With a projected market worth of $26.79 billion by 2025, Voice AI adoption has fundamentally changed the way businesses collect and process data as well as transformed backend operations across different industries.

From voice recognition that enables secure voice biometrics to speech recognition for automatic transcriptions, conversational AI is one of the most transformative developments shaping the future of customer experience.

The Future of Work: Collaborative Intelligence of Humans and AI

With a profound impact on productivity, businesses are supercharging their customer experience by augmenting humans with Voice AI to maximise profits, reliability, and scalability.

Advancements in machine and deep learning technologies are also opening new opportunities for Voice AI to be more human-like, which has enabled companies to reinvent CX in a way that is scalable yet remaining natural and contextual.

To put this into perspective, here are three industries that have leveraged Voice AI to transform and supercharge their customer operations.

1. Banking, Financial Services and Service Providers

Going online to access services such as digital banking, signing up for insurance coverage or an internet plan has become increasingly popular in the face of rapid digitalisation. This massive shift online has created a demand problem as call centres across industries and geographies found it increasingly challenging to keep pace with the high call volume.

Banks, financial institutions, telcos and insurance providers alike are beginning to recognise that there are faster and more interactive ways to engage customers. And while these incumbents have the resources to scale and transform their CX across multiple channels on their own, Voice AI software has proven to be a natural choice — especially in financial services and banking — to provide the agility needed to deal with the business impact of the pandemic.

Read more about how Voice AI can power the financial services industry.

On the other hand, new entrants such as fintechs may not have the ability to scale their own call centres at the speed of their hypergrowth. Moreover, outsourcing operations to third-party call centres can be expensive. In such cases, fintechs may also consider tapping into scalable and easy to implement Voice AI solutions like AI Rudder to meet their customer service needs and complement existing teams.

2. E-commerce, Retail and Essential Amenities

Customer-facing staff in frontline industries such as e-commerce, retail and essential amenities such as schools and hospitals among others may find providing high-quality service increasingly challenging as consumers expect seamless omnichannel experiences. Large amounts of customer demands and data are now generated across various consumer touchpoints but are not optimised or put to good use.

However, Voice AI can turn these unstructured data into actionable insights and empower your customer service representatives by automating high-volume repetitive tasks. Moreover, our AI can process and analyse large volumes of customer data, enabling anthropomorphic voices to engage with customers intelligently, as well as providing appointment or payment reminders to telemarketing new offerings.

3. Logistics and Supply Chain

Covid-19 has severely impacted the international movement of people and goods as countries implement additional border controls and restrictions on international travel. As a result, logistic companies have drastically reduced international services, leading to a significant reduction in air freight capacity and frequency.

Voice AI can be used to alleviate supply chain risks and enhance complementary industries like e-commerce. For instance, in last-mile fulfilment, Voice AI can be deployed to answer repetitive customer queries, help them keep track of their deliveries in real-time, amend orders or reschedule a delivery, avoiding stressful moments of uncertainty for everyone.

This is especially helpful in times of manpower crunch, or as fleets expand and the number of deliveries increases exponentially. Voice AI can also be used to keep track of service quality, such as collecting customer feedback post-delivery, which would otherwise be impossible to follow up with all customers.

Goodbye IVR, Hello NLP in Call Centres

Not all voice technologies are created equal. Traditional interactive voice response (IVR) can be limiting and can turn customers off. In fact, research has found that 51% of callers abandoned a brand or service provider altogether because their call has been routed to an IVR. This could cost companies about US$262 per customer per year.

Thus, many global contact centres have implemented AI-powered voice assistants with Natural Language Processing (NLP). The U.S. market alone estimated $399.6 million worth of AI adoption in 2021.

These virtual assistants help solve frustrations over IVR limitations, inefficient management, and enhance customer excellence by collecting customer feedback and enabling data analysis and optimisation at scale.

Read more about the differences between IVR and Voice AI.

Excellent Customer Service Boosts Loyalty 

Consumer behaviour has changed permanently because of the pandemic and increased digital adoption. However, expectations for companies to increase or maintain customer service standards remain high. Voice AI can bridge the gap between customers’ digital demands and businesses’ capabilities to deliver consistent service and excellent experience. 

Companies that leverage Voice AI will only stand to benefit significantly from improved processes and customer experience. An easily implementable and scalable solution like AI Rudder can thus boost loyalty and revenue, helping businesses to achieve optimal operational excellence.