In some ways you could think of knowledge bases as the library and conversational AI as the librarian that helps find the right info.

Deliver Timely Customer Service with Conversational AI

One thing is for certain: if you have customers, they’ll have questions. What tools do you use to provide consistent and accurate answers when questions arise? 

Knowledge bases (KB) and conversational AI are two ways your company can deliver consistent and timely customer service. Both hold a valuable place in the user experience — and enable you to address your customers’ and employees’ inquiries. Knowledge bases can offer valuable step-by-step instructions and details for troubleshooting and other self-serve activities. But many times KBs require users to wade through copious amounts of information to uncover answers. Enter conversational AI.

Conversational AI is a dynamic interface that provides targeted intelligent responses using natural language. Whether in a self-service or agent-assisted environment, that can save consumers and representatives the time and frustration sorting through responses and having to figure out which one is the best to use. Unlike knowledge bases, AI gets smarter over time as it automatically compiles information from interactions and other resources to improve accuracy. As such, you could think of knowledge bases as the library and conversational AI as the librarian that helps find the right info. 

Knowledge bases can still be vital to train AI chatbots; consider KBs to be valuable source materials to equip your chatbots. Conversational AI can serve up links to KB articles or use pieces of information to assist customers and agents alike. 

Empower Agents

AI isn’t designed to replace agents, rather it is designed to empower agents to deliver a better customer experience. Pointing your conversational AI engine at your service representatives  helps increase their speed, accuracy, and efficiency. Customers expect a conversational, dynamic experience that is personalized to their inquiries, and agent-facing AI prompts, based on the context of the conversation, can streamline responses and reduce the need to manually search KBs. Time to resolution is faster because behind-the-scenes bots are feeding agents with suggested responses that they can accept or decline based upon their knowledge. Agents feel empowered by a virtual real-time coach prompting them. See a side-by-side comparison of a chatbot implementation versus an agent-assisted chatbot roll out.

“Make sure the solution goes beyond just dumping raw content on the customer, to include easy findability of answers and conversational guidance for both customer self-service and human-assisted service.”

– MarketScreener, “Forrester Research: ABA-Customer Service Mistakes Financial Institutions Should Avoid

Customer satisfaction increases when they receive direct, personalized responses that enable follow-up and not “just” a link to an article that they have to digest. Providing succinct information on the pages they are visiting helps enable the customer to self-serve. 

Digital Customer Service is designed to reinvent how you serve customers and support agents — delivering seamless experiences that transition across channels and guide customers along their journeys. Learn more about Glia’s AI Management platform.