Founded in 2016, French startup Tolk.ai specializes in creating intelligent, scalable chatbots. In a world where human interactions are increasingly focused on messaging apps, chatbots offer brands an incredible opportunity to engage in conversation with their customers.
Tolk.ai helps companies, whether B2B or B2C, to create chatbots that fit seamlessly into their brand universe. These can be deployed on consumer messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Kik, as well as on messaging platforms for internal use, such as Slack, Zendesk, Intercom, thanks to technology incorporating scalable artificial intelligence.
Chatbots: friends or foes of customer relationship centers?
We are convinced that the future of customer relations lies in the hybridization of human and artificial intelligence. Chatbots are incredibly effective at handling Level 1 requests. The whole self-care approach is boosted by the implementation of this type of tool. With intelligent chatbots, companies can extend the working hours of their customer services. At the same time, they can offer responsive, personalized assistance, while keeping costs under control.
In this relationship, often considered ambiguous, agents are given more time to concentrate on high value-added tasks. Relieved of a large proportion of low value-added queries, agents are given more responsibility and autonomy to carry out up-selling and cross-selling, and take time out for complex requests.
There are chatbots and chatbots!
For Thomas Sabatier, co-founder of Tolk.ai, the future of customer relations lies in the hybridization of human and artificial intelligence. Conversational agents are incredibly effective at handling Level 1 queries. Companies can use chatbots to extend the working hours of their customer services and offer reactive, personalized assistance. Human operators will eventually be relieved of a large proportion of low value-added queries, and will be able to concentrate on complex requests requiring a high level of analytical capacity.
Chatbots can also support customers in their day-to-day lives, by recommending content or products, offering coaching in sports, cooking, fashion or wellness, offering personal services, providing assistance or customer service, etc. Tolk.ai enables brands to create rich, lasting relationships in new environments such as messaging applications, Amazon Echo or Google Home.
However, Thomas Sabatier admits that chatbots are still in their infancy and have a long way to go. Advances in machine learning offer significant prospects for development, particularly in understanding natural language and handling complex queries. It is important to understand that artificial intelligence remains artificial, and therefore limited.
According to Thomas Sabatier, the human brain is capable of adapting to any situation thanks to its constantly evolving emotional intelligence. Chatbots will continue to feed on human intelligence, with exponential learning capacities. The evolution of chatbots is that of the augmented human, to improve our productivity and put our intelligence to work on more complex and interesting problems.
What advice do you have for customer relations departments when it comes to equipping themselves with chatbots?
Finally, Thomas Sabatier advises customer relations departments wishing to equip themselves with chatbots not to embark on this kind of project without understanding what's at stake. The UX of the conversation is the part not to be neglected, and it's imperative to give your chatbot a strong personality, a tone and why not a little humor.
Interview conducted by Romaine Klein and originally published on Interactions Digitales on 10/10/16
