Watson Assistant – Making Impact During COVID-19
We are living in troubled times due to COVID-19. There is no one out there unaffected by what is going on. A degree of anxiety is present in everybody. There is a thirst to know more about what is happening.
Companies are inundated with multiple queries from employees and customers related to COVID-19.
Employees want to know about the changes to policies and their impact on them. It’s natural for them to be concerned about work conditions and to seek support as they work remotely. Customers need guidance or resolution to queries related to the company’s products or service offerings. With employees working from home, it can be challenging for them to provide timely responses to customer queries. There is also a risk of not adhering to the SLA’s, which would mean more disgruntled customers and customer churn.
There is also a significant compliance burden on organizations opening up for business. Key stakeholders need real-time visibility into adherence to State and Central Government regulations regarding office cleanliness and maintenance, records of employee health, and transport and logistics issues. It’s clear that the entire situation has become overwhelming for both customers as well as the customer service agents.
Companies may consider hiring more people in the customer support service or outsource it to an external agency to tackle the queries. However, given the budget constraints and lack of time and facilities to train, this solution may not be feasible for the current situation.
An alternate way to address this issue is by using chatbots. They don’t need extensive training and can be easily scaled up depending upon the volume of queries.
There are traditional chatbots that can answer simple queries.
But this is the time for companies to cement their position as being customer-centric. That’s where an intelligent and powerful chat-bot like Watson Assistant has shown itself to be the right solution for the current situation.
So, what (or who) is IBM Watson? And, what’s the COVID-19 play?
How Can Watson Assistant Help Companies During COVID-19?
Watson Assistant is a chatbot developed by IBM. An AI-based tool, Watson Assistant, can answer all questions across all channels irrespective of the complexity of the query.
Watson Assistant can address business challenges such as,
Lack of developers to create automated experiences
Companies do not have to worry about the lack of time or developers to build chatbots. Watson Assistant has an intuitive interface and pre-built content for different industries that helps companies build chat-bots quickly. Business users within companies do not require any coding knowledge to set up the chatbot. The best part is that companies can structure and customize the conversational workflow based on customer intent to make it more personalized and relevant to their queries. In pressing times like these, a solution like Watson Assistant is precisely what a company needs to address the overflow of questions.
Limited, artificial experiences
Unlike traditional chatbots, Watson Assistant does not mimic a limited set of human interactions. It uses natural language recognition to learn the intent of the user’s query and respond accordingly. It can be tailored according to the situation. For example, in the current scenario, it can be trained to help businesses address employee queries related to COVID-19.
Broken customer experiences across touch-points
Customers use multiple channels such as IVR, emails, and social media to contact the customer support team. Sometimes a query would require various interactions with different teams. Watson Assistant enables companies to build a friction less customer experience across multiple channels. It can be integrated with websites or messaging channels such as Facebook messenger to encourage customers to contact the company from whichever channel they prefer. Companies can also determine at what stage a human interaction would be required. For example, the chatbot could answer the basic queries and then seamlessly hand it off to the human agent when a specific question requires human intervention. The unified problem-solving capabilities ensure that the customer does not have to wait to receive answers to their queries.
Locked-in options
Watson Assistant removes the headache of deployment lock-in. Its deployment option gives companies the flexibility to deploy the chatbot on any cloud such as IBM, AWS, Google, or Microsoft. They also have complete freedom to choose if they want to use it on a private cloud or on-premise.
Scalability issues
47% of support teams surveyed by Intercom reveal that there has been a 51% spike than normal in the volume of inbound queries received ever since the outbreak of COVID-19. Understandably, it is difficult for customer support teams to handle such a high volume, especially when they are working remotely. That’s where a smart chatbot like Watson Assistant can come to the rescue. Watson Assistant can be scaled up easily depending upon the demand so they can handle 100 to 1000 calls daily without any hassles or delays in response.
Conclusion
COVID-19 has already impacted businesses. Many companies are worried about customer retention. Others have employee safety on their minds. Compliance with shifting government rules and regulations is also a key concern.
In such complex conditions, the only way to stay ahead of the curve and sustain in the long-run is by keeping customers happy, employees informed, and stakeholders updated. That is possible only when companies respond to queries immediately and provide timely support and information. In a tense environment like this, it is advisable to harness the power of intelligent technology to manage the scale of the problem. Watson Assistant is that intelligent technology that can help companies to build their reputation as being customer-centric, employee-focused, and transparent.
To know more about IBM Watson’s benefits and to hear all about its role in the fight against COVID-19, check out our recent webinar.