How to Choose an AI Voicebot

Customer service interactions are set to evolve significantly in the coming months. More and more organizations will adopt AI voicebots to manage their customer service or for many other aspects of their business: appointment scheduling, order tracking, sales campaigns…

Voicebots are faster, smarter, and more personalized than ever. They can answer questions, solve problems, and even crack jokes.

But before you dive into researching and selecting an AI voicebot for your business, it's essential to do your homework. That's what we'll cover here.

Do You Really Need an AI Voicebot?

AI voicebots are solutions that use natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) to understand and respond to human speech. They can perform various tasks such as answering frequently asked questions, scheduling appointments, recording orders, and more. They can also integrate with other systems to access and update data.

The benefits of integrating voice AI into your operations are numerous. You can:

• Save time and money by automating repetitive tasks.
• Improve the customer experience by providing instant and accurate responses.
• Increase customer loyalty by offering personalized and humanized interactions.
• Boost sales and conversions through upselling and cross-selling products and services.

It's essential to determine whether your business can truly benefit from a voicebot. Here are some factors to consider:

• The volume and complexity of customer inquiries you receive.
• The availability and cost of human agents.
• The preferences and expectations of your target audience.
• Your business goals and objectives.

Factors to Consider When Selecting an AI Voicebot

1. Your Business's Specific Needs and Objectives

You need to identify the problems and challenges affecting communication with your customers and how an AI voicebot can help you overcome them. For example, do you want to:

• Reduce wait times and improve response rates.
• Offer multilingual service.
• Increase customer satisfaction and retention.
• Generate more leads and revenue.
• Streamline workflows and optimize resources.
• Gather valuable insights and feedback.

2. The Level of Personalization You Need

Personalization is key to creating memorable customer experiences and building trust. Customers expect to be treated as individuals! A good AI voicebot should be able to:

• Understand the context and intent of customer queries.
• Produce relevant and natural responses.
• Deliver answers in a clear and expressive voice.
• Handle different accents, dialects, and languages.
• Learn from customer feedback and improve over time.

3. Technical Aspects and Performance

When choosing an AI voicebot, it's crucial to consider various technical aspects that will directly affect the user experience. First, latency, or how quickly the voicebot responds, must be minimal to ensure a smooth and natural interaction. Next, the quality of synthetic voices is paramount: they must be clear, expressive, and pleasant to listen to in order to deliver a positive user experience. Also make sure the voicebot supports multiple languages, which is essential if your business operates internationally.

Additionally, the voicebot must be capable of performing various specific actions, such as appointment scheduling. For example, an effective voicebot should be able to understand client availability, suggest appropriate time slots, and record appointments in your company's management system. This ability to perform complex tasks autonomously is a key indicator of an AI voicebot's performance and usefulness.

Finally, the ability to integrate the voicebot with APIs is a major asset. This allows you to collect and leverage information obtained during conversations and integrate it into systems such as CRMs. For example, collected data can be automatically recorded and updated in your CRM, facilitating the management of customer interactions and improving service quality. Effective API integration also ensures real-time synchronization of information across different platforms, contributing to a consistent and personalized customer experience.

4. Voicebot or Callbot, or Both?

A callbot works the same way as a voicebot, with the major difference being that it is deployed exclusively on a telephone platform. It's easy to confuse a callbot with a voicebot. They share many similarities, but there are also notable differences: a callbot is essentially a voicebot using the telephone as its channel.

Depending on your specific needs, you might prefer one or the other, or even a combination of both to deliver an omnichannel customer experience. A voicebot can enhance interactions on your digital platforms and website, while a callbot can efficiently handle phone calls, ensuring a fast and consistent response to your customers' inquiries.

5. The Ability to Receive or Make Calls

Callbots are particularly well-suited for managing phone calls, whether inbound or outbound. They can not only receive calls to answer customer questions but also make calls for follow-ups, appointment reminders, or marketing campaigns. This ability to handle bidirectional calls makes callbots extremely useful for call centers and businesses looking to automate their telephone communications.

6. The Desired Level of Human Intervention

Although AI voicebots can handle most inquiries autonomously, there may be situations where human assistance is necessary or desired. For example, when a customer has a complex question, when a voicebot encounters an error or ambiguity, or when a customer requests to speak with a human agent. A good AI voicebot should be able to:

• Detect when human intervention is needed.
• Hand over the conversation to a human agent.
• Transfer the conversation to the most appropriate agent based on availability, skills, or location.
• Collaborate with human agents by providing suggestions or sending alerts. For example, a voicebot for appointment scheduling can be configured to remind both the client and the professional of the appointment.

7. Proposed Integration

Integrations are essential to ensure your voicebot can access and update data from your existing systems and platforms. This helps you avoid data silos and inconsistencies, and provide accurate information to your customers. To ensure seamless integration, you need an AI voicebot that can:

• Connect to your CRM, ERP, e-commerce, or other platforms via APIs or webhooks.
• Synchronize data across multiple channels and devices in real time.
• Support multiple communication modes such as phone calls, web chat, mobile apps, or smart speakers.

8. Ease of Use and User Support

Ease of use is essential for your voicebot to be deployed quickly and smoothly. You should also consider how your voicebot can help your agents deliver better customer service. An AI voicebot should be able to:

• Be updated easily.
• Be analyzed simply using reports and analytics.
• Provide useful insights to employees on how to improve their business performance.

9. Scalability and Solution Customization

Scalability is important to ensure your voicebot can handle growing volumes without compromising quality or performance. Adaptability is essential for your voicebot to adjust to changing customer needs and expectations. A good AI voicebot should be able to:

• Handle multiple simultaneous conversations without latency or errors.
• Support multiple languages without losing accuracy or nuance.
• Learn from customer feedback and behavior and improve over time.
• Allow new features to be added without disrupting existing ones.

10. Security and Long-Term Potential

Security is paramount to protect your data and your customers' data from unauthorized access or misuse. A good AI voicebot should be able to:

• Encrypt and anonymize data during transmission and storage.
• Comply with data privacy and security regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc.
• Be regularly updated and patched to prevent vulnerabilities or bugs.

11. Costs and Pricing Model

Costs are a major factor in any business decision. You need to consider not only the initial setup costs but also the ongoing costs of using an AI voicebot. Compare the features and benefits of different AI voicebot solutions.

• Evaluate the return on investment (ROI) and long-term savings from using an AI voicebot.
• Choose a pricing model suited to your business needs and objectives, such as pay-per-use or subscription.

12. Ethical Considerations

Another point to consider is the ethical use of AI. It's essential to ensure that voicebots are used in ways that enhance customer service without misleading or frustrating customers. This includes clearly informing customers that they are speaking to a voicebot and giving them the option to speak with a human agent when necessary.

In conclusion:

Choosing an AI voicebot is not a trivial task. Many factors must be considered that influence your business outcomes and your customers' experience. Contact Versatik, we're here to help guide you.