Chatbots and voicebots – Customer satisfaction is the basis of every business’ success and when we talk about “satisfaction” we mean easy interaction, accuracy and quality of information.

Deloitte study “Chat, Talk, Touch” reports that over 70% of interviewed companies is today focused on user experience and process automation, with the intent to save costs and increase customers’ satisfaction.

For this reason, artificial intelligence solutions like virtual assistants, smart speakers and biometrics are integrant part of user experience and companies’ customer relationship management strategy.

Biometric technologies consent imminent access to devices and services through imprint and facial recognition and do not require users to remember or digit long and complex passwords.

On the other hand, a chatbot or voicebot integration on web sites, applications or devices represents the future of every business that aims to satisfy customers.

CHATBOTs and VOICEBOTs: WHICH IS THE DIFFERENCE?

CHATBOTS IN BRIEF

Chatbots and voicebots – Chatbots interact through text messages and thanks to natural language understanding (NLU) are able to convert audio messages into text (speech-to-text), while text-to-speech is the technology that converts answers into voice responses.

Machine learning based bots are extremely efficient in simulating a conversation based on natural language, understanding customers’ requests and providing imminent response.

voicebots in brief

Vocal bots interact through voice, by accepting vocal or textual commands and replying in oral form. Common examples are  Amazon Echo, Google Home, Siri, Alexa, through which users can freely interact with no need of a graphic or touch interface.

choosing between chatbots or voicebots

If you do not have budget limits, the choice depends on bot’s objectives.

The most significative difference between text-based and voice-based bots is in the way we interact with them.

According to recent using researches, users prefer vocal interaction when driving or at home, while they opt for textual interaction at work, in public services and generally in public locations.

Infact, chatbots can be easily integrated on websites and instant messaging applications like Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, WeChat, Slack etc. thus simplifying interactions with users.

Moreover, textual conversations allows to access previous messages and start up an asyncronous, multi-thread conversation, while vocal interaction is syncronous and can handle one conversation at a time.

For this reason users prefer textual interaction in case of transactions such as payments or orders. Likewise, contact information like URLs or phone numbers are easily sharable through written text.

Also, development times and costs make a difference: chatbots require a minimum training time and dramatically reduce the time frame between set up and deployment. Voicebots’ training times are longer and training dataset may vary depending on specific language, spoken accent and knowledge domain. Furthermore, “voice user experience” design is very expensive today.

In conclusion

Gartner predicts a raising trend of vocal bots by 2023, anyway the points explained above suggest a future integration of the use of both technologies while the key for customers’ satisfaction remains the same: “get to know your own customers and their needs”.

Source:

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/financial-services/deloitte-survey-chat-talk-touch.pdf

https://www.industryarc.com/Report/18647/voicebots-market.html

https://cobusgreyling.medium.com/read-this-before-converting-your-chatbot-to-a-voicebot-447f8fc3a325

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https://crafter.ai/it/2021/04/08/strategia-per-la-creazione-di-un-chatbot/