IBM Watson: Rise of the Planet of the Chatbots

Beth Smith, General Manager, IBM Watson Data & AI

Be it as a personal shopper, hotel concierge, or customer service assistant—today, chatbots are everywhere. So much so, organizations are shifting gears from “to bot or not to bot” to “when and how fast to bot.” Generally focused on one specific task within organizations, bots have made their way in enterprises by quickly digesting, processing, and reporting business data as and when needed, bringing new employees up to speed, providing answers to questions involving product and service lines, or technical support issues, and more. In collaborative working environments, chatbots are gaining steam and becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Take for instance, Slack, wherein the app acts as an intelligent assistant that monitors conversations between teams to serve up relevant facts or statistics at pertinent points during discussions. As natural language processing (NLP) and various machine learning (ML) techniques pick up steam in recent years, virtual assistants or chatbots are bringing multiple business benefits to the fore.

To capitalize on this digital trend, the industry-leading conversational AI technology, IBM Watson Assistant enables organizations to quickly and efficiently build, deploy, and optimize chatbots. Adoption of intelligent virtual assistants is at an all time high, and with Watson Assistant, companies are saving millions in operational costs while actively engaging with their customers and employees.

Power Your Bot with Watson Assistant

As chatbots usually serve as the digital alternative to human interactions, customers or users can get easily frustrated when they are not provided with a relevant answer. Watson Assistant brings more to the table. An offering for building conversational interfaces into any application, device, or channel, Watson Assistant knows when exactly to search a knowledge base for an answer, when to ask for further clarification, and when to direct users to a human assistant. Besides, Watson Assistant can run on any cloud, allowing businesses to bring AI to their data and applications wherever they are.

“Enterprise-grade AI virtual assistants are more than just chatbots,” said Beth Smith, General Manager, IBM Watson Data & AI. “A true enterprise assistant understands when to search from a knowledge base, when to ask for clarity and when to direct users to a human – helping to resolve more requests while reducing misunderstandings and alleviating frustration for both employees and customers.”

Watson Assistant can be run in any environment—on premises, or on any private, public, hybrid or multi-cloud-through a new integration with IBM Cloud Private for Data (ICP for Data). This gives businesses the ability to apply an intelligent, enterprise-class virtual assistant to all of the company's data.

By seamlessly integrating with CRM systems and communication channels like Facebook and Slack, Watson Assistant also works with a business's existing tools. With the IBM Cloud Private integration, Watson Assistant can operate on clouds from other vendors, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, as well as in on-premises environments, helping users to navigate through the challenges of security, data privacy, and the complex regulations.

Watson Assistant can be run in any environment—on premises, or on any private, public, hybrid or multi-cloud-through a new integration with IBM Cloud Private for Data (ICP for Data)

The ingenious AI solution helps companies manage a large and often wide range of customer and employee service inquiries on a daily basis. A multitude of companies across more than 20 industries including automotive, healthcare, banking and financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, and software and technology, leverage Watson Assistant to develop distinct virtual assistants that uniquely represent their brand attributes. With the help of these solutions, companies are able to deliver quick and consistent customer service experience across all touchpoints while also automating customer support operations, allowing employees to focus on higher value tasks in the process. As an added benefit, Watson Assistant comes packaged with customer Care, insurance, banking, telco, ecommerce, and utilities content. In case of additional content, Watson Assistant can also integrate with outside domain knowledge artifacts.

To ensure a positive customer experience, Regions Bank is using Watson Assistant in its contact centers to help both employees and customers. The company's Banker Assist harnesses the power of Watson Assistant to provide bankers with guidance on customer inquiries, empowering them to resolve customer service issues faster. With the help of Banker Assist, employees can use AI-powered search to facilitate quicker call resolutions and help customers with more consistent answers. Additionally, many customers who call Regions for support, interact directly with Watson Assistant, receiving rapid and relevant answers to their questions along with assistance on a variety of issues including updating personal information and navigating the Regions Bank website. By letting Watson take on the more routine questions, Regions Bank is enabling service representatives to tackle the more intellectually challenging questions, spend more time engaging with customers, and be better informed to solve customer issues. “The use of artificial intelligence among banks continues to rise, helping financial institutions make better use of vast amounts of data, analyze patterns, evaluate risks and improve customer service,” informs Beth. “Regions Bank is focused on improving customer and associate relationships and Watson will help them continue to provide a great customer experience.”

On another occasion, an online retailer, Very.co.uk, part of Shop Direct, launched a Watson Assistant powered chatbot during the 2018 holiday season.

Their “Very Assistant Chatbot” is designed to answer service-related questions such as 'where is my delivery' and 'what is the return policy?’ After having the virtual assistant beta tested with a selection of customers, Very.co.uk launched it during the peak sales period of Christmas season. Highly focused on improved customer service and online self-service options, the Very Assistant helped the company reduce customer calls in contact centers by 30 percent even during its prime Christmas sales timeline.

Deep-Rooted in Innovation

IBM announced Watson Assistant, at the THINK 2018 conference, as a new addition to its cognitive computing platform and an enhancement to an existing service—Conversation. While IBM is not trying to build an Alexa or a Google Home competitor, through Watson Assistant, the company is bringing in a platform to create Alexa-like experience across web, mobile, wearables, and even robotics. Using Watson Assistant as the foundational platform, developers can make use of their favorite wake word to build newer experiences based on natural language.

"A true enterprise assistant understands when to search from knowledge base, when to ask for clarity, and when to direct users to a human"

Much like other industries, the automotive industry too is harnessing the AI capabilities of Watson Assistant. For instance, Harman and BMW have partnered with IBM to build intelligent interfaces. Upon integrating several Watson Assistant use cases into a high-end, Maserati concept, Harman is demonstrating how AI-based interactive dashboards will be personalized to their drivers in the future.

As Beth explains in her blog, IBM has made domain-specific content available inside of Watson Assistant to make implementation simpler for all organizations. This, in turn, enhances the core capabilities of the market-leading technology and equips customers to add further depth to highly advanced industry-specific solutions. Moreover, to cash in on popular internet of things opportunities, IBM has introduced solutions built on top of Watson Assistant to help customers with jump-start on building a specialized digital assistant.

Regardless of the type of chatbot a company builds, it is essential to infuse it with some personality and life such that it is intuitive and easy to interact with. Be it something as simple as turning on a light or as complicated as applying for a mortgage, every pattern is distinct and has distinct features. Every brand that attempts to better their customer experience is looking at developing and deploying chatbots that stand out in the competition and shines bright in what it is designed to do. To help organizations keep pace, IBM has brought Watson Assistant to the table, where next-generation, intelligent applications can be incubated to respond to voice commands. IBM will continue refining its leading-age solution by adding new features and functionalities to it to provide developers and business professionals with the tools they need to build and improve AI assistants and chatbots for their business. The possibilities are endless.

- Ben Jackson
May 09, 2019