Solutions for today’s enterprise customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) challenges.
Full-featured contact center solution.
Secure, dedicated and managed cloud contact center running on Microsoft Azure.
Scalable and advanced contact center-as-a-service.
Collaboration tools, seamlessly integrated into your Avaya portfolio.
Unified video, conferencing, messaging, and more on Microsoft Azure.
Call, meet, message, and more—all in one app.
Integrate collaboration apps with Avaya Communication portfolio.
Cloud-ready pathways that integrate Avaya with third-party APIs.
A full-featured unified comms platform managed on-premises.
Rely on our team of experts to help you get the most from your investment.
Consult with the experts to create your best customer journey.
Explore our complete portfolio of devices for individuals and conference rooms.
Move at your pace with Avaya’s hybrid cloud options.
Deliver effortless experiences for customers and employees at every touchpoint.
Help your contact center run smoothly, no matter where your employees are.
Find an Authorized Avaya Channel Partner in your part of the world.
Build new, innovative communications solutions via Avaya’s open solution platforms.
See our partnerships with leading technology companies for unique and value-adding solutions.
Explore all of the partner types and programs available at Avaya
Sell the Avaya portfolio with benefits, incentives, lead gen, training, and marketing resources.
Transition customers to the cloud fast and on budget, supported by Avaya services and features.
Stay up to date on Avaya's latest news and solutions.
Deliver innovative and complete solutions to your customers.
Get to know Avaya through our blogs. Insights on collaboration, customer experience, AI, digital.
Watch videos and listen to podcasts by topic or just browse what’s new. Interviews, solutions, how-to’s, more.
See inspiring ways companies are using Avaya solutions to change the world of work.
Engage with us in an immersive and interactive experience—on site, virtually, or a combo.
Look at what's new in our world—and how it benefits yours.
Learn about the privacy, compliance, and security inside Avaya solutions.
Review the terms and policies associated with Avaya software and services.
Access a full range of information and assistance for your Avaya solution.
For research and support, access our product documentation resources.
Meet Avaya experts at our events, webinars, expos, conferences and more.
In person or online, gain a full understanding of your Avaya solution and its capabilities.
Blogs
Julia Litvak
Sr. Manager, Solutions Marketing, SaaS
The first chatbot [CHATting roBOT], named ELIZA, was created many decades ago in the mid-1960s by scientists at MIT. But it was not until after 2010, when Apple launched Siri as a voice-enabled virtual assistant, that humans started seeing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies as not just a tantalizing Sci-Fi movie marvel, but something that they can use in their everyday life.
Fast-forward to the early twenties of twenty-first century, and here we are, wondering how we could live all this time without Alexa, interactive chatbots, voice-enabled GPS and cars that understand our voice commands, self-check in or check out, automated re-ordering of our groceries, and “oh-so-very-many" types of nothing less than artificial intelligence integrated in our daily lives.
Chatbot programming is a subset of AI technology, and specifically, a subset of Conversational AI. Today, both conversational AI and chatbots have proven their enormous worth to many businesses worldwide. Conversational AI delivers rapid, context-based responses to customers – providing better experiences, shorter wait times, and more nuanced support – while chatbots provide ease of implementation, affordable service, and dependable query-and-response performance depending on the business need.
Both markets are exploding as customer preference grows for seamless self-service, hyper-personalized support, and around-the-clock attention. Each solution can be a best fit to a business depending on a scenario that the business has at hand. If you’ve ever wondered how these software systems differ, what organizations they work best for, and what they deliver, read on.
Chatbots are tools within the realm of conversational AI, but they perform more bare-bones functions. They follow scripts, can only respond to designated keywords, and cannot intelligently “understand” what a customer is trying to say. Yet chatbots have their place in customer support, especially if a business is looking for an affordable solution to self-service and one that can be deployed quickly. In fact, a study Avaya conducted recently found that chatbots were the most-used form of AI in the contact center for their ease of deployment and manageability. Chatbots are great for systems that want to direct customers through a menu-based navigation, prompting them to give specific responses that allow it to provide pre-written answers, or process information-fetch requests.
Chatbots features include:
Conversational AI can respond to a user that talks (voice input) or types (text input) questions or statements to an AI software interface. In a business context, conversational AI refers specifically to advanced communication software that can learn how to improve its responses to customers over time through repeated use. It can eventually gain the intelligence to decide when to hand over an interaction to a human better equipped to deal with different customers using intelligent routing. This immensely powerful technology uses natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU), which is a scripting process that gives the software the ability to grasp a user’s context in addition to his or her intent. In contrast, chatbots rely solely on a predetermined list of keywords to respond to customer questions and needs.
For example, if a customer types “My product arrived defected, I want a refund,” the chatbot would act on the keywords “defected” and “refund.” Conversational AI, on the other hand, can read full sentences and then potentially verify the customer’s purchase by asking if the item was bought on X day, arrived at Y time, and cost Z dollars. With time and continuous usage, the AI software can also address the need in real-time with the customer and improve its ability to handle more nuanced customer interactions.
Conversational AI features include:
According to PWC research, COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the widespread business efforts in adoption of AI, with more than half organizations increasing their strategic investments in this area. Companies can leverage Conversational AI to drive better customer relationships and improve productivity and efficiency. An absolute majority of companies recognize that adopting AI to improve their customers experience is a must-have necessity if they expect to compete and succeed in today’s business environment. Some major brands have already demonstrated the power of AI in enabling a better customer experience, for example:
Avaya OneCloud™ is an AI-powered experience platform. Together with Avaya, businesses can use this platform to create memorable, in-the-moment experiences that matter. Avaya can help you choose the modular cloud-based apps and AI components your business needs and your customers want, then compose and combine communications capabilities to achieve any outcome. Contact Avaya to get started or learn more about our chatbot and conversational AI solutions.