When we created Conversational AI, it was because, as a team, we felt that the basic format of a survey has serious limitations. The survey ‘container’ at worst, puts constraints on people’s ability to share their thoughts in a way that is important to them. Even when done well, it is not conducive to encouraging them to share their thoughts and feelings as a human being.  

The limitations of traditional surveys 

1. People rate pre-conceived statements about the nature of the services delivered 

1. They’re not interactive so that people, in the moment, feel heard 

1. They don’t encourage people to introspect about their experiences by applying good qualitative practice 

What is Conversational AI? 

Instead of box-ticking and one-way question sets, our Conversational AI companion EVE (Evolved Verbatim Engine) allows your business to engage with customers and employees with an inquisitive feedback companion that enquires on each unique response, in real-time.  

EVE replaces traditional surveys; we have developed advanced language processing methods to parse feedback and develop realistic conversational responses. Advanced text analytics methods are used to analyse and visualize feedback at scale including sentiment analysis, text clustering, auto-coding and emotional thematic analytics. 

Our evolving journey with Conversational AI 

When we commenced our journey with Conversational AI 3 years ago, we knew that technology had reached a point where these traditional survey limitations could be addressed. We were not sure how application of AI in real-time engagement would draw people out. We were also not clear on whether clients would have the confidence in the technology to embrace a questionnaire that had just two core questions – express how you feel and discuss why. Surely, we must ask about everything so that we can answer everything? 

The good news is that the technology works, and our clients have adopted it because it delivers a deeper level of insight, along with better customer and employee engagement. 

Let’s look at some examples of how Conversational AI improves the employee and customer experience:

Conversational AI + Employee Experience 

Here is the first response to a question we asked on our Evolved Omnibus about people’s experiences at work: 

We’re interested in understanding people’s experiences at work. You don’t have to say where you work, but just generally, how has it been in the last month? 

It has been ok. I am glad that restrictions have eased and I have more opportunities to work. But in terms of career advancement, it has been really slow. 

Ordinarily, that would mean we get 29 words in answer to our question. So, what happens when we introduce conversational AI?  Here is the rest of the discussion… 

Thank you. I understand you are talking about the management of COVID-19. Could you tell me more about that? 

Yes, so jobs in the industry I hope to be in has been a lot more competitive. 

I understand you are also talking about career progression. How has that affected your experience? 

I haven't found a full time job yet. Feel like I have less opportunities and less employers are considering people like me (who are not citizens but temp visa holders) 

In the subsequent discussion we can see that the total word count has increased to 76, which is 262% more feedback (note that the average is 275%). In fact, we could have gone further but the length of the conversation was purposefully limited.  

Most importantly, we can see our level of insights has increased so that now we understand that there is anxiety about competition and the underlying root cause issue is that the person is a visa holder – critical information that would otherwise not have been evident. This is just one example.  

Conversational AI + Customer Experience 

Moving from Employee Experience onto Customer Experience; below is a real conversation EVE had with a superannuation customer:

Hi, I'm Eve. I'd like to further understand how you feel about your current super fund. To start off, could you describe how you currently feel about it and why you feel that way? 

I am with a good super fund because school teachers go with {super fund} and would have looked through the options for the best one. I am worried that my super is not growing as fast as I need as well as my super not pumping money into the correct investment options - should be environmental and not non renewables. 

Thanks for that – appreciate you sharing feedback about investment returns. What are the positive aspects of being a member of your current fund? 

That I am getting money for my retirement. Hopefully enough to retire. 

And what can your current super fund do to improve member experience? 

Invest in better opportunities. I really need to research and learn more about it but my financial advisor did say I was in a good one. 

In this example, we can see that the initial feedback is qualified to show the concerns are about retirement, and most importantly, we surfaced that the respondent is getting advice from a third-party adviser, which can be indicative of roll-out risk.  

Benefits of using Conversational AI 

1. You get more information than a traditional survey 

1. People feel they have truly been listened to 

1. Using applied qualitative techniques, we can get to the ‘wow’ moments, and a true understanding of WHY things happen 

Point 3 emphasises the opportunity to integrate categorical feedback from these conversations into customer analytics that transcends opportunities with traditional surveys. The key to this is the power of our text analytics, which uses the latest deep-learning techniques to improve accuracy and continuously learn. This is itself, a topic I’ll touch on in future blogs. 

Conversational AI delivers real results 

Our client, GHD, saw a 20% higher response rate and 300% more feedback from their employees using Conversational AI as part of their Employee Listening program.  

Read the full GHD Case Study here. 

Find out more 

To find out more about how The Evolved Group and our Conversational AI capabilities, check out our website, or feel free to shoot me a message via LinkedIn.