Customer service bots have become popular among small, medium, and large companies because they automate customer service, resolving simpler issues and freeing human agents to handle critical and/or high-value cases.

According to Gartner, in 2021, 15% of all customer service interactions will be completed using AI, with significant adoption of bots. The bot market, in turn, was valued at $17.1 billion in 2020, with a forecast to reach $102.2 billion by 2026, according to data from Mordor Intelligence.

With growing interest from businesses and society as a whole, some interesting claims are emerging, such as bots being able to learn on their own. But that’s not quite true.

Google’s robots

Google’s robots developed the ability to communicate with each other, and most impressively: in secret.

Researchers at Google Brain (the company’s artificial intelligence division) created three software robots, named Alice, Bob, and Eve, with well-defined missions.

Alice was supposed to send an encrypted message to Bob, who was tasked with decoding it while avoiding Eve’s espionage, whose goal was to intercept and read the message.

Using neural network techniques, Alice and Bob developed their own encryption method and communicated entirely confidentially, preventing Eve from decoding the information.

For the first time in history, two artificial intelligence entities managed to independently create a means to communicate secretly.

However, this does not mean these bots learned on their own; rather, they managed to evolve the programming they were given.

Customer service bots

A customer service bot is one that, when asked by a client, consumer, or user, can promptly respond with relevant information to clarify doubts or resolve the requester’s issues on the first contact, without the need for human intervention.

A customer service bot can consult (collect data), think (process data), and act (apply the rule). This is how the bot can closely mimic human behavior.

In other words, a bot can be considered intelligent if it collects, stores, and decides based on information generated from its interactions with users.

And, of course, the great advantage of a bot is that it can solve real problems, allowing users to perceive the value of the technology, thereby increasing their satisfaction and admiration for the company.

But ultimately, with such intelligence, can bots learn on their own or not?

Bots cannot learn on their own—yet

It’s an urban myth! For now, bots are not capable of learning on their own. In the future, who knows? With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence, we might have self-taught robots that read a training manual about a product and start serving consumers right afterward. Currently, that’s just a myth.

The truth is that behind a bot, there is an entire team analyzing and improving the bot’s interactions with users, the data, and the entire conversational flow.

The message we receive from a bot goes through a process of evolution, where every word is carefully chosen, from creating the knowledge base to defining its vocabulary, tone of voice, and more.

This detailed analysis is usually (and should be) conducted by a multidisciplinary team made up of professionals from various areas of the business: management, administration, sales, legal, marketing, and others.

After all, bot developers and programmers are experts in the technical aspects but generally lack broad knowledge of all business-related matters and customer service.

Therefore, a single phrase or response may go through analysis and approval by several professionals from different departments before being integrated into the bot.

The evolution of a bot

The first step in evolving your bot is to have a very well-defined purpose, so it operates strictly within its context, according to the objectives set by the company before its development.

Every conversation your chatbot or voicebot has with a client generates data that, if well-utilized, can be crucial for its evolution. Therefore, it’s also essential for your business to have tools to collect this information.

This data collection can determine your bot’s success level and also identify areas for improvement that need adjustment for increasingly accurate and efficient service.

Finally, after collecting, it’s time to analyze the data. Intent rate, interaction, activation, retention, conversion, fallback, session time, response time, and more.

There are numerous metrics that must be constantly evaluated to determine whether your bot is useful, helping your clients with what they want or need.

It’s a process of continuous improvement for your bot that, with this step-by-step approach, can become the main asset of your business’s customer service.

The ultimate goal is to achieve a high rate of successful interactions without requiring the involvement of a human agent.

That’s it! We hope we’ve clarified that no, bots still cannot learn on their own, but they can evolve if well-managed.

Thank you for your attention. See you next time!

Also read: ASR: Everything You Need to Know About Voicebot Speech Recognition