| | AUGUST 20218CIOReviewAVOIDING THE BLIND SPOT AND MISPERCEPTION IN CHATBOT & DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVESBy Rudy Dalimunthe ,VP of Customer Excellence, TokopediaDigital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence, Chatbot, Robotic Process Automation, and Smart Self-Care have become some of the latest buzzwords in the past 3 years. More people are raising the topics and more companies around the globe have even started to embrace these emerging market trends so as to not get left behind.However, it is imperative for companies to first understand the bigger picture. Many companies transform digitally merely for cost saving or even worse, cost cutting, as they put customer care as a cost center rather than strategic business unit. In fact, the transformation should actually be grounded upon delivering the best experience, solving problems, and fulfilling the needs of the customers. Unfortunately, many failed to see the blind spot and took the shortcut by creating automation and chatbot to simply shift the interactions from human assisted channels.THE RISE OF CHATBOT AS A NEW FACE OF CUSTOMER SERVICEThe ever-changing customer behaviors and trends have spurred the expeditious evolution of customer service. From voice hotline in the 1990s, email channel in the 2000s, web self-service in 2004 to the latest trends of connected omni-channel (bot and live agents), and social media with sales and marketing in 2019. Driven by growing expectations and high adoption of mobile internet and social media by customers, many companies across industries are inviting their customers into digital and social channels --- and chatbots are gaining popularity and becoming a pivotal part of customer experience nowadays. According to Forrester Research in 2018, 57% of companies globally have already used chatbot, while Global Market Insights states that chatbot market is on the rise in Asia Pacific and keeps getting traction. Today, chatbot capability has evolved. Some experts classified it into four stages with high involvement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it advances:1. Content-based (scripted) bot: Scripted, keyword-driven, and acts based on manually-crafted rules, difficult to scale since the company has to explicitly update rules as it goes different way.2. Intent Recognizers: AI & machine learning capabilities are improved by understanding user's intent, relations between words, and extracting meaning from a request.3. Virtual Assistant: Able to understand what human is trying to achieve. It goes beyond words; it connects to other systems and leverages user's profile and insights.4. Human-like consultant: A strong & human-level AI; it understands contextual factors at human level intelligence.In Tokopedia, chatbot is positioned in the 2nd stage, which is Intent Recognizers. The chatbot is able to greet customers with small talks, answer frequently asked questions, and take action to solve inquiries. In the near future, we aim for the chatbot to enter the 4th stage as we believe that our agent should only be the advisory hub for the users, while the chatbot will automatically engage and detect the user's issues as they enter. Now, Tokopedia chatbot covers almost 100% of the issues faced by users with more than 8 million interactions per year across channels. Furthermore, our chatbot can deflect 65% of incoming tickets with 3,000% of return on investment (ROI). Non-stop annotation process is done daily by reading fallback tickets and bad CSAT responses, classifying them, and creating new possible solutions if needed. Recently, Tokopedia has been recognized as the `Best Use of Self-Service Technology', `Best Technology Innovation', and `Best in Customer Service' in 2019 Contact Center World Award by racking up three gold medals for our innovations in chatbots. Prior to that, Forbes listed IN MY OPINION
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