By Ravi Saraogi, Co-Founder and President of Uniphore APAC
Goodbye 2021, hello 2022. With a whole new year ahead of us, we can be sure that there will be a rise in opportunity for business innovation. As the world welcomes the new year, organizations will look to finesse the mix of technological solutions implemented over the pandemic to adapt and prepare for accelerated growth and productivity.
Let’s take a closer look at some trends the market will be turning to in 2022.
Identifying emotions with AI
The market is expected to grow significantly over the next decade, with smarter AI solutions for enterprises soon becoming a real possibility. Conversational AI will continue to evolve into an even more powerful and integrated offering – a blend of voice with video and emotion AI. Remote work and video conversations are becoming the norm for how businesses operate. This increases the essentiality of video and emotion AI to enhance communication, adding the ability to better understand engagement levels and emotions of video call participants.
According to a recent consumer survey on video conversations, more than two-fifths of Malaysian respondents were bothered by not being able to tell if others on the call were engaged while close to a third of them said that they could not get their point across. Addressing these challenges with AI will help businesses forge stronger relationships built on empathy and trust with employees and customers.
Accelerating digital transformation (DX) with low code / no code
The pandemic has also accelerated the need for businesses – big or small – to digitally transform and automate business operations to stay nimble and keep up with changing consumer habits.
This is where low code / no code comes in. Simply put, low code / no code revolves around the concept of connecting pieces of a puzzle together. Gone are the days of lengthy processes around traditional coding, as businesses welcome user-friendly drag and drop application components to create mobile or web apps in a matter of hours or days.
Over the last decade, we have witnessed an evolution in software development. Specialized coding knowledge is no longer a prerequisite, and businesses can enjoy improved agility, decreased costs, higher productivity, and an overall better customer experience (CX) through low code / no code platforms. It has set a new benchmark in the advancement of DX and is a development area to watch in the coming year.
AI architecture for enterprises
The role of AI has no doubt changed the playing field, making it a crucial component to help businesses grow and innovate. The next phase for businesses is to build a solid foundation of AI architecture that integrates industry knowledge with cutting-edge technologies – such as low code / no code capabilities – across multiple business functions.
AI can facilitate effective problem solving, automate tasks and enhance communication across an entire enterprise. This allows for better workflows and synergy of various functions such as sales and marketing, customer service, operations, finance, human resources, and more. Ultimately helping businesses drive better and more cohesive results. This leaves more time to focus on intelligent, strategic tasks to build stronger connections, steadily shaping the way businesses of the future operate.
The business of promise-keeping
With a solid foundation in AI, organizations can tap into a new area of automation – promises management – which allows brands to rely on technology to fulfill their commitments to customers.
Promise management tracks commitments made by agents in real-time during the call and manages fulfillment with customers immediately after the call, essentially integrating the front and back office. Unkept promises can quickly negate the positive effects of good conversations between businesses and customers – promise management can track them to completion. This will continue to be an important component in the CX journey that directly impacts call handling times, wait times, and overall customer satisfaction.
A new era in the future of work
As man and machine continue to carve a better future of work, the Asia Pacific region still has some way to go in the implementation of AI and automation technologies. According to a report by Deloitte, countries such as Singapore, Australia and Japan are the most prepared, while the rest of the region needs to proactively work on improving access, skills, and changing mindsets of the workforce.
We foresee industries such as education, healthcare, and retail becoming more receptive to new technologies such as video and emotion AI and low code / no code capabilities. As the education sector enters a new era, there is an increasing need for innovative solutions such as video and emotion AI to facilitate better collaboration, connection, and continuity between teachers and students undergoing home-based learning. Due to the pandemic, other key sectors such as e-commerce and small businesses across the region are also primed for change due to the pandemic. The demand for low code / no code platforms is surging among this group as it helped accelerate their DX and CX journey without compromising on day-to-day operations.
We acknowledge that the road ahead may look uncertain as economies across the region continue to recover from the pandemic slowly. It is, however, crucial for businesses across all industries to keep an open mind to emerging and unfamiliar technologies as these smart solutions are here to stay to help create a better, faster, and more efficient workforce in 2022 and beyond.
