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Chatbot and the Future of Conversational Intelligence: Sonny Patel
338 Plays2 years ago
Chatbots are becoming more popular to serve the needs of customers and answer their questions, but the AI is making chatbots smarter and more valuable. On this episode of Marketing Spark, Liverperson's Sonny Patel's talks about the future conversational inteligence and how companies can use it to drive marketing and sales.
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Transcript
The Hype vs. Reality of AI
00:00:07
Speaker
In the technology world, hyperbole, also known as hype, is inescapable. Anything new is touted as the next best thing since, well, the last next best thing. There's overwhelming enthusiasm and expectations are sky high.
00:00:23
Speaker
And over the last few years, artificial intelligence has received this treatment. You'd swear that AI was a gift from the business gods, given the possibilities that everyone has touted. But like everything, AI has thrived in some areas, and it's still a work in progress in others.
Meet Sunny Patel from LivePerson
00:00:40
Speaker
To delve into the world of AI, I'm talking with Sunny Patel, SVP Conversational Intelligence with LivePerson, which develops conversational commerce and AI software. Welcome to Marketing Spark.
00:00:54
Speaker
Hi Mark, thanks for having me.
LivePerson's Evolution
00:00:56
Speaker
My description of LivePerson, I cut and paste off the web, so it's pretty formal. Can you talk about what LivePerson does and as important, provide some context about the role of AI within the software?
00:01:12
Speaker
I can also start from where we began and how we evolved. A live person at this point is a 26, 27-year-old company. Our founder and CEO was a pioneer for the web chat idea. Back in the .com era when everybody was building websites, he essentially pioneered this idea of why do I need to navigate through this very artificial looking website. I should be able to just talk to a person.
00:01:40
Speaker
like we were used to until that point. So that's what we started as and we evolved. Now more recently we are investing a lot and building a brand around being a conversational AI company. So a quick fun fact is that Fast Company has named LivePerson as the number one most innovative AI company in the world.
Creating Empathetic Chatbots
00:02:03
Speaker
When you say conversational AI, I think a lot of people equate that to a chatbot. Is that basically what we're looking at when it comes to what my person does? A lot of the companies that are in the conversational AI space, that's what they're focusing on is just being able to build chatbots that probably tackle some of the more simple use cases like answering frequently asked questions. We are
00:02:24
Speaker
innovating beyond that in the sense that not only do we want to enable brands to automate the conversations that they have with their consumers when the consumers are reaching out.
00:02:35
Speaker
for any reason to buy a product, to inquire about a product. For service-related question, we also want them to feel that human touch, make that conversation feel more empathetic, feel more human-like. And the way we do that is by understanding first, what is the consumer really intend to do during this conversation?
00:03:01
Speaker
And in order to do that in a very effective manner, we need to understand, we need to measure, we need to remember, and then use all of that knowledge to
Importance of Personalization and Empathy
00:03:15
Speaker
personalize the response that we are providing back to the consumer. So to me, that's what conversational AI does, and that's the power behind it, not simply responding to a question saying, what are the hours you're open and answering back with a static answer, no matter who's asking the question.
00:03:35
Speaker
It begs the question of how big of a challenge, how much AI power is needed to answer questions quickly and effectively. And as you say, you do it in a very personalized, empathetic human way because
00:03:53
Speaker
Robots tend to talk like robots and humans talk like humans. But if you can get a robot to talk like a human, obviously you're going to have a better experience. So you've got a big team. I think you had up a 200 person team. So a live person must be investing a lot of money and a lot of a lot of intellectual firepower to create that that human like chatbot for lack of a better term.
00:04:17
Speaker
Very much so. And it all starts with data, right? And I think that this is definitely the distinct advantage LivePerson has. We support over a billion interactions on our platform every month. And all of that data essentially gives us the foundation to understand how these conversations are going, what's going well, what's not going well, where can brands do better. And we use all of that data to model and feed into our AI
00:04:45
Speaker
powered capabilities. Very important, and I think that no one can build an AI or get better at it without that underlying data, which given our history, given the customer footprint that we have, we have that distinct advantage.
AI's Role in Brand Improvement
00:05:03
Speaker
In terms of the investments, where we
00:05:07
Speaker
are definitely more focused on is developing better understanding of where the conversation is going well. Obviously, when something is going well, we do more of it. And where the reception from the consumer is better, we give those signals to the brand. So brands also understand what's going well, do more of it.
00:05:27
Speaker
And also give them signals on areas where they should be putting in more effort either by improving the dialogue or when it's an appropriate time to pull in the human being into the conversation and inform them.
00:05:44
Speaker
And the idea is to also automatically take action and not just wait, not just say, hey, here's a measurement of conversation not going well, but make recommendations on what they could do at that point. In the marketing world, there's a lot of emphasis on personalization these days. I guess one of the problems is that marketing automation has allowed marketers to do things at scale.
00:06:07
Speaker
but it's come at the cost of everything seems very generic these days, other than if insert first name here when you're doing email marketing, for example. The experience seems very impersonal, and a lot of consumers are now sort of becoming very aware of that, that they're just being part of the machine. Can you talk about the value that LivePerson brings to brands and marketers
00:06:32
Speaker
allowing them to do personalization at scale in a way that is empathetic and appears to be the right message for you at the right time. The word that's evolving around that concept is hyper-personalization. A good analogy is how we interact with other human beings. You and I are meeting for the first time, so obviously our conversation today is going to be very genetic. It's going to be a little different
00:07:02
Speaker
the second time we talk to each other. It's going to be very different. The 10th time we talk to each other. And it all depends on the fact that it's a two-way conversation. When you have questions about me, you ask me. I ask you. Over time, we develop an understanding of who it is that we are speaking to and use that knowledge to respond appropriately based on the preferences that we have gathered. And that feels real.
00:07:31
Speaker
So the injecting the name, but keeping the rest of the message the same, even though we call it personalization, but it's not really. And I think that this is the distinct advantage conversational AI has over traditional AI, is that in conversational AI, for most part, we are going through the conversation, gleaning preferences for sure.
00:07:57
Speaker
and combining a lot of that with the signals. But we could also just directly ask the consumer when we are talking to them and basically say, hey, would you prefer X versus Y? And use that explicit knowledge to improve the future interactions.
00:08:14
Speaker
And that is something where that's an advantage of these having conversations as a basis for developing the understanding of who it is that we are speaking to.
Consent in AI Personalization
00:08:27
Speaker
The dialogue that develops as a result of it looks very different from the more templatized personalizations. The other aspect of personalizations which people are starting to get very wary about is this whole notion of companies using cookies.
00:08:43
Speaker
I think people in general feel very achy about being followed, you know, as they're surfing through the Internet. And that's, again, the consent-based personalization is also something that we can do during the conversation.
00:08:57
Speaker
And the third thing is about when we use personalization. Personalization, for the sake of using it, can sometimes actually backfire. So I'll give you an example. I pick up my kid most of the days around 3 p.m. I leave from home. And over time, my Maps application learned that that's where I'm going to. And makes a suggestion saying, hey, I got into the car, it knows I'm in driving mode,
00:09:26
Speaker
and it automatically plugs in where it is that I'm driving to. Very delightful because it's actually helping me bypass a few clicks that I would be doing at that time. When AI is used to personalize an experience and it works, it's fantastic. The fact that my phone, that application tracked, that that's the pattern I was following, doesn't really bother me because I'm getting a benefit out of it.
00:09:54
Speaker
I think where the variness for the personalization for being followed comes in is when the AI quite doesn't work. And I think that within conversational AI, we have the opportunity to inject personalization at the most appropriate time. And also, again, we can get a signal directly from the person that we are engaging with, whether they liked it or not, because we are actually hearing back from them.
00:10:24
Speaker
and we understand whether the conversation from that point onwards had a more positive kind or a more negative sentiment attached to it. I want to take a step back when you talk about the idea of hyper-personalization. In simple terms, is that the killer app for conversational AI? Or is it part of the killer app recipe, the fact that the conversation that I'm having with a chatbot or an AI-powered
00:10:53
Speaker
software is all about me and my experience and the things that I want to do. Is that the killer app when we're talking about conversational AI? That would be the vision of it. Let's say you and I reach out to the exact same brand.
00:11:09
Speaker
And we start to look for products, something to buy. The experience that is presented to you should be different than assuming with different people, with different preferences, should be different. And also in terms of even little things, like when is a recommendation presented to you? At what point during the conversation?
00:11:30
Speaker
The fact that the AI or the chatbot is able to detect and do it accordingly to maximize, one, your satisfaction, because you're the consumer here ultimately, where you feel like, wow, that was the right time. It did ask me a question that made me feel valued, gave me value out of that conversation. And also the impact of that for the brand is that you're more likely to shop with them again.
00:11:56
Speaker
because you feel like they know me and they're personalizing it to me as opposed to having a script. And one of the statistics that we have discovered is that 79% of the consumers prefer interacting with brands where they feel a personal connection. So the value of why are we investing so much in enabling brands to present that personalization is that it
00:12:19
Speaker
Overall increases the lifetime value from all of the consumers and increases the likelihood that those consumers will actually go back to the brand engage with them again. From a high level perspective when we look at the impact of AI on marketers and marketing.
Conversational AI and Marketing
00:12:39
Speaker
Where are we at in terms of the journey? Like how much value are marketers getting from leveraging AI in terms of the software that they use? AI for the sake of AI, I don't know. If it doesn't make your job easier or allow you to do things faster or better, then there's not much value in it. So how much of an impact is AI making on marketing right now? And where do you think the areas that it's making the most impact are?
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll focus a bit more on the conversational AI aspect of it, because I think it's incredibly powerful. This notion of engaging, but engaging with you to have a two-way conversation as opposed to just blasting marketing messages, which we know traditionally are not as impactful, right? But basically reaching out and saying, Mark, I think you would like this product.
00:13:28
Speaker
or this is a time to kind of renew your subscription or here's your opportunity to pay a bill and then you can take action based on that.
00:13:38
Speaker
that initial message. So what we are finding is that about 83% of the consumers want to interact with brands to buy products via messaging. I'm one of them, by the way. I hate making phone calls. I'm not as much of a in-person shopper. I do. I would rather do it online. I would rather do it over messaging when I have a question as opposed to picking up the phone. I hate phone calls.
00:14:06
Speaker
Also, out of those 83% that are willing to engage, 77% overall of consumers are willing to make a purchase when the brand supports messaging. So there is a lot of power in having these interactions over messaging, which is at the convenience of the consumers.
00:14:22
Speaker
And I think that the AI aspect of it for marketing is, again, like I said, rather than have this genetic blast, like a marketer wakes up in the morning and says, today I'm going to talk, blast this deal for toaster, which
00:14:37
Speaker
how many of us are looking for a toaster at any given day, as opposed to, again, using personalization, using machine-learn models to vary the recommendation pace for each individual based on their past purchases. That is very impactful, and then do that over a conversation, do that over a messaging. The mission of that is very, very incredibly effective.
AI's Unmet Expectations
00:15:04
Speaker
Obviously, there's been a lot of hype surrounding AI and its impact on how companies do business and interact with customers. So the big question, and it's a loaded question, is has AI lived up to the hype?
00:15:22
Speaker
or have expectations been too high? Or are we still early in the AI game, keeping in mind that this is not new. AI has been worked on for decades. Provide some context in terms of the fact that a lot of people think that AI is a disruptive game changer that's going to basically upset the apple cart.
00:15:46
Speaker
aligned with the fact that maybe AI is seeping its way into the business world, but it's still early days.
00:15:53
Speaker
We're very early. We're still experimenting. There's obviously, like I mentioned, there's a few applications of AI that have proven to be incredibly effective. But I also feel that we have had a few false starts. And by the way, before joining LivePerson, I was at Amazon working on Alexa, the voice recognition piece of Alexa. That was something I helped launch.
00:16:23
Speaker
And we had this notion of these AI assistants being omnipresent, being able to understand our every need and making it so easy to have a conversation and just make our life easier. And I don't think that has quite panned out. With all the Alexa's I have in my house, most I use them for us. Play music, play sleep sounds.
00:16:53
Speaker
when the kids are sleeping or turn lights on and off, which is incredibly convenient. But for most part, it's been me saying, Alexa, do this, Alexa, do that. But it's not been as engaging. That's my Alexa waking up. Sorry about that. See, it's real time AI right there.
00:17:17
Speaker
So I think that this vision we all had of the world, we would live in like this black mirror world where we are gesturing and interacting with all the devices that are around us all the time. That has not quite penned out. And I feel that this is where obviously we need something to interact with. So having those devices is great, but make that a conversation as opposed to command based interactions. I think that's the, that seems to be the gap.
00:17:47
Speaker
and for that to actually work, it can't be a small subset of devices. We need to be inclusive of more devices that are around us, and also it cannot be purely command-based, but it's more integrated as if we're interacting with the human beings around us.
00:18:09
Speaker
And this is something that Lightperson is definitely thinking very deeply around. We launched quite a few innovations under the branding of Curiously Human. And the whole notion is that when we have these interactions with AI, whether I initiate the conversation or the AI initiate the conversation,
00:18:28
Speaker
It feels as if we're interacting with human beings as opposed to distinctly understanding that, hey, there is this thing called AI named XYZ that I'm interacting with. If they flip the conversation back to the chatbot landscape, from the outside looking in, it appears crowded and noisy.
Standing Out in a Crowded Market
00:18:50
Speaker
There are dozens, if not hundreds of companies playing in the chatbot
00:18:55
Speaker
world chatbot sandbox. Live person is obviously a fast growing company. So it would be interesting to get to get some perspective on the market's growth, its evolution, some of the more exciting trends that we're seeing within that world. I mean, obviously, from my perspective, from a lot of consumers perspective, we see that little box in the corner, and we have answers that we get frustrated, we hit the box. But
00:19:18
Speaker
step back and provide some big picture perspective on how you see the market moving forward. And are we going to live in a world where there's hundreds of chatbot companies battling for companies dollars and cents?
00:19:30
Speaker
I think that's where we are, is that there's a lot of companies that are tagged as conversational AI companies, but they're really chatbot companies. They're really providing tools on how to build chatbots and basic chatbots at that in terms of, okay, so load up your, one of the questions that are most frequently asked, load that up, set up a chatbot to do that. And where
00:19:52
Speaker
Live person definitely we distinguish ourselves. And I think that that's that's tackling the true power of AI is to think about the entire journey. So sure, there is an aspect where you build a chatbot. Sure, you can start with a more basic chatbot. But there has to be an evolution to make that
00:20:12
Speaker
automation more sophisticated. And in order to do that, you need to bring in some conversations. So start to build some data. Use that data to build an understanding of what's going well, what's not going well. So define some metrics, even to understand how do we measure a good conversation and then measure that. And using those
00:20:35
Speaker
metrics, build understanding, develop some insights to say, oh, when the customers are calling about basic questions, the chatbot is doing great. It's all fine. But when the consumer has a more complicated question that they want to provide some feedback on a product that they bought, that's where the chatbot is failing. So these are the intents.
00:20:57
Speaker
where the chatbot is not doing well, provide that insight back to the brand and also go with some recommendations to say, okay, when these intents are being brought up by the consumer, here are the more nuanced responses that you can give back to them. Here's where personalization can be provided.
00:21:17
Speaker
or in a very complicated case, that's when to bring in a human being and provide recommendations for actions. And in some cases, if you are able to take an action on behalf of the brand, just do it. And to me, that is what a conversational AI does. And when we talk about a lot of companies and the space being crowded, I feel that they're basically starting the first step, which is essentially helping brands set up an automation and serve some basic use cases. And we need to go much beyond that.
00:21:46
Speaker
You raise a good point in terms of measurement. And I did want to ask you about that to get some insight into how companies quantify the performance of a chatbot, the impact, the benefits, and as important the ROI. I mean, a chatbot is a great tool to engage with customers and provide a different or better experience. But at the end of the day,
00:22:14
Speaker
would be interesting to know from your perspective from a live person perspective is what is that chatbot dashboard look like when i look at my kpis in terms of how the chat part performing what are the different metrics and and how do i get actual insights so that i can look at the metrics and do things better.
Measuring Chatbot Success
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the conversational intelligence space. That's what we're looking at. So here's what we do at LivePerson. So we take a number of different signals, look at a number of different metrics, and we use that data.
00:22:52
Speaker
to really build an understanding of four distinct measurable areas. On the consumer side, we want to measure the effort. How much effort did the consumer put in in order to get their intention fulfilled, whatever it was that they didn't shout to the brand for? Also, at the end of the conversation, what was the emotion? Was it a net positive conversation, net negative conversation? That's from the consumer side.
00:23:21
Speaker
Again, we distill it down to these two metrics. However, there's a lot of data points that go into measuring those. From the brand side, we want the brands to develop an understanding of how effective were they, how efficiently did they respond back to the consumer's intent, and also how well
00:23:41
Speaker
They handled it. So it's efficiency and effectiveness. So we call that the 4E framework. When we think about what is that feedback we are giving to the brands that use our platform, we want to distill all the distant data points.
00:23:56
Speaker
into these four areas of measurement that they can take a look at and understand where they need to take action. And the areas where we are looking to innovate and build more capabilities is that once we have those measurements, what actions should the brand take? And instead of putting the onus on the brands themselves or the agents or the managers who are managing the contact centers,
00:24:23
Speaker
We want to be the ones to make recommendations just to make their life easier. So the AI we are building is not only useful to provide personalized responses to the consumers, it's also something that we want to use to the advantage of the businesses so they can operate more effectively.
00:24:39
Speaker
One final question, where can people learn more about you and LivePerson?
Learning About LivePerson
00:24:43
Speaker
So we have our website, liveperson.com. A lot of what we do is on our website. I would also recommend following us on LinkedIn. We are constantly updating our audience on the new and improved enhancements that we make. And I'm on LinkedIn as well.
00:25:00
Speaker
Thanks for your insight into the exciting world of AI and chatbots. It feels like it's early days. It feels like we're gathering momentum and the chatbot world will look a lot different a year or two years from now. And I want to thank everybody for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a positive review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media.
00:25:26
Speaker
And to learn more about how I help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor, and positioning and messaging development, email me at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.