Actionable ways that businesses can start using AI to improve customer experience and employee productivity

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with David DeWolf and Andre Yee at the Voice & AI conference in Washington, D.C. We spoke about business leadership in the AI era, at a time when business has seen a 300% increase in the use of AI in the last 5 years. One of the topics of discussion was around use cases for AI, and finding tangible opportunities to make a business impact. This is something that I’m very passionate about and wanted the opportunity to dive deeper into.

AI powers “ask and get” experiences

At XAPP AI, we use a combination of the AI technologies that are out there to provide what we call an, “ask and get” experience. These are consumer-facing experiences that make it simple and delightful for a user to get the answers to their questions, and get things done, quickly. It can be done in a conversational format through chat, or in a less formal experience, like a search bar.

When users can ask for what they want and get it immediately, it creates a highly satisfying customer experience.

People buy differently today than they used to. For the most part, they don’t want to talk to anyone. They want to handle their own self-service and research. They don’t necessarily trust people acting “on behalf of” a company. That inherent lack of trust trickles down to sharing information. When something pops up and asks for a phone number, people get protective. They don’t want to give their information to get information back. They just want answers to their questions, quickly.

When they’re able to get answers to their questions in a self-service way, that starts to build trust. As the conversation continues, with the user feeling a strong sense of control, they’ll often be more willing to tell you something about themselves and their intentions. From there, it’s a lot easier to drive them to conversion and capture that lead information.

Generative AI is creating a renaissance in productivity

In today’s world, organizations of all sizes are strained to find talented salespeople and customer service people. It’s a problem that exists 24-7 in a world where customer expectations are such that they want answers and support at all hours of the day, every day. 

Every role, every business, every organization, and every use case can be better with generative AI. Whatever your job is, whatever company you work for, you should be asking yourself how generative AI can improve the work that you do. 

CEOS need to think about AI as the exercise room for productivity. You need to get into the exercise room. You need to show the time you’re spending and what you’re doing to use AI to make us as a business or as an organization more productive. It’s that important.

Organizations that are not taking advantage of generative AI will be left in the dust.

Business leaders, even the non-technical ones, can use these tools to do things that add immediate value to the business. Everybody talks about analytics and how much data we have. Data without analysis and understanding isn’t valuable. Using AI to cull through the data and pull out insights allows you to define information from massive amounts of data.

Companies can put guardrails around AI to make it feel less scary.

Handing conversations where people can ask specific questions off to AI can understandably make folks nervous, especially in regulated industries. But we have techniques for how to handle this using prompt engineering that puts guardrails on generative AI. At XAPP AI, part of the guardrail is that we use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) where we crawl all the content that a business owns. We then only search that content, and use AI to articulate an answer from it. Accuracy is guaranteed and the business can feel confident knowing that the only answers given will be ones culled from information published by their organization. 

The ability to put guardrails on AI technology extends to ethical concerns as well. There are rules to define everything – including how to manage and respond to user inputs in a way that aligns with the values of your business.

Improved productivity makes teams stronger.

Right now we are in a very tight labor market, where it’s hard to find the people needed to do the work that has to get done. The reality is that the “extra” work often falls on the shoulders of the existing employees. When you can use AI to improve their productivity, you are quite literally giving them time back in their days that they would not have otherwise. They’re better positioned to deliver more value to your customers, to have improved work-life balance, and to feel less overwhelmed and overworked. 

Trying something new can be scary. This is one thing that you need to build over time, like a muscle, by experimenting with AI technology and finding creative ways to use it to help solve business problems.

The value to the customer experience is an easy sell. Where people start to get uncomfortable is when we start talking about the productivity use case because it can feel like a roundabout way of discussing replacing people with computers. That can feel scary and intimidating and keeps many businesses from dipping their toes into the generative AI waters. I’d advocate for jumping in with both feet in pursuit of a world where people are better supported by computers through AI.

Contact us to discuss how we can help any size business launch AI-powered search and chat solutions that answer customers’ questions, build trust and capture leads.

* These fields are required.

September 28, 2023

Generative AI Use Cases for All Businesses

People buy differently today than they used to. When they're able to get answers to their questions in a self-service way, that starts to build trust. As the conversation continues, with the user feeling a strong sense of control, they’ll often be more willing to tell you something about themselves and their intentions. From there, it’s a lot easier to drive them to conversion and capture that lead information.
September 14, 2023
customer service rep wearing a headset while sitting at a desk with two monitors

Find the Best AI-Powered Chat Platform for your SMB

If you’re an SMB owner who’s interested in using AI, be sure to have a clear understanding of your needs before diving into the capabilities of the technology. Let your expertise in your business be an anchor as you begin exploring the world of AI.
September 5, 2023
Black and white photo of a person's hand hanging up a payphone receiver.

How AI-Powered Digital Messaging Can Improve Customer Service for Small Businesses

AI-powered digital assistants can be a valuable tool for small businesses, as they can help improve customer satisfaction by always being available, reduce operational costs for the business, and free up staff time.
August 16, 2023
A small business owner stands at a register and smiles while hugging her child

Small Businesses: Technology Pioneers

As new technologies like Generative AI continue to emerge, small businesses will again be at the forefront of testing, using technology to benefit their customers and their bottom line.
August 1, 2023
Image of the ChatGPT welcome screen on a mobile phone

ChatGPT: What Small Businesses Need to Know

Like any new technology, it’s important to weigh the risks before making an investment with an impact on operations. While ChatGPT may not be the right answer for your small business, the underlying technology holds opportunities for all businesses wanting to be here in the future.
July 19, 2023
Photo of orange and purple smoke converging

The Convergence of Conversational AI, Generative AI, and Intelligent Search: A New Era of Human-Computer Interaction

The convergence of Conversational AI, Generative AI, and Intelligent Search is creating new possibilities for human-computer interaction that were previously unimaginable - a world where humans are interacting with computers without realizing it.
July 6, 2023
Man pointing to information in a book

Trust and the Importance of AI Citations for Retrieval Augmented Generation

If you’ve been following industry discussions about Generative AI and RAG, you’re likely already aware that the output is dependent on the inputs. The AI algorithm retrieves the information it deems relevant from the sources available to it and should be able to cite those sources and present them back to the user.
June 22, 2023
Image a clear male mannequin facing to the side against a blue background, with light shining through it

To Expand Generative AI Usage, Tech Companies Must Build Trust

Between news coverage and growing Google search trends, you’d expect to see rapid growth in usage adoption or user sign-ups for Generative AI-powered services. That is, perhaps surprisingly, not the case. With all of the coverage and awareness around Generative AI, where are the users?
June 8, 2023
Photo of a golden retriever dog jumping into a body of water

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is the Operations Upgrade Your Business Needs

We’re living in a time when common business pain points like staffing and training can have uncommon solutions. Technology is creating new options that could not have existed just a couple of years ago. Sometimes the technology (or combination of technologies) enables solutions that were inconceivable just a couple of months ago. RAG has the potential to make the written word experiential, indexable, and immediately available for a variety of different use cases.