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During our second panel at PolyAI VOX 2024: Horizons, Moni Panchavadi, Worldwide Partner Solution Technology Lead at AWS, and Juan Ocharan, CIO at Pet Paradise, joined PolyAI’s Brian Thompson to discuss using generative AI in a customer-facing role.
Automation has reshaped many industries, particularly during challenging times like the pandemic. Businesses had to adapt quickly to changing customer needs and behavior.
“For travel and hospitality, the pandemic kickstarted the automation movement,” says Moni. “People were checking in and out online more frequently. If they are at a hotel and want to reach out to customer care, they’re increasingly using chat and voice instead of going to the front desk.”
Juan echoed the need for quick, efficient communication and highlighted how automation plays a critical role in balancing speed and personalization.
“For [Pet Paradise], it was about trying to find that balance between personalization and making sure that we’re attending to our customers and providing as quick of an answer as possible,” says Juan.
“Pets are our family members. Customers call us to discuss something urgently about their pet or to check-in. For us, automation meant trying to discern between those two different types of use cases and quickly respond to both as efficiently as possible.”
Why voice AI matters in customer service
As customer expectations evolve, voice AI has emerged as a powerful tool, offering humanlike interactions while addressing customer needs more effectively.
“In the travel and hospitality industry, voice is a major player because you have experienced travelers who are going to places week in, week out,” says Moni.
“Then you have occasional travelers who travel once or twice a year, they’re not as familiar with the process. They like to talk to someone, they want to understand, they want to explain the problem.”
Juan also shared how voice AI simplified the process for common customer inquiries, making it an ideal alternative to traditional IVR systems.
“Our customers got very used to IVRs and hitting zero or pressing 4 to ask simple questions around opening times, for example,” says Juan. “We thought voice AI would help us resolve simple customer inquiries a lot faster than a traditional IVR. And it’s proven to do just that.”
Reducing hold times with voice AI
Juan explained the significance of implementing voice AI on wait times and its broader impact on customer experience.
“We quickly understood that we wanted to leverage our 2,000 employees who know the pets the best and make sure that those calls were transferred over to the resorts in real-time.”
Before voice AI, high demand during peak times often led to frustratingly long wait times for customers. Automation provided a solution.
“Before we leveraged AI, we sometimes had 20-minute wait times because we couldn’t answer all the questions – especially around the holidays,” says Juan.
“There are so many quick and easy questions that we found we could take down that time. A live conversation that has a little bit of chit-chat in it can be four minutes, but an AI conversation is 35 seconds.”
The importance of monitoring generative AI
When leveraging generative AI, maintaining quality and accuracy is more important than ever. Both speakers stressed the value of consistent monitoring and refinement to mitigate risks.
“It’s a continuous learning process,” says Juan. “We had a whole quality team that listened to all the calls and worked with the deployment team to refine and iterate how we wanted to respond. Think of it as any other call center human interaction, and monitor and update at all times.”
“Customers need to be very aware of the risk and what risk they are willing to take,” adds Moni. “For example, an airline used a chatbot and it provided incorrect information about cancellation fees, and they had a backlash about that. So what I recommend from my experience is to evaluate the risk and also consider whether you have the right data to support your AI applications.”
Engaging internal teams for successful AI adoption
Implementing new technology isn’t just about customer buy-in. Internal stakeholders need to be brought on board too.
“We could have invested a lot more in our resort personnel and making sure that they understood what this was like and what could possibly happen,” says Juan. “Their feedback would have been instrumental to making this even better.”
Moni emphasized that getting internal buy-in is key to ensuring both acceptance and implementation of new technologies.
“When it comes to customers embracing that change and understanding the value of the new feature or the new product, getting that buy-in is very important for acceptance and implementation.”
You can watch this panel session from PolyAI VOX 2024: Horizons on demand here.
