Virtual Assistants Are For Real

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have enabled the creation of automated chatbots that have been mimicking human behaviour so impeccably that it is hard to tell whether the “Sonia” you’ve been chatting with is a real woman answering your queries real-time or a bot trained to seek relevant information to be able to assist you!

- Akhil Gupta

Time is money. And both are usually running low.

Any business that is consumer-focussed will necessarily need to hire a customer support service. From real estate to aviation to e-commerce and banking, all C2C businesses admit the importance of 24x7 customer service executive. Traditionally, a customer service executive’s daily activity includes monitoring phone calls or live chats and providing fast assistance to callers. Since a lot of these requests are routine asks and involve checking query status, account balance or any such data and most asks do not need an actual person checking it all up manually, bots have become an industry favourite. One single bot alone can take the load of 1000 people solving 1000 queries in a minute. They considerably bring down labor costs. With bots acting as virtual assistants, maintaining efficiency and the desired standard of service became a lot simpler. For a business, it saves money, for a customer it saves frustration. We are millennials. We can’t wait 2 working days for someone to get back to us!

Supported by artificial intelligence these virtual assistants understand the meaning of what is said or typed. They have evolved to an extent where they can not only look at the phrases but also understand what specific words mean in a certain context.

They are here to stay