Engaging with a company can feel either effortless or exhausting. The multiple ways to engage – chatbot, email, with a real human – can mean that we are repeatedly having to explain ourselves. Why? Because there is an infrastructure problem. Each communication channel may work very well in isolation, but when they are not talking to each other, therein lies the problem.
The effortless customer journey
Most customers don’t engage with a company using only a chatbot. They engage via multiple channels. An effortless customer journey starts with the infrastructure. Chatbot, people, and systems need to be able to talk to and understand each other.
When considering a conversational AI platform, orchestration capability must be a priority. In the past few years there has been a focus on faster, smarter chatbots giving better answers in a more natural way. But the competitive advantage in AI is not smarter chatbots, it is effortless orchestration.
From chatbot to conversational AI system
Launching a basic chatbot is relatively simple. Go online and you can find step by step instructions to get a chatbot up and running in no time. And you will be able to get it to answer questions and give scripted responses, with limited understanding. The basic chatbot won’t, however, be able to hold a conversation. A conversation is more than answering a question.
The focus on conversational AI systems coincides with a shift in customer expectations. Customers want to have a continuous conversation, and this needs a certain level of infrastructure to make that happen.
Conversational AI systems act as the conversation engine, designed to understand, manage, and engage in multi-turn conversations. The systems enable conversations to take place within context, in a coherent way and makes goal-oriented tasks and outcomes possible.
Connecting and coordinating conversations
Behind every chatbot there is an extensive network of models, systems, integrations, tools, and processes. The response it gives is a result of the user input having been correctly directed to the right model, tools, services, and workflows.
Conversational AI orchestration brings diverse and disparate elements together, making sense of them all to produce accurate, coherent, and relevant responses. Orchestration of the customer experience is about a system that chooses the right tools and services, at the right time and knows the right things to do.
Choosing the correct LLM(s), tools and systems, determining context and intent, directing workflows, and implementing rules and policies are key tenets of conversational AI orchestration.
Orchestration makes everything work together making sure smart chatbots provide personalised, accurate, relevant, and safe responses.
Commodity to competitive
There is universal access to the same models, tools, and systems. The capabilities of many service providers are similar. It is no longer what ‘you have’ but rather ‘how you use it’ that is providing the competitive advantage. And that is why orchestration has become so important.
Companies can use the same models, but the outcomes will be completely different because of orchestration. Orchestration is where instructions on what matters most, when to upsell or support, the data sources that are authoritative, the risk-tolerance levels, and when to say ‘I don’t know’ are encoded.
Because orchestration is interconnected with internal systems, continually refined through feedback, built from real user edge cases, and accumulates over time, it is valuable organisational knowledge which becomes a competitive advantage.
Orchestration is hard to copy. Whilst models, prompts and UI are easily switched, copied, and imitated, orchestration is unique.
Conversational AI systems
A conversational AI system is an ecosystem, where the network of connections is directly linked to the quality of chatbot output. It is the conversational AI system that ensures an effortless customer experience, and this is why it matters as critical infrastructure for the future of useful chatbots, voicebots and virtual assistants.
Having the best conversational AI system will deliver the best customer experience. The conversational AI system manages the customer journey whilst the chatbot answers the questions. With AI spread across the enterprise, the strategic competitive advantage lies with bringing people, tools, and systems together to ensure cohesive conversations.
