Ideal time to plan for AI for 2018.
Planning for AI in sales and customer service 2018.
Already in 2017, over 55% of enterprises have implemented artificial intelligence (AI) based software, or plan to implement it over the next 12 months.
If your company has started to discuss the potential areas for its implementation and made first budget estimates, the beginning of the year is the ideal time to start planning such activities for 2018. We suggest, among other things, to check what your annual goals are, what specific areas to target, and how to plan your implementation schedule.
3-2-1 Start. What service targets should your AI aim to achieve?
Past experience elucidates 3 areas of benefit achieved in projects implementing Artificial Intelligence in companies:
1- Saving customer service costs. This is the #1 area for AI projects in companies in 2017. The application of AI technology in hotlines and contact center solutions allows for automation in the handling of the most common problems, thereby reducing the total service costs.
2- Increasing revenues through marketing automation. This is the second best area of involvement— AI technologies are used here to more precisely identify leads (future clients), and further, converting them to clients.
3- Optimization of business processes. Automation can positively affect myriad departments rang ing from HR processes, management, and the R&D of products. These benefits are more difficult to measure—they concern the quality of service (measured, for example, by NPS – net promoters score), productivity or user satisfaction.
The first key decision related to AI planning in companies is the choice of the application target—this will then decide on how this application is measured.
Deciding what technology you plan to implement?
The four most commonly chosen smart technologies within customer service and sales are:
1- AI-Chatbots, virtual company assistants, virtual agents—already several dozen of the largest enterprises in Poland have launched these on their portals or in their online stores. Their task is to provide immediate answers to customers who, for example, are having trouble with payment while e-shopping—instantly by live chat.
2- Voice recognition technology, allowing hotline consultants to let go of repetitive issues, resolving 20-40% of the most frequently reported problems— often assisting in tens of thousands per month.
3- Image recognition technology, which enable far-reaching automation of production processes, customer service requiring identity identification or for finding “visually similar” goods in e-stores.
4- Big Data analytics solutions, enabling hitherto demanding expensive work and advanced computers to discover relationships and draw conclusions based on huge streams of data, often from various sources.
Each supplier usually specializes in just one AI technology, hence the choice of a specific solution is usually preceded by a RFI (request for information) or RFP (request for pricing) procedure. InteliWISE offers a full set of services and solutions, all of which saves your company time and expenses.
How much to spend and how to plan your budgeting for AI?
In 2018, adding AI technologies to a company’s service portfolio no longer costs millions, as was the case only a few years ago. Firstly, many aspects of AI are now available as a cloud service, which eliminates the need to invest in servers, and infrastructure. Secondly, selected providers offer payments in the form of monthly subscriptions, based on the actual use of the service, further bring costs down. Thirdly, due to growth of historical data regarding AI implementations in companies, you can relatively accurately determine the ROI (return on investment) when incorporating AI.
For example, when planning to launch our Virtual Assistant, which is aimed at cutting helpline and company websites costs, a budget can be easily determined. For example, one might consist of a start-up fee and a several-month subscription, as below:
- Demo – usually doesn’t require any budgeting, as it is often built into test periods of software accounts;
- The solution prototype, launched for the purposes of initial tests and assessment of potential – from USD 5,000 up;
- Proof of concept – from USD 15,000 up;
- Industrial implementation – usually from USD 50,000 annually.
Having worked on many AI projects with enterprises in Poland, USA and UK, we at InteliWISE have prepared an easily implementable path, within which we set precise goals, budgets and optimal technologies to be implemented in a specific case. The first step is sending out a form with several simple questions to our company – we encourage you to contact us and join the global revolution of AI in businesses!
