Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. has been recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Platform Providers, Q3 2023 report.
Over the past few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) has gone from a sci-fi concept to an everyday reality.
But just how valuable and useful has AI been when it comes to customer service?
Applause recently conducted a survey on the topic, which looked into the use of AI for voice applications, such as chatbots, interactive voice response (IVR), and other conversational AI-assistants. Here's what we uncovered.
High Expectations
Chatbots are now expected. 93% of respondents expect some sort of chat or voice functionality when they visit a website or place a call. Specifically:
■ 31% always expect automated chatbots, and 46% always expect an automated voice system
■ 61% sometimes expect an automated chatbot, depending on the industry, and 40% expect the same for an automated voice system
■ Only 7% never expect an automated chatbot, and 11% never expect an automated voice system.
When it comes to mobile apps:
■ 44% always expect voice assistants / search features
■ 41% sometimes expect voice assistants / search futures, depending on the app category
■ 13% never expect voice assistants / search features
Low Satisfaction
Despite expecting AI-enabled voice and chat options for connecting with an organization, the majority of respondents prefer to wait for a human agent. Specifically, when calling a company for a service:
■ 51% prefer to wait for a human agent
■ 25% prefer immediate access to an automated touch tone response system
■ 22% prefer an automated virtual representative that responds to voice commands
When it comes to chat functionality, while 93% had expected this on a company's website or app, only 63% said they were somewhat or extremely satisfied with the experience. Of the 19% who found their experiences dissatisfying, the top three reasons were:
■ 29% could not find the answers they were looking for
■ 25% said the chatbot did not understand what they were asking
■ 20% said the chatbot just wasted time before they were eventually connected with a human agent
AI continues to drive innovation and alter the way businesses interact with their customers and stakeholders. The results of this survey highlight this trend, but also show a disconnect between expectations and results.
The global natural language processing (NLP) market is projected to grow from $20.98 billion in 2021 to $127.26 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 29.4% in that forecast period. Now is the time for organizations to invest in this technology as it advances from optional, to required and a competitive advantage for customer experience. Customers expect automated chatbots and voice systems, so it is important that these technologies work correctly and as customers expect. Plus, the benefits these systems can provide transcend customer experience — they also free up customer service reps for higher-value activities while reducing wait time for customers.
Industry News
Red Hat and Oracle announced the expansion of their alliance to offer customers a greater choice in deploying applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). As part of the expanded collaboration, Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes for architecting, building, and deploying cloud-native applications, will be supported and certified to run on OCI.
Harness announced the availability of Gitness™, a freely available, fully open source Git platform that brings a new era of collaboration, speed, security, and intelligence to software development.
Oracle announced new application development capabilities to enable developers to rapidly build and deploy applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Sonar announced zero-configuration, automatic analysis for programming languages C and C++ within SonarCloud.
DataStax announced a new JSON API for Astra DB – the database-as-a-service built on the open source Apache Cassandra® – delivering on one of the most highly requested user features, and providing a seamless experience for Javascript developers building AI applications.
Mirantis launched Lens AppIQ, available directly in Lens Desktop and as (Software as a Service) SaaS.
Buildkite announced the company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Packagecloud, a cloud-based software package management platform, in an all stock deal.
CrowdStrike has agreed to acquire Bionic, a provider of Application Security Posture Management (ASPM).
Perforce Software announces BlazeMeter's Test Data Pro, the latest addition to its continuous testing platform.
CloudBees announced a new cloud native DevSecOps platform that places platform engineers and developer experience front and center.
Akuity announced a new open source tool, Kargo, to implement change promotions across many application life cycle stages using GitOps principles.
Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. announced that it has been recognized on Newsweek’s inaugural list of the World’s Most Trustworthy Companies 2023.
CloudBees announced significant performance and scalability breakthroughs for Jenkins® with new updates to its CloudBees Continuous Integration (CI) software.