Slowly but surely, there is a quiet revolution taking place in customer interaction technology around the world. Already it is touching the lives and transforming the way companies engage with customers. We are talking about Cognitive AI, the latest buzz in tech circles. If you aren’t familiar with the term, better do it faster. According to Tractica, a US-based market intelligence firm, the market for AI software will grow from $1.38 Billion in 2016 to $59.75 Billion by 2025. With Amazon’s Alexa at our beck and call and Google’s AI-powered predictions on Google Maps that help us quickly determine the fastest way to work, it is easy to see how this explosive growth will be fuelled.
AI is set to revolutionize our lives, helping us automate tasks further. Cutting edge cognitive computing methods are bringing this goal ever closer as a result of successful studies focusing on how the human brain functions and simulating human reasoning through self-learning algorithms. The technology allows computers to “talk” and “think” just as a human would do and employs natural language processing, data mining and machine learning, helping the computer to understand data, intents in conversations, answer questions, reason, reach conclusions and learn as new information becomes available.
The potential applications of this technology are endless ranging from assistance in making medical decisions, treatment plans, improving travel experiences, mining weather data and analyzing risk scenarios, providing us answers to complex questions easily. Real-world applications are being tested today for specific tasks such as answering queries (Siri) or driving a car, but as these cases are proven to be successful companies are likely to increase AI application to more generic cases.
For example, your bank could provide you with your personalized financial virtual assistant that could interact with you, answer your questions, resolve your issues and also advise you on your next investment decisions, based on your current spending and earning data. In another scenario, your IT Support could be entirely handled at the first level by such virtual agents, before escalating to appropriate human agents. These cognitive virtual agents or “bots” will become mainstream interaction channels for enterprises. With a convenient chat-like interface, that resembles a whatsapp like conversational experience, it is no wonder why such a channel is appealing to the millennial customer, as opposed to using phone calls.
Benefits of AI applications in organizations includes not only increasing efficiency through the use of less manpower for everyday tasks, but also sifting through big data quickly and reaching conclusions effectively. All of this has a direct impact on the bottom line based on its application, by decreasing costs, increasing sales or both, and thereby increasing profits. One company that has been at the forefront of cognitive computing applications and that has seen tremendous growth since its inception is CogniCor.
“I was always interested in understanding the secrets of intelligence as displayed by nature, and CogniCor is a result of materializing that quest into a commercially useful product”, says Dr. Sindhu.
