Next-Gen AI Chatbot a Helpdesk Software Game-Changer?

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If you’ve ever used a chatbot, you know about the frustrating stories customers say about them. Though helpful in answering FAQs and enabling self-service, AI chatbots are also notorious for misunderstanding queries that lead to undesirable customer experiences. All that might soon change, thanks to advancements in natural language processing (NLP).

Artificial intelligence company, OpenAI’s new chatbot tool, ChatGPT, for example, has taken the internet by storm last week. AI trainers trained the OpenAI chatbot using reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and deep learning. In its beta testing stage, users who evaluated the chatbot were surprised by ChatGPT’s ability to interact in a conversational way. It understands NLP queries and replies in natural language as well.

One software developer even used the chatbot to help him spot errors in his code. Not only that. The AI also provided a fix:

ChatGPT could be a good debugging companion; it not only explains the bug but fixes it and explains the fix pic.twitter.com/5x9n66pVqj

— Amjad Masad ⠕ (@amasad) November 30, 2022

Meanwhile, musician Grimes had an exchange with the AI that demonstrated its ability to interact like a human:

This is so insane pic.twitter.com/hwbngS05Ag

— (@Grimezsz) December 1, 2022

According to OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, there’s more to come with language interfaces. Voice capabilities (users able to “talk” to the computer) are likely to further push the technology forward. “Soon you will be able to have helpful assistants that talk to you, answer questions, and give advice. Later you can have something that goes off and does tasks for you. Eventually, you can have something that goes off and discovers new knowledge for you,” said Altman.

Next-Gen AI Chatbot to Change Customer Experience

As digital services increase and consumers’ service standards go up, support teams will also increasingly rely on advanced technology to deliver help desk services. Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots are among the most utilized tools included in help desk software for multiple reasons.

AI chatbots enable self-service, which is important when you consider that 69% of customers prefer to resolve their service problems on their own before seeking help from agents. Also, AI chatbots can provide 24/7 support, and automatically categorize and route tickets. They can also help agents focus on cases that need human expertise. But their limitations in answering queries—especially more complex ones—haven’t made them crowd-pleasers.

With advancements in NLP, chatbots would be game changers in the customer support world. Help desk software could offer chatbots that can attend to customer queries in ways not previously possible. Once APIs are available for the OpenAI chatbot, for instance, companies could develop call center support tools that could significantly impact customer service.

Moreover, next-gen AI chatbots, like AI writing software, could particularly be useful to SMEs or startups who want to leverage technology to provide excellent service in the absence of a full customer support department. Advanced NLP capabilities can keep up with consecutive queries and handle complaints much better than current AI chatbots.

Businesses can also use customer conversations with next-gen AI chatbots as a reference for gathering data on customer behavior. They would be able to review the interactions and see how the AI responds without human intervention. This will help provide insights into what areas or internal processes need to be improved to deliver the best customer experience or solve cases faster.

Limitations of Next-Gen AI Chatbots

While advancements in NLP could provide businesses with human-like chatbots, there are still many limitations with the current chatbot from OpenAI. It’s still prone to biases, could spout hate and misinformation, and respond to harmful instructions.

It’s also not perfect in that it can provide wrong answers to questions. This becomes a concern since the AI seems confident whenever replying to queries; thus it could easily convince users to believe its answers.