Most businesses make use of some sort of digital self-service tool on their website. Whether it’s a chatbot or a search bar, they try to provide ways for customers to find information or solve problems. But these tools typically have the same problem: they aren’t very smart. And when you start to talk about what smarter solutions might look like, people start to get nervous. Why?

There’s a lot of fear around the Artificial Intelligence technology necessary to take digital self-service tools to the next level. Someone will hear “AI” and immediately think about the Large Language Models that can (and will) say anything – and they think that having AI-powered self-service tools on their website could compromise the customer experience or their brand reputation. That means not having access to the latest innovations like intelligent search and intelligent virtual assistants.

Digital self-service is less expensive, faster, and results in satisfied and loyal customers – and fear of an out-of-control AI doesn’t have to keep you from enjoying those benefits

With inaccurate media representations of AI, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking that your options for digital self-service are a chatbot that only knows answers to a pre-programmed list of questions or AI being used to answer questions about a local HVAC service provider in Des Moines, Iowa, that can also tell inappropriate knock knock jokes.

Thankfully, those are not your only options. There’s a way to leverage the learning and conversational know-how that comes from training models on large data sets, without stepping outside the bounds of your core business and customer needs.

The key is getting all of the information about your company, everything from services offered to educational content that can help guide prospects to a buying decision, into a single repository. One, unified knowledge base that can be used to train one Unified Knowledge Model™. 

In the simplest terms, you’re putting the bot into a box and telling it that everything it needs can be found in that box. You have total control over what goes into that box, so you have total control over what the bot finds and uses in conversations.

Limited risk does not mean limited training

When you’re training models for AI, you need a lot of data to help create the context for the words being used in order to return an accurate and relevant response. More information turns into more efficient and accurate processing of queries, and more satisfied customers. Sourcing all of the data and validating its accuracy is a lot of work. One solution that we’ve found success with is leveraging a pre-trained industry-specific model. This is built into the Unified Knowledge Model™ and gives you helpful conversational experiences, with significantly less risk to the customer experience or brand reputation.

A Unified Knowledge Model™ can help you offer better customer service at a lower cost

Digital self-service on the whole is a great way to lower operational costs and improve customer satisfaction. You’re giving people the tools to instantly find what they need when they need it. There’s no waiting for business hours or queuing up for the next available rep. Leveraging a Unified Knowledge Model™ at the heart of your digital self-service takes those savings even further by tying into existing content repositories and pulling the latest information directly from those sources. That means that if you change the hours that your business is open on your website, you don’t need to then go into a separate database and update the hours in order for the intelligent search and intelligent virtual assistant to know the right hours. Your website is regularly crawled for updates and any changes are automatically applied to update the Unified Knowledge Model™. Faster, more accurate, more efficient – it all translates to more satisfied customers.

Humans don’t measure intelligence or helpfulness based on an ability to regurgitate facts

The context and ability to respond to a question with the right information, at the right time, and in the right tone, all factor into how “intelligent” we feel that something is. 

The holy grail for digital self-service is to offer people tools that feel not just intelligent but helpful – to offer people the kind of tools that they want to use

While a limitless AI-powered tool might be the most “intelligent” it won’t necessarily be the most helpful for a business and its customers. Bringing people the information that they need, in a tone that feels helpful, and a context that helps build trust, that’s a smart solution. And with the Unified Knowledge Model™, it’s a digital self-service solution that you can feel good about using.