Chatbots come of age in a crisis Chatbots come of age in a crisis
Over the past months, as call centers across the globe have had to mobilize urgently to respond to a surge of inquiries under the added strain of reduced staff and/or remote working conditions, text based chatbots have been successfully deployed to take up the slack – deployed at scale for multiple use cases for rapid response and recovery across different industry sectors. For example:
- Medical and health insurance companies have built chatbots to provide specific COVID-19 advice.
- Specialist retailers have deployed chatbots to meet an increased demand for fulfilling customer prescriptions online.
- Governments have relied on chatbots to process new unemployment claims.
- In the US, banks have used chatbots to handle a deluge of questions regarding loans and grants mandated by the government’s emergency Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
- In the education sector chatbots have helped homebound students get access to the equipment they need to continue their studies online.
Mobilizing chatbots at scale relies on trust through consistency
The rapid mobilization of chatbots underscores their importance in modern digital communication. A technology once seen as a shiny toy by many executives has come to be acknowledged as an invaluable member of the team.
Yet, with newfound respect and widespread adoption comes greater responsibility. As chatbots graduate from experimental pilot projects to critical communication tools, they must demonstrate not just consistent value to the business but that they can be trusted by their customers.
Based on KPMG data scientists’ experience designing chatbot strategies and implementing them within businesses, we believe that customer trust in chatbots can be achieved by considering and addressing the following four questions.
1. What problem does a chatbot solve for the business?
Pop-up chatbots can have an immediate impact in relieving stress points in the organization but only if the need is scoped properly. In the immediate consequences of the COVID-19 situation, for example, many organizations found their customer service representatives were not well equipped to work from home. They turned to chatbots both to meet existing customer service requirements and to solve new problems brought about by COVID-19.
Start with an analysis of the workflows and human resources that are already in place to gain clarity on what conversation and information gaps a chatbot is needed to fill. Chatbots can only successfully solve customer queries, for example, if they are given access to the right data sources to address common inquiries.
All too often, chatbots are seen as shrink-wrapped solutions when, in reality, they need to learn customer interactions and language, and to adapt quickly to a real-life environment to succeed. Even though chatbot designers can try to anticipate the nature of customer interactions it is important to iterate and improve the programming once the chatbot is communicating live with customers.
2. What structural barriers to adoption exist, and how might these be overcome quickly?
For pop-up chatbots to demonstrate value quickly, companies must identify and remedy any immediate roadblocks to adoption.
These barriers could relate to the enterprise infrastructure in which a chatbot needs to be integrated, the data architecture it must communicate with, or the information security issues that arise from its deployment, particularly if they are cloud-based.
Where possible, working within the parameters of existing communication and networking technologies and platforms will help to address likely concerns raised by risk and governance teams. After all, there is no point in fast-tracking a pop-up chatbot solution if it will take months to implement the architecture to support core use cases.
3. How can chatbots be integrated into existing communication workflows?
Pop-up chatbots need a formal role in communication workflows to be effective, including a description of what they will do and what they will pass along to human teammates.
Employees – such as those fulfilling front-line customer service roles – need to be comfortable with the support that chatbots offer. They need to understand and be reassured about how a chatbot will complement, rather than replace, their customer support activities.
Sometimes barriers arise if a chatbot solution is seen to be managed by another part of the business, for example by the IT function rather than the customer service function. Leaders therefore need to explain clearly how the deployment of chatbots will help existing employees perform their jobs better by freeing up time to focus on more valuable tasks for customers.