Introduction
Customer-business interaction has transformed with the rise of virtual agents that have streamlined and strengthened the relationship between both. These virtual agents are redefining customer service, sales, and other operations with productive efficiency and personalization.
Virtual agents are significant in improving customer satisfaction as they have proven highly effective at engaging in complex conversations and performing specific tasks, providing effective resolution to customers. IBM survey reveals that 99% of organizations using virtual agent technology reported an increase in customer satisfaction.
If you are not quite sure what a virtual agent is, this blog will elaborate on how they work along with the impact they have on modern business.
What is a virtual agent?
Virtual agents are specially designed software that uses natural language processing and machine learning to produce human-like interaction to provide support, information, and other services through various channels like chat, voice, or email. Though virtual agents and chatbots may seem alike in their function, they are different.
A virtual agent is a highly specialized tool focused on a specific function or activity, having in-depth knowledge to perform its functions accurately.
Related article: Explore How Agent Bots Can Transform Your Business
How does a virtual agent work?
Virtual agents use artificial intelligence technologies such as natural language processing and other key mechanisms to understand and produce human-like responses to user queries.
• Natural language understanding: It is a branch of artificial intelligence that involves deciphering the relationship between words through an established structure to comprehend the meaning of a phrase or a sentence.
• Intent recognition: A virtual agent can recognize the intent behind a query by interacting with the user.
• Entity extraction: Virtual agents can extract entities like date, name, product details, order ID, etc, through entity recognition.
• Machine learning: A virtual agent constantly learns from past interactions to improve accuracy and fluency.
• Contextual understanding: Virtual agents can keep track of past interactions to extract a contextual understanding during a conversation.
The impacts of virtual agents on business
Virtual agents have significantly reshaped how businesses interact with their customers. They have been crucial in improving customer service, which impacts customer satisfaction in these dynamic market conditions. Some key impacts of virtual agents are;
1. Personalized service: By using natural language processing and machine learning, virtual agents offer personalized conversations and services to users.
2. Quick response: Virtual agents are always active on various platforms, significantly reducing user wait time.
3. Round-the-clock availability: Virtual agents can be available beyond business hours and even during company holidays, which enables them to serve customers 24/7.
4.Automation: Virtual agents can automate repetitive tasks to ensure space for human agents to engage in productive collaborations that can impact improving operational efficiency.
5. Optimizing operational cost: Since virtual agents can handle increased workloads and automate routine tasks, they enable reduced requirements for additional resources to perform functions, reducing operational costs.
6. Data-driven insights: By being active and present on various platforms, virtual agents acquire and process a lot of data. These data from virtual agents can provide critical customer insights to businesses for improving their strategic goals.
Conclusion
In these competitive market conditions, virtual agents are an effective tool for streamlining operations, improving customer satisfaction, and boosting efficiency. Businesses looking to race ahead should strategically plan on using virtual agents to strengthen customer relationships and enhance productivity.
Adopting AI technologies assures a strategic win as customer expectations are evolving, which requires businesses to evolve their offerings. Virtual agents ensure business gains the right impact through consistent customer service and save resources, money, and effort.
Frequently Asked Questions
In the future, the scope of functions that virtual agents can perform include;
- • Sophisticated emotional intelligence and empathy
- • Integration with IoT and AR/VR
- • Wider industry-specific adoption
By automating routine tasks, faster resolution, and round-the-clock support, virtual agents reduce the need for hiring additional human agents, thus reducing operational costs.
There are various virtual agents, each having their own function and advantage;
• Rule-based virtual agents
• Voice assistants
• Chatbots
• Smart personal assistants
Nisha Sneha
Nisha Sneha is a passionate content writer with 5 years of experience creating impactful content for SAAS products, new-age technologies, and software applications. Currently, she is contributing to Kenyt.AI by crafting engaging content for its readers. Creating captivating content that provides accurate information about the latest advancements in science and technology has been at the core of her creativity.
In addition to writing, she enjoys gardening, reading, and swimming as hobbies.
