FAQs
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
In simple terms, Artificial Intelligence is technology that enables us to program machines to perform human-like tasks that typically involve learning, problem solving, perception, prediction or decision making.
AI is an interdisciplinary science that involves multiple approaches and technologies. AI can be as simple as a problem solving-application that makes decisions based on if/then logic and as complex as self-driving cars. The term AI is often used interchangeably with terms like machine learning, neural networks and deep learning. However, machine learning is rather a component, or subfield, of AI, neural networks a component of machine learning, and deep learning a component of neural networks.
As AI has progressed, it has been applied to every industry from healthcare to finance to professional sports. It has even been used to help protect endangered species.
AI has immense potential to completely transform the way you do business. For years, Ameniti’s AI Platform has been helping hotels improve guest service and efficiency with automated communication and decision-making. A broad examination of our services led to the conclusion that any business can benefit from automated communication and AI powered business recommendations - especially in Ameniti’s intuitive format. Large corporations are already using AI to stay ahead - especially when it comes to meeting customer service needs and business goals. Our mission is to provide the same tools for any business that wants to remain competitive and provide excellent service, while cutting costs.
What are some examples of Artificial Intelligence in daily life?
You interact with AI more than you think. Artificial Intelligence personalizes your social media feeds and your Google search results, recommends what to watch next on Netflix, listen to on Spotify or buy on Amazon. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are all virtual assistants powered by AI. AI even works to keep your online banking secure! With so many large companies adopting AI, you likely encounter it many times a day. A.I is revolutionizing our lives and businesses; don’t be left behind - implement A.I in your business today.
How does AI work?
AI differs slightly from application to application and encompasses several scientific disciplines and technologies. In general, however, it works by collecting huge amounts of data and processing it using fast algorithms. AI technology can learn automatically from patterns and attributes in the data it receives and make independent judgements and decisions.
What is Machine Learning?
Machine learning (ML) is a component, or subset, of Artificial Intelligence. Machine learning involves a set of algorithms that has the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience (or data inputs) without being specifically programmed to do so. It does so by using statistical techniques, and the more inputs are received, the more accurate the output will be. Machine learning enables analysis of massive quantities of data and eliminates the need for writing millions of lines of code.
Machine learning algorithms incorporate both supervised learning (using labeled data sets) and unsupervised learning (using unlabeled data sets). Supervised machine learning algorithms apply what has been learned in the past to new labeled data sets to predict the future (an example of this would be revenue management systems in the travel and hospitality industry). Unsupervised machine learning algorithms, on the other hand, searches for hidden structures in unlabeled data sets (an example of this could be grouping customers by purchasing behavior).
What is Natural Language Processing?
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a subset of Artificial Intelligence that uses computers to understand and interpret human language. Simply put, it is the use of Machine Learning to allow a computer to gain meaning from language. NLP allows computers to “learn” by identifying natural speech patterns and extracting meaning from them. You’ve likely encountered NLP through talk-to-text options, Google Translate, and voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa. It is even used to detect grammatical errors in word processing programs. NLP is a key component of AI-powered automated communication, used to ensure accurate results and mimic human speech patterns.
What is Deep Learning?
Deep Learning (DL) is a branch of machine learning, and the type of AI that best imitates the human brain. It uses algorithms based on human intelligence, in other words, the way the human brain naturally works. These algorithms, referred to as neural networks, are able to “learn” from large amounts of data inputs.. However, rather than identifying predetermined data features like general Machine Learning technology does, Deep Learning independently analyzes and identifies the most important data features. DL technology can form advanced representations and create its own approach to problem solving.
Is business automation expensive?
Not with the right services! In fact, if done correctly, automation should actually save your business money. For example:
Automatic answers to recurring customer questions reduce labor costs, creating a lighter load for employees and external call centers.
Business Intelligence services use data analysis to recommend ways to save money based on your day-to-day metrics.
Smart workflows, created using your data, assign tasks and track progress automatically. This means less time and effort managing staff and their responsibilities.
How do I integrate AI into my business?
AI can primarily support three important business needs: the automation of business processes, improving business intelligence insights, and enhancing customer and employee engagement.
We suggest you start by prioritizing the factors that will create the most value for your business (e.g., saving time, reducing costs, improving productivity, enhancing customer service). Then, select simple, plug-and-play solutions that are scalable, easy to implement and have proven instant impact. Automated customer communication management, for example, is one solution that any business can take advantage of, irrespective of size. Later on, scale up by trying more advanced communication management features, automatic ticketing and business intelligence solutions.
According to Research, AI doesn't always perform best on its own. Although AI technologies are great at automating repetitive tasks, businesses often achieve the greatest performance improvements when humans and machines work together. You should therefore consider AI as a means of augmenting rather than replacing human capabilities in order to capture the full promise of this powerful technology.
What is Conversational AI?
Conversational AI is just what it sounds like - technology that makes it possible for a human to have a natural conversation with a computer. Conversational AI is an extensive, nuanced technology that takes into consideration factors like context, intent, sentiment and language patterns. Its most common application is the creation of chatbots and voice assistants, which Ameniti uses as the basis for its communication services.
Conversational AI uses vast amounts of data, machine learning and natural language processing to mimic human interactions and can recognize speech and text in multiple languages.
What are the business benefits of AI?
By deploying the right AI technology, your business may experience many benefits, including: saving time and money through workload reduction and workflow improvements; improved customer service and employee satisfaction; increased sales; less human error; and faster decision making based on real-time data analytics. AI is on track to transform and disrupt every industry.
Embracing AI will help you stay ahead of the game, giving you business a competitive advantage.
AI primarily supports three main business functions: automation of routine processes and tasks, advanced data analysis, and enhancing customer and employee engagement.
For example:
High call volume means huge costs, employee stress, and the perception that service is lacking if the calls are not answered and resolved in a timely manner. Conversational AI and IVR solutions equip your business to easily handle high call volumes. This technology allows callers to resolve straightforward customer service interactions 24/7 by themselves over the phone, without ever having to speak to a live agent.
Implementing a Customer Communication Management (CCM) tool allows you to engage with your customers on any of their preferred digital communication channels, whether that be SMS, email, social messaging apps, web chat or phone, from a single platform. You can see every communication across all channels in real time. This optimizes operations and workflows and allows you to respond to customer needs faster.
Taking advantage of CCM and IVR automation allows you to provide instant, accurate answers to most inquiries, freeing up your employees to focus on more complex or specialized activities - and those interactions that do need human involvement. When the right answers are readily available, customers prefer independence and automated self-service - it is convenient, faster and more accurate and therefore offers an improved customer experience.
With real-time data collection and analysis of important business factors, you can make faster and smarter data-driven business decisions, identify key patterns and trends in your organization, gain new customer insights and maintain better control over your processes and operating procedures.
What can AI do for my business?
AI powered solutions can have wide-ranging benefits for any business, from small, family-owned companies to large corporations. Depending on your industry, AI can also have special advantages. Just a few examples include:
Retail: Personalized shopping recommendations for customers, facilitation of curbside pickup, online shopping, stock control and buying trends.
Manufacturing: Automated quality control and safety checks.
Freight/Transport: Traffic analysis to select the best routes for drivers.
Agriculture: Crop maximization with predictive analysis and forecasting for environmental factors.
Hospitality: Automatic direct bookings, contactless check-in/out and room, order taking, automatic ticketing.
How can AI save my business money?
Cost reduction is probably the area where Artificial Intelligence will deliver first. By automating processes and tasks, AI helps increase productivity and minimize errors, leading to greater output in less time and lower cost. One area where implementing Artificial Intelligence can have a particularly high ROI and save cost for any is in customer service.
AI allows you to provide customer service 24/7, 365 days per year - in different languages - without needing to hire a whole team to work for you.
Depending on your industry, processes and needs, there are many other opportunities for cost saving with AI, such as:
Automated IoT control of building environments to save on energy costs
Data-driven recommendations for revenue and cost reduction
AI-powered staff management, including automatic task assignment and notifications
Real-time data collection and analysis of important business factors - a comprehensive snapshot that will help identify areas of improvement and support day-to-day decisions.
With process automation, error reduction and AI’s ability to boost customer service and sales, you will not only save money on expensive business processes, but also increase revenue.
How can AI boost productivity?
AI can have a massive impact on productivity by automating repetitive work and low level tasks, freeing up employees to focus on more specialized and complex tasks. AI also minimizes errors and mistakes - which can be both costly and time consuming. The biggest impact on productivity, perhaps, is AI’s ability to process and analyze huge amounts of complex data in real-time, a task that would take hours of laborious work by a human - if at all possible to accomplish. Data is an invaluable resource in today’s digital world, but it is useless if you cannot make sense of it or if you get it too late. AI can provide more meaningful and actionable business insights in real-time and even provide predictive insights into the future.
Here are a few more examples:
Automatic ticketing gives staff all the information they need, without a manager having to supervise. It also holds staff members accountable by reminding them with reminders and check-ins.
Automated customer service allows staff to focus on more complex issues rather than answering the same questions over and over. It also improves First Contact Resolution, meaning no follow-ups or further actions are required.
Tracking and analysis helps management gauge performance, so that productivity can be further optimized.
Freeing up people to focus on more valuable work boosts staff morale - which leads to higher productivity.
How does AI improve customer service?
Customers no longer stay loyal to a business because of products or prices. They stay loyal because they believe your business provides better service and higher quality than anyone else. And the most important element of good customer service? Fast response times.
Today’s customers want to take care of their needs now, not tomorrow or the day after, whether it be the answer to a simple question or placing an order. They are connected, tech-savvy and more likely to find answers to questions and solutions to problems themselves, rather than contacting customer service for assistance. And they actually love to help themselves. According to the Salesforce “State of the Connected Customer” report, 59% of consumers and 71% of business buyers say self-service availability impacts their loyalty.
Other important elements of good customer service include friendly service, first-contact resolution, transparency, personalized service and multiple contact points. So how do you meet all of these expectations and keep your customers happy, while providing a fast response? The solution is AI-powered customer self-service.
Self-service applications powered by AI improve the customer experience through convenience, ease of use, instant responses and 24/7 availability across all channels. Ameniti’s AI powered platform also allows customers to contact your automated agents via both text and voice, and offers interchannel integration (voice to message or email to text, for example), with live agents on standby for those occasions when human intelligence is required.
Ameniti measures First Contact Resolution by the percentage of customers whose issues are resolved with AI alone, and do not require a transfer to a live agent. We are proud to report that this rate is up to 70% among our clients. The result: Enhanced guest satisfaction and 85% cost reduction.
What is IVR?
IVR, or Interactive Voice Response, is what many would describe as an “automated receptionist”: it is, in fact, an automated phone system technology for handling incoming calls. Callers ask for what they need, interacting with a computerized voice recognition system that provides the required information or automatically connects the caller to the appropriate agent, department or person.
How does IVR work and what is it used for?
IVR technology integrates computers and telephones and can range from very basic to very advanced. A simple IVR system lets you pre-record greetings and menu options that a caller can select with their phone keypad. A more advanced IVR system leverages speech recognition to allow the caller to use simple voice commands instead of “pressing buttons”. Very advanced IVR systems use AI and are able to provide comprehensive answers to a caller's questions. This type of IVR will understand what callers ask and either answer their questions directly or provide a transfer to a real person who can help with a specific issue.
IVR systems have many uses, for example:
Intelligent call-routing can pre-qualify callers and route them to the agent or department that is best able to assist them, eliminating the need for live operators and reducing hold times.
Efficient call handling for call centers with large call volumes, improving First Contact Resolution.
Providing callers with self-service for commonly asked questions and problems - even outside regular opening hours.
Personalized service and high-value customer prioritization by pre-qualifying callers.
Promoting special offers or notifying callers about announcements such as changes in opening hours or services.
Order taking.
Appointment scheduling and reminders.
Feedback surveys.
What are the benefits of IVR?
According to research, almost 70% of customers prefer self-service for simple questions and issues. And almost 80% expect to be able to solve a complex issue by speaking to only one person. These days, clients want to be more self-sufficient, and businesses are looking to improve customer experience without increasing costs.
High call volumes means high costs, increased employee stress, and the perception that service is lacking if calls are not answered and resolved in a timely manner. IVR is both simple and effective - and will significantly reduce costs and increase efficiency and customer service within any company:
IVR works 24/7 and handles unlimited simultaneous calls. This means no callers are made to wait on hold during the initial stage of a call.
Intelligent call-routing eliminates the need for live agents whose only job it is to answer and transfer calls.It also eliminates the need for callers to repeat their problem to multiple agents.
With IVR, you can significantly increase First Contact Resolution because callers are always either provided the information they need instantly or routed to the most qualified agent or department to meet their needs. When the most qualified agent receives a call, the caller is less likely to be transferred to another agent or department. In many cases, caller questions are answered without ever speaking with a live agent.
Providing callers with self-service for commonly asked questions and problems frees up your team members to focus on more complex questions and specialized responsibilities. Employees who are relieved of stressful, monotonous or repetitive duties are more motivated to engage, more productive and therefore more valuable to your business.
Since an IVR self-service system can handle calls at all hours, it can extend your business hours.
IVR allows you to prioritize high-value customer calls. This can mean automatically routing them to the most appropriate agent or placing them at the front of the queue if all agents are busy.
IVR can help your business appear larger than it actually is. IVR can be configured to allow callers to talk to sales, support, accounting or marketing, for example, and the person or persons on your team assigned to answer calls will know which department the customer requested.
See an example of the benefits of IVR in action in this case study.
What is First Contact Resolution?
Traditionally, First Contact Resolution is a customer service metric that tracks the percentage of customers who are successfully helped the first time they reach out to a customer service center. This means no follow-ups or further actions are required. However, this seemed too easy, so we’ve developed our own definition.
At Ameniti, First Contact Resolution is measured by the percentage of customers whose issues are resolved with AI alone, and do not require a transfer to a human agent. We are proud to report that this rate is up to 70% among our clients.
How does automated customer service work?
Automated customer service uses AI-powered technology to offer customers self-service options for simple tasks — for example, providing information, solving basic problems, booking appointments and placing orders.
The automated customer self-service platform can be delivered via your business’ website, on messaging platforms and via your IVR enabled telephone system, using text or voice, depending on business needs.
Automated customer service works 24/7 and provides instant answers and solutions to callers without the need for live agents.
What are the benefits of automated customer support?
When customers prefer to be self-sufficient and businesses wish to improve customer experience and keep costs down, automated customer service is the perfect solution.
Automated customer support has many benefits, including:
Instant, personalized and friendly answers to those who reach out to your business, across all channels at any time.
Enhanced customer experiences thanks to no initial holding period, faster response times, self-service options, accurate answers and increased First Contact Resolution.
Higher customer retention due to better customer service.
Improved morale and productivity of employees, who can focus on complex questions and specialized responsibilities rather than repetitive issues and questions.
More efficient workflows through intelligent call routing and automatic ticketing.
Cost savings through workload and workforce reduction.
Effortless data collection that helps you keep your finger on the pulse of your business, and track both customer behavior and staff performance.
Why are integrated communication channels important?
All-channel integration is a crucial part of our model. We know firsthand how it promotes both customer satisfaction and efficiency. We always give your clients the option to communicate through the channel of their choice, but sometimes it makes more sense to use one channel over another. For example, those who call your business would likely rather receive a confirmation number via text message than having to write it down. We make this possible with no extra work for your staff. We also give you the option to view all communications - no matter the channel - on one single platform.
If I use Ameniti, can I retain my current services and infrastructure?
Yes. All of our solutions are designed to work in tandem with your existing technology as desired. After you decide which Ameniti solution to implement, setup will be completed with zero interruption of your established infrastructure. We also provide customization when desired. For example, although our services are app-free, we do offer app integration when requested.
What if my customers need to talk to a real person?
This is completely understandable, and we have you covered! Customers are able to request a live agent at any time, no matter what channel they’re using. We also automatically detect when a customer is having difficulty getting their point across and transfer those conversations to a human agent automatically.
Where customers are transferred is up to you. We can work within your infrastructure to transfer customers to a specific staff member or department based on their needs, integrate with your existing external customer service center, or, even better, to our own live agents at Ameniti 360.
Although we always include a human transfer as an option, we find that the majority of callers don’t need it (read about First Contact Resolution above).
What is Ameniti’s installation process?
We’re proud to say that we have one of the easiest setup protocols on the market. This means instant, remote installation and no technical expertise required on your end. All you have to do is mix and match the services that work for you. We take care of the rest, from start to finish.
For our Customer Communication Management services, implementation is turnkey and ready to go before you know it. Your business selects which communication channels to offer your customers (we recommend an omnichannel approach) and provides some basic information related to the most common inquiries you receive. Then, we can either set up our texting and calling services, either with your existing phone number or a new number created just for you.
For Business Process Automation, we will create a set of AI logic parameters based on your business processes. We first determine which services will work best to meet your goals and then implement them, along with whichever integrations you choose. This is all you need to get started with Business Intelligence and Automatic Ticketing. If you choose to implement Ameniti 360, we complete all of the same steps, plus provide our agents with all of the relevant information about your business so that they can serve your customers successfully.
All of our solutions include training sessions and clear, intuitive instructions for your staff. We’re proud to say that our products are easy to use - so much so that staff can get the hang of the Ameniti Tool and Ameniti Alerts in a single training session. But, as customer service is our specialty, we don’t stop there. We provide 24/7 support to all of our clients, making ongoing support as easy as initial setup.
How can I learn more?
If you have more specific questions about Ameniti’s services, we are happy to help. Send us any questions here or set up a demo to see if Ameniti is a good fit for your business.