Digital channels are more effective in engaging with customers than letters and phone calls. Adding AI into the mix takes customer engagement to another level.
Webio’s AI makes managing conversations more efficient and effective. Delivering hyper-personalised engagement around specific customer needs at scale to result in better customer experiences and better business outcomes.
Understanding who your customer is when they start engaging, knowing what they want to do, routing the conversation down a hyper-personalised path and predicting the most likely outcomes is exactly what Webio’s AI does.
Webio’s AI customised collections language model (CCLM) is specifically trained for the credit and collections industry.
Webio’s AI responses are not the same as generative AI responses. No need to worry about rogue answers. All responses can be approved by the business to ensure compliance is met at every turn.
Improve agent performance and reduce workload with AI Co-Pilots. AI generates and ranks top response options, giving agents the best responses based on previous conversation outcomes.
No need for agents to write responses every time. Webio's AI removes all the heavy lifting from the agent's role and ensures prompt, compliant responses.
Starting with lower levels of automation, Webio clients have moved along their automation journey and are now operating a well-oiled machine, blending inbound and outbound AI agents with live agent engagement.
Maximising agent productivity, reducing costs and delivering a better customer experience, better than they ever did before.
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Not all customers who start to self-serve will complete it. Webio understands and manages customers that step away from their self-service journey.
Our conversational AI is the safety net that reengages, resolves the query or drops customers back into their self-service journey to continue to completion. Blending conversational AI drives completion rates and customer satisfaction.
You don’t need to be a programmer to use the simple and logical no-code drag-and-drop bot design tool. Visually build a bot with all the features at your fingertips. And tap into the library of best-practise bots to kick-off your bot building endeavours.
More about the AI Bot BuilderIf you need to improve your customer engagement, talk to us and we'll show you how AI automation via digital messaging apps works.
You will love the Webio experience.
We promise.
NOT USING THIS PANEL
Quickly extract the key points of a longer conversation with the conversation highlights function. Handy for an agent to get up to speed when taking over or rejoining an existing conversation.
Accessing a knowledge base for FAQ
Asked Ciaran about it – his response:
So it will allow customers to create bots that can answer their faqs. They do this already but it takes a long time and those bots tend to be quite large. This condenses it into one step.
It doesn't use generative AI at the moment. What they do instead is upload a file (like an xls or csv file) containing the faq answers, and the intent model determines the label for the answer. So during a conversation if that same intent is recognised in a customer's question it will send the corresponding answer
For more: What is the Difference Between Generative AI and Conversational AI?
A custom language model (CLM) is designed to understand and generate language for the particular needs of an industry. Unlike generalist language models, custom language models are fine-tuned to excel in one focused area using industry jargon and styles.
Webio's conversational AI platform is built on a custom language model created specifically for the credit and collections industry. This collections CLM was trained using millions of actual conversations to teach the model the language and vernacular of credit and debt collection.
A CLM is Always Learning
Webio's AI models achieve a starting accuracy of 85%-86% and with fine-tuning up to 90%-94%. Machine Learning allows AI systems to learn from data and the algorithms can be used to train conversational AI models to become more intelligent and capable over time. AI AI Agent interactions with customers are fed back into the system to keep it continually learning.
The Role of Generative AI in Customer Engagement
Generative AI is built on large language models that are not reliable, accurate or secure enough to be trusted with customer engagement, especially in a sensitive area such as credit and collections. However, Webio is building generative AI tools to be used in areas such as summarising conversations in the Conversation Highlights Panel, answering FAQs, and bot building and training.
(See: What is the Difference Betweeen Generative AI and Conversational AI?)
For more, see:
AI Enhanced Agent Experience
AI Agents automate the bulk of customer engagement tasks, up to 75%, while agents deal with the more sensitive or complex cases. AI agents can easily handle simple queries, like balance enquiries, conducting I&E, and setting up payment plans, whereas human agents step in, for example, if a customer is showing signs of vulnerability. Furthermore, agent productivity increases as they can now manage more conversations simultaneously, up to 15 at a time.
AI Smart Tools Give Agents the Edge
Agents are bolstered with AI tools, such as conversation summaries and response suggestions, that make their lives easier. The Activity panel on the agent's screen provides a neat summary of the key data from the conversation between the customer and the AI agent or live agent. Here agents can see the Entities, Intents and Propensities, as well as other useful information such as Notes and Customer Details.
Automate Campaigns with 80% Less Effort
Simply setup and launch campaigns through an intuitive visual interface. Track the progress and outcomes of each campaign and stay fully in control of campaigns that you can throttle, speed up and pause as needed for optimal performance.
For more details: Agent Experience and Intelligence
Empower Customers with Self-Service
Sometimes, the quickest and most effective way of helping a customer is providing a way for them to help themselves. Webio's Self-Service Studio is an online portal giving customers the option to make payments, set up promises-to-pay, arrange payment plans and check accounts. Conversational AI agents are on hand to guide customers through the process and answer any questions they may have.
Increase Payments and Save Time with Conversational Payments
Collect payments quickly and securely. Optimise payments by bringing in live payment requests into customer conversations in digital messaging channels. Agents can simply send payment requests in the message as soon as the customer indicates they would like to pay.
Gather Data 5x Faster with Conversational Forms
At times, you need to gather information from a customer in order to resolve their query. A good example of this is an Income & Expenditure form. Webio offers conversational forms that can be accessed from within the conversation in the messaging app, like WhatsApp and SMS, and the information is scored and the results determine the next step in the conversation. Customers are sent to the form by an agent or an AI agent. The conversational design makes for a good customer experience and information is gathered 5x faster than if an agent were asking the questions one-by-one.
Being proactive with messaging is an effective way to engage customers. Whether they just need a gentle reminder or have been avoiding all contact. The right message, tone and timing is proven to significantly improve customer responses.
Proactive engagement must be personalised and deeply relevant to the customer. It must feel pre-emptive. Webio provides smart context triggers to achieve this. Smart Triggers will change across the credit and collection cycle and may involve integrations via the simple but powerful Webio API.
Capturing every aspect of each customer interaction. Adapting and using this knowledge in future conversations improves the quality of engagement and outcomes. Webio has channel spanning automation capabilities to achieve this.
An understanding of what the customers channel, language, and interaction style preferences are. This requires us to go beyond simple automation to use the power of Artificial Intelligence to deliver this seamlessly every time.
Have pain free, convenient experiences, that make customers "feel known, empowered, and safe". Webio's conversational interface delivers this.
The initial experience of excellent customer service is speed of response. We ask and we get. We choose and it's done.
Webio's ‘Instant Infrastructure’ was designed for high-performance.
From an enterprise point of view Webio’s “Instant” infrastructure enables the import of millions of file details, to have powerful importation rules applied in real time, making instant “campaign ready” a reality.
For inbound communications “Instant” infrastructure means instant scalability, ensuring you are always up, open, and ready to respond.
Webio’s Propensity Studio machine learning engine predicts the most likely outcome of each customer conversation within the first 3 utterances.
Assessing and applying individual scores against likely outcomes. Webio Propensity Studio interprets the customer's language, response behaviours and previous conversation history to determine how best you can manage and route every interaction.
This might be in the form of presenting the next best option to the customer using a combination of words, images, and options such as being serviced by a live agent.
Propensity AI agents give the business the ability to manage millions of messages, regardless of channel, and have full AI driven customer conversations. Propensity Studio AI agents ease the pressure on contact centre volumes by automating simple interactions whilst also improving customer engagement and experience.
More customer engagement brings more collections success
Engage with customers with the perfect balance of automation, AI and live agents.
Conversational AI enhances the customer experience and creates smooth interactions by managing all the elements of inbound and outbound conversations. In busy contact centres, automation leads the way by handling high-volume interactions quickly and efficiently.
The result - intelligent conversations that deliver better business outcomes and satisfied customers.
A Custom Collections Language Model (CLM)
Webio's conversational AI model is built using a custom language model that has been developed specifically for the credit and collections industry and that has been trained on millions of customer conversations. Unlike more generalist language models, the collections CLM is secure to use, compliant to industry regulations and remains under the control of humans. Furthermore, it has been trained in the language used in credit and collections and has guardrails in place to prevent the bots from going rogue and fabricating wild responses.
AI Agents: The Face of AI
Early chatbots used simple yes-no-click types of decision logic, but with AI Agents and conversational AI, they have stepped into a new realm where they can simulate human conversation. Conversational AI technology enables computers to understand and then generate human language, making it possible for them to converse in a natural and engaging way to resolve customer queries. (See: How Do AI Chatbots Work?)
Why Use Conversational AI for Customer Engagement?
Conversational AI delivers a wealth of benefits. From handling routine tasks, creating personalised conversation paths, improving agent efficiency and productivity to 24/7 availability and maintaining compliance; conversational AI is a powerful tool.
Using AI and automation means that the business can do more with fewer resources. Agents are more productive and can handle multiple customers simultaneously, resulting in a more cost-effective operation. Since it's automated, customers get instant responses at a time that suits them.
The Metrics
Make it Easy for Your Customers to Engage with You
AI Agents lower the barriers to talking about finances as they remove the awkwardness factor. This is especially true if the conversation is thoughtfully designed to display understanding and uses relational langauge. Customers appreciate feeling that they have been heard and that their query is important. Webio's AI Agents are designed to respond according to the sentiment they read from a customer's responses, for example, they respond empathetically if a person is displaying signs of stress or vulnerability.
Blend AI Agent Automation with Agent Engagement
The ultimate goal of customer engagement is to complete the conversation quickly, comprehensively and to the customers satisfaction. Therefore, Webio’s AI agents blend with live agents for better engagement, and the customer needs and experience are central to the conversation design. So, an off-ramp to speak to an agent is always readily available if needed and the AI Agent is taught to hand over to an agent if it cannot deal with a query. Webio always keeps humans in the loop for those times when a more complex or financially sensitive issue arises.
Multichannel Digital Messaging
Now with messaging apps and AI, the very nature of how companies engage with their customers is forever changed and companies need to easily adapt to this new customer engagement environment.
Webio’s clients converse with customers via their preferred customer contact channel, the ones they will respond to and feel more comfortable connecting in. With Webio's platform, businesses can determine the right channel to start the conversation in and even switch channels by time of day or day of the week – based on the customer's interaction history.
AI Bot Builder
The Webio Bot Builder is feature rich and flexible with it's visual, drag-and-drop interface. The bot designer can easily create a simple or a highly complex bot that incorporates steps such an Entity Gathering Step, a Listening Step, Wait Until, a conversational form and payment links.
Template Library of Best-Practise Bots
Start with a library of proven bot templates and configure them to suit your individual needs.
Chatbot Design and Language Use for Successful Customer Engagement
How you design the chatbot and the language it uses will determine how successful the bot is. Design a conversational and relational tone that matches the unstructured flow of human language in order to build a meaningful connection with the customer.
When it comes to customer experience, it is important to provide exits for customers to speak to an agent, ensure a logical flow of information without repetitive loops, and aim for quick resolutions to queries.
Webio's converstional AI platform is built on a collections custom language model (CLM) that has been fine-tuned to perform specifically in the credit and collections industry.
A key element of Webio's CLM is that it has been trained on millions of customer conversations to understand and respond to credit and collections related queries. Also, in an industry like collections where sensitive customer data is handled, it is imperative to have security and compliance top of mind when creating a conversational AI system. With a CLM, the AI is strictly controlled and will not go rogue.
The three foundational components of Webio's conversational AI are Entities, Intents and Propensity.
1. Entity Extraction: What are the Key Pieces of Information?
Identify and extract key information pieces from within an unstructured message. By standardising the format and verifying it against a company database, you eleminate the need for back and forth messaging, and so achieve in three messages what would have taken six or seven. As an example, by simply extracting data from a message and standardising the format, over 57% more ID&Vs make it through without the need for a human agent.
Examples of entities include - Date, Amount, Postcode and Name
2. Intent Recognition: What does the Customer Want to Do?
Webio AI is trained to recognise the words and phrases in a customer message and match it with an intent. The 'intent' is what the customer is actually saying or wants to do, and they are listed in real-time on the agent screens to prompt them to take the best action. At the conversation design stage, specific intents are mapped to specific routes to automatically guide the customer towards a positive outcome.
By having AI recognise intents and then guide customers down the optimal conversation route, automation levels increase and the need for human agent intervention decreases. Agents will only be brought in when needed. With AI in play, automation levels of Webio clients reach over 75%.
Vulnerability detection is a powerful use of intent recognition. Our AI can spot trigger words and phrases which indicate that a customer is in financial stress and needs attention.
Examples of intents include - Make a Payment, Balance Enquiry, Organise a Plan, Complaint, I&E Required. Forty percent of customers coming into a contact centre want answers to such questions, and with a simple API all these basic queries can be handled instantly.
3. Propensity: What is the Most Likely Outcome?
Predict the most likely conversation outcome within three utterances, with 90% accuracy, to lead the customer down the best route to complete the conversation. By having clear journey paths based on specific customer circumstances, conversations are resolved in fewer steps.
Designing highly personalised conversation journeys that get the balance right between automation and live agent engagement helps businesses reduce the number of agents needed and brings in agents only when the AI Agent cannot resolve the query.
And with AI and automation, this can all be done at scale.
Examples of propensities include - Vulnerability, Payment, Promise to Pay, Communication Request.
Find out more about using Propensities in AI-assisted customer engagement
