There can be some confusion as people use terms like virtual assistants and digital assistants interchangeably, often in the same breath as remote assistants. “Remote assistant” or “virtual assistant” refers to actual people doing work for your business via virtual avenues, while “digital assistant” refers to artificial intelligence or machine learning platforms helping to automate your organizational operations.
Digital assistants may not be a complete replacement for people in a business, and there is always a need for humans to be behind the wheel of any digital assistant solution to ensure it’s operating properly. However, they are playing an increasingly significant role in creating business growth opportunities.
Here are 4 big ways that digital assistants can help augment and empower a company’s goals and success:
Move business workloads to the cloud
Digital transformation is no longer a choice; it is a survival tool for the data-driven economy. To remain competitive and grow, enterprises need to adapt to the new realities by harnessing the cloud’s power and leveraging its value. The pandemic increased remote working 20X in three months, added 150 million remote workers in two weeks, and increased eCommerce levels by ten years in eight short weeks.2 Here is a three-step approach that organizations can adopt without much disruption.
- Automating repetitive tasks – This is the big item that most companies can see straight away. By placing an AI in charge of data entry or sorting, letting it crunch the big numbers far faster than human brains are capable of, much of the heavy lifting is taken off the people. Employees can then figure out the best strategies based off the reports that are automatically produced for them.
- Increasing customer response volume – Whether through website chat programs or automated phone systems, digital assistant solutions can handle hundreds, if not thousands of customer inquiries at once. While some customers may need their questions escalated to a person eventually, many questions and concerns can be dealt with without taking up a second of an employee’s time.
- Streamlining customer demand – For customers looking to order particular products or filter down to the right solution to purchase from your business, an AI assistant can guide them through the selection and buying process without needing the intervention of a sales associate through most, if not all of the customer journey.
- Processing data faster – With sorting and analyzing customer data being essential for any business, digital assistants can make aggregating targeted info easier than ever. By merely interacting with a chatbot or AI system, customers are providing all manner of data that can be tracked, reviewed, and sorted into vital insights that can drive higher profits and keep customer satisfaction at its peak.
While some people may fear that AI is going to eliminate jobs and cut out the human element of their company, there’s really no need to worry about that. The reality is that while machine learning platforms may take on repetitive, redundant tasks within a company, the human workforce will just be freed up to focus on more valuable projects and priorities, making them even more invaluable and essential assets in the long run.
