People are now entering a new era of technology and automation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly popular in businesses and is playing a larger role in their marketing and business processes along with our daily life. However, with these new technologies and changes comes fear and the uncertainty of them along with the embracement. Businesses are sometimes unsure about the potential implications of AI, including chatbots with AI, and its effects on their overall business operations. Most often the challenges come from not understanding the technology and lack of planning not only the implementation but further the usage, adapting it based on customers’ and employees’ interactions and feedback, and its further development and integration within the digital ecosystem of the business.
In which areas are marketers worldwide testing or utilizing the use of AI in conjunction with their marketing automation?
According to an eMarketer graphic, based on research by Acsend2, paid advertising, personalization in emails and offers along with predictive analytics and chatbots are the areas where marketers already using AI to improve the overall marketing of the company they are working for. A year ago, AI chatbots were not the top priorities of marketers, although were the #1 software solution on the list of the leaders of various industries. However, with recent development and AI chatbots getting into every media globally due to ChatGPT, 2023 promises to turn into the year of chatbots and AI in everything. Moreover, chatbots with AI could be also used for advertising and personalization, in email campaigns, and products and service recommendations to merge the marketing strategies into a successful one. It’s a matter of time for marketers to learn how flexible are the AI chatbots when it comes to sales and marketing and all the opportunities and benefits they offer to become a crucial part of the companies’ marketing strategies and operations.
Conversational AI is used in chatbots so they could communicate with their users (business customers, employees, and partners) 24/7 all year round improving users’ interaction, experience, and overall satisfaction. Along with it comes the expectations of customers for digital self-service solutions. The trends using AI in marketing are not new but became mainstream with the usage of the language model ChatGPT – such as creating content and other useful materials. The next logical step would be enhancing the company conversations with it, as the buzz around the opportunity something else to talk with the customers all day and night releasing the employees from the routine, and the business to have control over that, is increasing.
72% of customers expect businesses to be available 24/7 for instant communication. We see it in all chatbots on our Umni platform – nighttime communication reaches up to 45% of all business communication. Customers themselves have become more impatient and have higher expectations for businesses to be technologically relevant, i.e., to provide accessible modern digital tools, including self-service options. This presents businesses with a dilemma of how to keep up with these expectations. On the graphic published by eMarketer based on the CDP.com story, you can see that overall, 77% of the user accept assistance from AI chatbots and find them helpful for customer service. The level of acceptance and usage depends on the technology adopted and its way of usage. 23% of the users stated that they find AI chatbots irritating – an issue that easily could be solved with better planning of the chatbot implementation and better training of the conversational AI module in it. The needs of businesses also remain classic even though they have been exported to the digital world: to sell more, save more while improving customer support and customer experience, and grow. There are still some barriers and fears when it comes to using AI chatbots. Digging deeper one may find that they are mostly in the minds of those making the decision whether or not there is a place for a smart digital assistant in a business, but such fears are stopping them to have a digital instrument on their side. We want to break those barriers and fears, as listed in research conducted by Coleman Parks in March’22. We are going to mention the top 10 of them in the next paragraphs and will be happy if someone recognizes his/her thoughts in this blog post and find the answers. Every business deserves to stay competitive and use the power of the AI chatbot to grow and achieve more than expected. As Peter Diamandis, an American entrepreneur, writer, and futurologist has said – “By the end of this decade, there will be 2 types of companies: those that use artificial intelligence, and those with no business.” As technology is much more advanced than just a few years ago and is quickly being developed further, Peter’s words may become reality sooner than expected.
The Top 10 Fears Businesses Have When It Comes to AI (chatbot) and How to Overcome Them:
Cybersecurity
Protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computer systems, networks, and data, against cyber-attacks or unauthorized access is the biggest fear related to AI in 69% of the respondents in the research which allocates the need for overcoming it by featuring the solutions. It’s important to note that no system is completely secure. AI chatbot platforms like any other platform on online software solutions rely on encryption to protect the customer’s personal and sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, and personal identification numbers. Other methods that are used to protect clients’ accounts are two-factor authentication, password strengths requirements, regular software updates, secure server infrastructure, and data backup and recovery.
Data privacy
Business owners may be concerned about the potential risks to customer privacy and data security when implementing an AI when 65% said this is their second biggest fear of the technology. To overcome this fear, it’s important to assure them that chatbots are built with security measures in place to protect customer data. Chatbots collect first and zero-party customer data – users’ behavior statistics provided are only general information such as what users are asking or looking for, what time of day they do it, and willingly provided information. The forms send the collected information to an email specified by the company. The information collected is deleted from the conversation with the AI digital assistant instantly after form submission. The business team – the receiver of the e-mail or other source of collected information (in case of integration with other company software was used) is responsible for analyzing this information, taking action, and securing the collected data according to company policies and procedures.
With the upcoming changes in the cookieless world, businesses face how to deal with better customer understanding after the disappearance of third-party cookies. The AI chatbots for sure have place on the business website as a first- and zero-party data collection tool, working in accordance with data protection and privacy regulations.
Compliance with various state and local regulations
What does that mean? 57% of people have said this comes as a challenge or is a risk when deciding to use AI-related software or instruments in their business. These risks wouldn’t be a problem in most countries when following strictly data privacy regulations and personal rights safety. When it comes to the usage of AI chatbots on the website, the regulations on the EU level are related only to its “transparency” – that the AI chatbot states it is a chatbot and the users are aware that they are chatting with a software solution. “Hello! I am the chatbot of company X…” – everybody who communicated with a chatbot had seen such a welcome message. Although now it is a requirement, it is also a good practice in chatbot making as it sets proper expectations for the users.
Legal liability
57% of business people who participated in the research, answered that legal liability would be a risk when it comes to using an AI-related technology. The legal liability for companies when it comes to AI chatbot usage varies depending on the jurisdiction and the specific circumstances of the case. However, such common issues as data privacy, misrepresentation (means the chatbot providing incorrect information), product liability (the chatbot causing loss or damage to customer by providing wrong information), discrimination (in the answers), and intellectual property infringement (infringing on trademarks or copyrights) can be easily avoided in the AI chatbot by ensuring that the chatbot answers, provided by the company team, are always updated and their quality is up to the company standards, rules and policies. This by the way, is the big difference between such language models as ChatGPT and the business AI chatbot – while the language model generates the answer based on its knowledge base (and nobody knows what the answer will be), the business AI chatbot is trained to recognize customer questions related to the concrete company, its product, and services, and provides answers written by the company team, means the business has 100% control over the content and the answers of the chatbot.
Fear of technical complexity
Almost half of the people in the research lack understanding of the technology: business owners and managers may be intimidated by the technical aspects of creating, implementing, and using AI in their projects and operations, also in integrating it with existing systems and maintaining it. When it comes to conversational AI and chatbots with conversational AI, this is becoming mainstream. About AI in general, and AI chatbots in particular, there are a lot of how-to material and useful content, webinars, courses, books, and other material to help understand how the technology works and how to deal with it. To overcome this fear, it’s important to read information from reliable sources, and have a clear and detailed plan for the creation and implementation of the AI chatbot, as well as for its ongoing training, support, and maintenance. The implementation is a very easy job when it comes to placing it for example on the business site. Often this is a quick copy/paste of a short code and you do not need any technical knowledge and skills to do it. Therefore, better focus on the need for such an instrument, researching the proper platform to use, creating a detailed plan and implementing the chatbot to start benefiting from it, as it not only will assist your customers but also partners, employees, and business overall. Having an employee or a team devoted to the AI chatbot, learning the technology to improve and upgrade the chatbot continuously while further understanding its benefits and technology specifics are part of the success of such an AI project. Don’t forget also to plan and execute its popularization online and offline to make it really useful and to help your business grow.
Lack of regulation with clear guidelines
When your business adopts some new technology into its services, it comes with the need of learning how to work with it and use it. It’s the same with AI and AI chatbot technology. There are many misconceptions and myths about chatbot technology and here’s the reality. As AI technology is rapidly developing the regulations are following – this is usually the case with every new technology, the law needs cases to create “do” and “don’t”. However, when it comes to AI chatbots, there are not too many regulations that are related to their usage. We already mentioned transparency, data protection, and other customer rights protection. The guidelines for using an AI chatbot would be not too much different from those when your employees are chatting with customers over messengers, by e-mail, by phone, or face-2-face. Using your business common sense and company policies, you will be able to implement and work with an AI chatbot without any challenges related to regulations.
Organization’s reputation
How AI, including chatbots with AI, can affect a company’s reputation? This could happen when the AI chatbot gives wrong answers or incomplete or outdated information. The problem with the answers could be easily handled by making sure there is a person in your team in charge of the chatbot content. If your chatbot had been trained to answer some questions of your website visitors but it is still gaining more topics to handle, instead of just negative responses like “I don’t know the answer”, make sure the chatbot offers an alternative to the customer such as filling a contact form with their questions so an employee could follow up or a number to call or else. A note “I am still learning, please excuse me if I don’t know yet the answer” in the welcome message of the chatbot will also ensure customers do not have a negative experience with the business AI chatbot therefore it would not affect the company’s reputation. Meanwhile, be proactive in training the conversational AI module of your chatbot – add more topics (not only what customers ask the chatbot but also from questions received in all other channels of communications), provide more training phrases, and make sure the answers are not robotic (like yes, no, very short and incomplete) and provide further details and options to customers. Here are some mistakes in the chatbot creation and maintenance that could affect your brand reputation, but if you know them and avoid them, that is not likely to happen, and your AI chatbot would work at its best. Your AI chatbot success depends on your team – to use it properly, to maintain and improve it over time.
Recruitment fairness
39% of the people in the research said they face AI-related risks regarding recruitment fairness. Business owners may be concerned that implementing an AI chatbot would also automate jobs and result in layoffs. To overcome this fear, it’s important to emphasize that AI chatbots and other AI-related systems are designed to assist and augment human capabilities, rather than replace them. AI chatbots can take over repetitive, mundane tasks, allowing employees to focus on more complex and valuable tasks, and be more motivated to help the company grow. When it comes to the fairness of the recruitment processes, they also depend on people’s choices at last, an AI-based program could make the first selection, but in the end, people choose who to recruit and hire to work for them. AI chatbots and AI-related systems only help with these processes, not replace them at all, everything, at last, depends on human decisions. AI chatbots further help with supporting staff and company health, therefore being unexpectedly an HR helper. Some would ask how this could happen and we have an answer in our blog post on the topic with author Stanislava Zapryanova-King, an organizational psychologist with a focus on mental health and building organizational cultures for wellness in the workplace.
Physical safety
How could an AI chatbot affect someone’s physical safety? Of course, as the chatbot is online and the chatting goes on the screen of the phone or on the desktop, everyone should follow such common sense when using a chatbot like not texting and walking or driving, or not watching the screen for too long time. Adding a voice option to the AI chatbot would assist users with using the chatbot when they are on the go and cannot text. Excluding the described situations, the AI chatbot could affect people mostly in a positive way – both customers and employees. When a customer wants to communicate with your brand, he or she wouldn’t need to wait in queues at your store, or wait too long and get stressed because of it. He or she would use your AI chatbot for self-service and stay satisfied with your products and services. It’s similar for the employees, they would have time for more complex and exciting tasks, because the AI chatbot takes care of the routine ones. As we mentioned above, an AI chatbot takes care of the business and staff health by it all means. The chatbot itself cannot cause physical or mental health or safety issues.
Poor performance and high costs
This fear is not included in the research quoted above but businesses we have communicated over the years have it as one of their main. Business owners may be concerned that AI-powered chatbots will not perform as expected, resulting in a poor customer experience and a high cost of implementation and maintenance. To overcome this fear, it’s important to emphasize that AI chatbots are continuously trained and improved, and if the chatbot isn’t performing as expected, it can be adjusted and improved according to the business and customers’ needs. This process is under the full control of the business and its team. Implementing an AI chatbot also is a mainstream technology now, which means it’s more affordable than ever. For those business owners that are concerned about the financial costs, it’s important to highlight the potential cost savings that a chatbot can bring, such as reducing the need for human customer service representatives at the first level, increasing the support to 24/7, increasing efficiency and sales, and improving overall business processes. We have written a blog post about what to consider before investing in such project, what is the total investment in chatbots and what are the most important savings and gains.
As the AI chatbot technology and AI in everything continue to evolve every day, it is important to know exactly how AI-powered instruments and software work before having one. Instead of fearing various sides of the technology, the best solution is to research and learn about it, consult with an expert in this area, and test it. Making a detailed plan, being aware of the mistake that should be avoided and the good practices, and using the AI chatbot properly will help overcome every single fear and further grow. Like someone once said, if you want to do something, but you are scared, do it scared, you will regret it only if you didn’t try. So, when you decide to trust the AI chatbot as it is for every business, no matter its size and industry, read about all wrong expectations and the reality, all risks and how to overcome them and start your AI chatbot journey fully aware, knowing what it could give you and your business – many benefits and growth for sure. Contact us to start now before your competition creates their digital assistant! The first are the winners.