AI Assistants for Business

AI assistants have become increasingly common in today’s world.  Examples we’re all familiar with range from Siri and Alexa to ChatGPT and beyond.  These tools can review and summarize large amounts of information in seconds.  But what about AI assistants for your customers or internal business users?  Here we look at six areas where AI assistants can provide value.

Customer Service and Support

AI assistants can provide significant value in customer service and support in several ways:

24/7 Availability: AI assistants are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, allowing customers to get help and information whenever they need it, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex or sensitive customer issues.

Instant Responses: AI assistants can respond to customer queries and requests instantaneously, providing quick solutions and reducing wait times.

Consistent and Scalable: AI assistants can handle a large volume of customer interactions simultaneously, without compromising the quality of service.  This allows companies to scale their customer support effectively.

Reduced Operational Costs: Implementing AI assistants can result in cost savings for companies by reducing the need for human agents and the associated overhead costs.

AI chatbots or email bots combined with automated ticketing handle customer service inquiries, improving response times and availability.  Tools like Pantheon’s Odyssey Platform with AI-Driven Automation (AIDA) capabilities can parse the incoming text and determine the next best course of action.  Actions could include providing a requested document, creating a support ticket, updating company or customer records, routing to a live agent, or escalating.

Operational Efficiency

In addition to some of the value points above, AI assistants can significantly increase operational efficiency for businesses by:

Automation of Routine Tasks: AI assistants can automate repetitive and standardized tasks, such as processing orders and updating customer records.  This frees up human employees to focus on more complex and value-added activities.

Consistent Performance: AI assistants can provide a consistent level of service without the variability or potential mistakes that can come from manual processing or data entry.

AI-powered image processing can extract text and data from scanned documents, receipts and invoices, automating data entry and reducing errors.  AIDA tools like the Odyssey Digital Automation Platform can automatically flag exceptions and ensure the correct actions are taken.

Employee Productivity

AI assistants can significantly enhance employee productivity, providing:

Access to Information and Expertise: AI assistants can be integrated with a company’s knowledge base or multiple information sources, allowing employees to quickly access relevant information and expertise, reducing the time spent searching for answers.

Improved Decision Making: AI assistants can analyze large datasets and provide insights to help employees make more informed and effective decisions, leading to increased productivity.

Consider the case where a legal team must review contract clauses for a pending contract.  Pantheon’s Odyssey AIDA solution can review contract clauses, compare them to the company’s standard clauses and determine how well they match.  For cases where they differ by a significant amount, AIDA can re-write the clause to better align the company’s and vendor’s clause.

Talent Management

AI assistants can provide significant value in talent management in the following ways:

Talent Acquisition: AI-based resume analysis and candidate matching can help identify the most qualified candidates for specific roles.

Employee Onboarding: AI assistants can guide new hires through the onboarding process, providing personalized information, checklists, and support to help them get up to speed quickly.

Learning and Development: AI assistants can provide just-in-time support and guidance to employees, helping them acquire new skills and knowledge more efficiently.

AI-powered applicant screening with Odyssey AIDA Resume Review can match candidates by not only skills and experience, but can also consider cultural fit, work environment, time spent with specific companies, social media presence and other factors.

Compliance and Risk Management

Some of the ways AI assistants can provide value in the areas of compliance and risk management are:

Regulatory Compliance Monitoring: AI assistants can automate the tracking and reporting of compliance-related data, reducing the manual effort required and improving accuracy.

Automated Policy Enforcement: AI assistants can be programmed to enforce organizational policies and procedures, ensuring consistent application and reducing the risk of human error.

Fraud Detection and Prevention: AI algorithms can analyze transaction data, user behavior, and other signals to detect and flag potentially fraudulent activities in real-time.

As an example, Odyssey’s AIDA capabilities can analyze corporate or procurement card statements and look for anomalies such as non-business related charges or charges made during a weekend or holiday.  Odyssey AIDA can then generate a natural language response indicating why a transaction was flagged as well as generating reports and charts.

Conclusion

These are just a small sample of the many ways AI assistants can be leveraged to drive business value.  As technology continues to evolve, applications will only become more sophisticated and pervasive across industries.

Please join us at 2 PM EDT on Thursday, October 3 for a webinar on AI-Driven Automation with the Odyssey Digital Automation Platform.