicates, and formatting and refining data to make it fit for use. When this automation solution is combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), Text Analytics, and Machine Learning (ML); the robot can track activities, collate payments, determine anomalies, and identify fraud patterns. Apart from freeing up humans from repetitive and monotonous tasks, RPA also ensures higher accuracy and enhanced productivity, as it can self-learn from previous cases, thereby reducing time spent on subsequent disputes at most.

Decision Making: RPA has revolutionized the back-end operations of banking organizations, and debit/credit card fraud processing is not an exception. The automation solution has been able to significantly reduce costs while easing financial employee workloads, as well as increasing the quality of fraud processing and minimizing the number of human error-related issues. While the issues faced by financial institutions in detecting and processing fraudulent card transactions may continue in the future, Robotic Process Automation, more or less, can empower efficiency in resolving these challenges.

About IGT in RPA
IGT Solutions has an extensive experience in back/front office automation leveraging Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as the means to automate business processes which are high volume, repetitive, prone to human error and come with stringent regulatory compliances. The tasks can include queries, calculations, reports and maintenance of records and transactions.
IGT has a team of RPA specialists who have successfully automated processes for some of the major players across industries.

Author:

Himanshu Gandhi is a Project Manager at IGT Solution’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA). He has 14 years of diverse work experience as a Senior Consultant and Project Manager for Digital Transformation across Airlines, Food and Beverage, and Banking industry. He can be reached at Himanshu.gandhi@igtsolutions.azurewebsites.net.

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As robots don’t have intelligence of their own, it severely limits the extent to which automation is possible, as there may be a lot of varied inputs and processes that require decision-making at different stages. To bring in some intelligence to automation, we must look at Artificial Intelligence technologies. AI has the ability to use its own logic and understanding to perform tasks. AI can learn to take decisions on its own, based on rules created by humans, and can learn by failing too, which is popularly known as machine learning.

AI includes multiple technologies that study the different facets of intelligence, including Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML). NLP and ML are more advanced than RPA. Other technologies used in AI include Virtual Agents, Biometrics, and Image Recognition. Virtual agents make use of chatbots that are programmed in a way that it can respond to human queries. A lot of applications use a virtual agent as the first point of contact for interaction with customers. Biometrics are used for identification and analysis of the human body e.g.; fingerprint can be used for entering the in-time or login time of an employee. Image Recognition is used for identifying and distinguishing an object in a video.

To explain in layman terms, RPA depicts human actions whereas AI depicts the intelligence of a human. RPA does not have the ability to learn from its mistakes whereas AI can keep learning from its own actions. RPA performs tasks that are clearly defined and where no thinking is involved. However, AI is a step further from RPA as it can learn and analyze and can give improved output to the user through training. AI differs from RPA as it can include voice and facial recognition.

Intelligent Automation (IA) combines RPA with AI technologies as per business needs to maximize the value of automation. Organizations can use IA to provide virtual assistants to their customers across chat and voice channels. The organizations that use IA can surely see an increase in their productivity, accuracy and understand the needs of their customers better by directly connecting with them. It also leads to a reduction in costs.

The ideal combo is one where RPA is combined with AI where AI helps yield better results. Which directly results in the expansion of the scope of automation within the enterprise.

As we already learned, to maximize value from automation and expand its scope, a blend of RPA with AI technologies will result in Intelligent Automation to empower rapid end-to-end business processes and considerably more.

IA offers many advantages that can be incorporated by organizations so that efficient solutions can be provided to the clients. The advantages are as follows:

• Increased productivity that enable automated applications and processes to run faster.
• Reduced costs – Automation ensures increased productivity leading to decreased manpower costs.
• Improved accuracy – Work done by an automated bot has less errors than done by humans.

Let’s look at one of the use cases where IGT incorporated RPA technology for a leading airline. This technology helped the airline cabin crew staff update their status of flying with the help of chatbots. The chatbot that interacts with the attendants shares updates about last minute changes in the staff on a particular flight.

IGT has deployed IA solutions in multiple domains like travel, hospitality and healthcare. With IA, IGT has improved its customer experience by optimizing back-office operations and increasing process efficiencies. By incorporating IA in contact center processes, it has further been able to handle surges in call center volumes, provide proactive customer service, and automated personalized messages for many of its clients.

Author:

Ayushi Jain is a Module Lead in RPA at IGT Solutions. She has 8.5 years of experience in the IT industry and has rich work experience in the Travel and HealthCare domains. Ayushi has obtained various certifications in UiPath and Automation Anywhere. She loves to travel and explore the untouched beauty of nature and enjoys reading fiction in her free time.

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Today, influential megatrends are reshaping the industry adoption of Conversational AI, reimagining value delivery in unforeseen ways. It includes the emergence of voice commerce, data-driven chatbot design, customer sentiment analysis, multi-lingual support, M2M conversations, voice assistants, and much more.

With proven benefits, enterprises are increasingly putting Conversational AI into action for enriching customer experience, improving bottom-line performance in the process. As per Deloitte’s Beyond Touch: Voice Commerce 2030 study, voice commerce will increase online sales. The decisive factor here is unimagined convenience for the customer, with the study predicting that over 30% of e-commerce sales will be driven via voice commerce by 2030.

Applications of Conversational AI

Businesses leveraging Conversational AI can become an emphatic organization that is more responsive to the customer’s needs. Chatbots depicts one of the most popular forms of Conversational AI. However, there are diverse applications of this emerging technology across business verticals, some of which include:

Online Customer Support: Conversational AI is being implemented by many companies for providing 24/7 customer service support at an optimized cost and much greater reliability.  E-commerce platforms use virtual assistance for product selection and customer service, which helps the business achieve higher customer satisfaction and service relevance.

HR Processes: Most of the time, employees call HR managers to know the information they can look up themselves. To maximize the HR department’s efficiency, a 24/7 employee service AI chatbot can be implemented to answer all the employees’ FAQs.  The HR chatbot is also helpful in passing any relevant information and real-time updates related to any changes in the company’s policy.

Retail & Ecommerce: According to Statista, worldwide e-commerce retail sales are expected to reach 5.4 trillion USD by 2022. At this growth rate, e-commerce platforms often struggle with manual sales and support systems that have their limits to delivering a seamless customer experience. As a respite, e-commerce and retail platforms are shifting towards Conversational AI to increase engagement, elevate the customer’s purchase journey, and offer personalized communication for the buyers.

Gaming: Gamers are usually engrossed and if there is a challenging level to complete, and they happen to face a technical glitch, they want it resolved immediately so that the momentum is not lost. Nowadays, many gaming companies have set up service centers to assist gamers whenever they feel stuck at a level. To help resolve common issues, an AI chatbot is set up to answer these queries. With this help, there is a high chance that the slump faced by gamers will end, and they are less likely to end the game mid-way.

Travel & Hospitality: The traveling customers expect to have their queries resolved on demand. It is where an AI-based chatbot can come in handy for companies that provide travel & hospitality services. Conversational AI is used to keep track of customers booking details, room preferences, opted traveling packages, travel dates, and many other details.

How Does Conversational AI Add Value to A Business?

Conversational AI is a technology that guarantees optimized ROI for growth-oriented enterprises. It brings value for both the customer and the employees and promises exceptional benefits for businesses, some of which include:

Substantial Cost-Savings: About 15 -70% of cost reduction opportunities are available for businesses with Conversational AI depending on customer channel interactions. The algorithm powering the Conversational AI bot can be trained to answer repetitive questions, allowing valuable human resources to focus on more strategic roles like customer relationship development and grievance redressal.

Increased Sales & Customer Engagement: Conversational AI allows customers to engage more frequently with the brand, creating a sense of trust among the target audience and ultimately increasing revenue.

The personalization feature can keep track of customer activity and recommend products or services depending upon their previous preferences.  

Deep Customer Insights: The customer’s interaction with the Conversational AI-based bot provides companies with data on what problems customers face and which issues need to be targeted and resolved on priority.

How Are Enterprises Implementing Conversational AI?

Let’s take a look at some real-life instances of some world-class organizations using Conversational AI to improve value delivery.

A Leading Airline Company Applies AI Chatbots

Germany’s largest airline company implements Conversational AI to update passengers on canceled or missed connection flights. The AI chatbots can answer all the FAQs that a passenger can have while boarding the plane.  If passengers are not satisfied with the answers of Chatbot, then they also interact with human agents without any waiting period. This way, customer service executives can spend more time answering complex and specific queries.

A Mental Healthcare Chatbot

A mental healthcare company makes use of a conversational AI-powered mental health chatbot that has made mental healthcare services more accessible for patients. It breaks all the barriers of mental therapy and allows people to have real-time interaction with the bot. Researchers developed the AI chatbot in collaboration with Stanford University to deliver behavioral therapy to patients at their convenience. It provides psychoeducation to the users and offers insights to deal with their mental issues by conversing with them.

Implementing Conversational AI:

• Making A Smart Adoption Strategy: While making the adoption strategy, businesses should figure out detailed customer persona, narrow down the scope, and use the data that is already available to set up the scene.
• Conversation Design: A lousy conversation design can lead to a bad customer experience. Conversation design plays a massive role in delivering a superior customer experience. A suitable conversation design must be sought out earlier in the development stage as it is easy to change.
• Choose The Right Channels for Integration: Before jumping into the development of Conversational AI, you should figure out which key channel and existing software you are to integrate with it, for example, company website, social media channels, CRM, emails, etc.

Even though Conversational AI has many applications today, there is still much room left for its development. Chatbots will become more personalized with time. According to a survey carried out by Deloitte, personalization is one of the significant fields of innovation and is responsible for 16 % of patents filed today.

Sources: Deloitte, Statista, Juniperresearch,

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