Transform your bot from ‘just’ FAQs to strategic partner

Launching conversational AI solutions? Many companies begin by addressing the simplest tasks - typically FAQs and general inquiries. However, our experience shows that the highest returns come from advancing beyond this stage and integrating with existing systems.

Of those companies we’ve seen have the most success, we’ve noticed they all have one thing in common: they have organisational buy-in. It's the difference between propelling forward with innovation or watching your aspirations languish amidst a heap of virtual nuts, bolts and potential. 

AI often comes with lofty expectations, heralded as a solution for everything from customer service to global energy challenges. When a simple chatbot falls short, it's tempting to blame the technology. However, it's crucial to first assess if you have integrated all necessary components seamlessly into your business infrastructure. With the right setup, AI can effectively transform these challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation.

“It takes a full organisation to give bots what they need.”

With organisational alignment, AI technology can become a powerful tool for innovation and business efficiency. We've observed champions of AI bring visionary technology into companies with great promise. However, the key to unlocking its full potential lies in effectively communicating and gaining support from the entire organisation. By securing this widespread backing, projects can progress beyond the preliminary FAQ stage and reach their full transformative potential.

As the old (old in terms of digital assistants go, anyhow) adage goes, a bot is only as good as the information it’s trained on. And it takes a full organisation to give bots what they need.

Consider this. If the teams that are responsible for ensuring the quality of the information is correct leave information to go stale, the chatbot looks uninformed. “Ugh! this tech always gets it wrong!”

If the team responsible for building the APIs the chatbot needs to get personalised data doesn’t prioritise the work, the chatbot looks incapable. “This bot can’t do anything!”.

If the team responsible for marketing doesn’t tell anyone about the bot, the chatbot may be unpopular. “Nobody uses it.”

If C-suite doesn’t understand how AI will make organisations faster and employees more efficient, the team will be underfunded, lack resource and progress will be slow. “It’s still can’t do that.”

If the customer service team doesn’t consider a chatbot a tool to help them do better work, it will get a bad reputation. “The tech’s more trouble than it’s worth”.

We could go on.

But when all those factions work together to get the technology working at its best, the comments change:

“Just ask the bot. It has that information built in.”
“You can do that via the bot now. It takes 20 seconds. It’s amazing!”
“Have you seen this new assistant. It’s so cool? You should use it.”
“It can even do this now.”
“I’ve loved chatting to you, but next time, the fastest way to get that info is via our digital assistant.”

“Involving the entire organisation will ensure progress is fast-tracked and you’ll see the ROI of your project faster.”

So it’s more crucial than ever to attack a project involving AI as a company initiative. Not a silo project. Involve all the departments, outline the role they play, and sell what your goals are and how this tech is going to help you reach them. This will ensure progress is fast-tracked and you’ll start seeing the ROI of your project faster.

Yes, at the beginning, your bot may only answer FAQs. But as it grows, and the responsibilities and goals are clarified, your data quality improves, cultural acceptance is high, the integrations are faster, you’ll find that you, your colleagues and your customers will be asking yourselves however you did what you did before without it.