As customers, we are more and more enjoying the benefits of artificial intelligence, voice assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa), and Conversational User Interfaces without being aware of this.
Lately, we have dealt with the issues of Voicebots and Chatbots, which are clearly linked to the current topic, in the articles: What is a Voicebot? Voicebot design. And What is a Chatbot? Chatbot design.
Today we will deal with a more general issue. Namely, what is a Conversational User Interface (CUI)? and how are Conversational User Interfaces designed?
Chatbots and Voicebots have become popular for many reasons.
When looking at the course of real-time interactions, their increasing effectiveness, and more and more perfect natural language processing, the presence of an intelligent assistant in applications and increasingly smart homes is not surprising.
Virtual assistants send messages to the users, offer the performance of specific tasks, and can answer the user questions in a sensible, relevant, and helpful manner.
Conversational User Interfaces facilitate communication and get better and better at speech simulation. They are increasingly taking over customer service and responding in a natural language, sounding more and more natural.
The revolution in communication, communication automation, and AI-based customer service would not be possible without Conversational User Interfaces that, like any other type of interface, must be designed with User Experience in mind.
Hence, today's questions will be as follows:
What is a Conversational User Interface? How do Conversational User Interfaces work? What are the types of Conversational User Interfaces?
What are the most common applications and use cases of Conversational User Interfaces? What are the benefits of using Conversational User Interfaces for an organization?
Let's look for the answers to these questions! Enjoy reading!
We Audit. We Research. We Design.
What is a Conversational User Interface?
As usual, let us define the term first.
Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) are the interfaces that allow user-software interactions through text or voice.
The purpose is to imitate real-world and natural communication behavior and to make the dialog as real-life and satisfactory as possible.
For quite some time, Conversational User Interfaces have been replacing Graphical User Interfaces or Command Line Interfaces, which did not enjoy great popularity among users and had a rather bad reputation.
Contemporary Conversational User Interfaces enable human-software dialog using natural language.
A significant advantage of Conversational User Interfaces and virtual assistants is also the possibility of integrating them into digital products.
They are also highly attractive to use. Their use does not really require prior preparation, knowledge, or training, which significantly increases their accessibility and usability.
It is possible to achieve the impression of natural conversation due to, among others, the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology which enables voice recognition and conversational pattern analysis and interpretation.
AI-based natural language processing, natural language understanding, and human speech recognition, the technologies that have advanced rapidly over the past few years, have enabled many industries to communicate with users via Conversational User Interfaces.
They allowed them to support many processes in a much more efficient way.
Firstly, it has been recognized that a significant portion of the questions and answers in the customer and user service processes can be automated.
Secondly, it has been checked that it can be handled while maintaining high quality that is constantly improved.
Thirdly, Conversational User Interfaces handling queries and conversations with artificial intelligence have also the advantage that they enable you to meet the need to get a fast and relevant answer quickly and successfully.
Fourthly, in many cases, the interaction between a human and a machine, software, and artificial intelligence does not differ significantly from the conversation, dialog, or information exchange between humans.
Fifthly, conversations are more and more flexible, natural, and far from the early days of this technology when they, to a great extent, consisted in finding specific commands, icons, and buttons in the Graphical User Interface (GUI).
The times when the conversation meant the need to enter commands instead of asking questions are becoming a thing of the past.
Modern Conversational User Interfaces are much more:
- Versatile
- Flexible
- Mimetic, or ‘human’: they can mimic typical communication behavior in specific situations or contexts
- Adaptive: they gain experience, learn and correct their reactions with each new interaction and conversation
- Effective
- Usable.
To sum up, a Conversational User Interface:
- Enables the user to express themself in an individual manner
- Can be used in web and mobile applications
- Can in equal measure (interchangeably or simultaneously) use written and spoken language
- Enables you to maintain and use the principles of human-to-human conversation
- Allows text-to-speech and speech-to-text conversion
- Takes two forms: Voice Assistant and Chatbot (text assistant).
How do Conversational User Interfaces work?
The dynamic development of the technologies employed in CUI promotes their popularization.
Organizations are more and more willing and convinced to utilize bots to relieve, improve and streamline the handling of simple questions and issues.
With Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Conversational User Interfaces are getting better and better.
They can:
- Understand increasingly complex questions expressed in a way far from command and instruction formulas
- Answer increasingly complex questions
- Independently generate questions enabling them to clarify the range of subjects, determine the expectations and probe the needs
- Take the initiative, suggest, recommend, diagnose, give opinions, prompt, explain, express curiosity, and show interest.
Conversational User Interfaces are no longer:
- Crude
- Rigid
- Annoying
- Daunting
- Primitive
- Of very limited use
- Passive.
Conversational User Interfaces are mainly based on two technologies:
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Natural Language Understanding (NLU).
Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Understanding employ the knowledge of linguistics, IT, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and others.
Conversational User Interfaces are mostly created from several key components, including:
- Component for voice recognition and speech-to-text conversion
- NLU/NLP
- Dictionaries and libraries of language samples
- Contexts
- Business logic.
What are the types of Conversational User Interfaces?
The main interface division criterion is the manner of interaction with the software.
Generally, Conversational User Interfaces are divided into:
- Chatbots
- Voicebots
In the case of the former, the conversation, dialog, and interaction are carried out by means of the written word entered in the chat window via keyboard.
For the latter, it is performed using the spoken word and a microphone.
So far, paradoxically, Chatbots appear to be more natural than Voicebots because the users are used to chats as such. With the popularization of mobile phones, SMS, social networks, and instant messengers, text communication has become widespread and natural.
Voicebots, or Voice User Interfaces (VUI), communicate with the users through sound.
Although more and more common, VUIs are still not as popular as Chatbots. Also, due to the following barriers:
- Economic: they are still quite expensive
- Psychological: people have not grown accustomed to voice communication with software.
The most common applications and use cases of Conversational User Interfaces
Text and voice assistants are gaining popularity. And it is not a great exaggeration or a thing of the future that we have entered the era of Conversational User Interfaces and customer and user service automation.
Obviously, not in all industries, Conversational User Interfaces are greeted with great understanding and interest.
Currently, most such technologies, solutions, and functionalities can be found in industries where efficient service plays a special role in the sales and after-sales service processes.
Conversational User Interfaces are the most popular in the following industries:
- E-Commerce
- Health care
- Travel
- Entertainment
- Transport
- Education
- Catering
- Hospitality
- Finances, finance services, and banking.
A major advantage of Conversational User Interfaces for customers and business owners is the possibility to perform different roles.
Also, the functions they perform, external, front-line, and internal, related to data aggregation, analysis, and interpretation, are extremely useful and will win them supporters.
You need to remember that assistants can be helpful tools for supporting:
- Service processes
- Sales processes and systems, sales funnel
- Organization and logistics processes
- Communication and promotion processes
- Information processes
- Billing, ordering, and stock monitoring processes
- Modeling, mapping, and planning processes
- Daily user activities (e.g., Internet of Things or IoT).
What are the benefits of using Conversational User Interfaces for an organization?
In the era of Conversational User Interfaces, we benefit, most of all, from comfort and speed.
Text and voice assistants have the advantage over full-time assistants that the AI and the system behind them:
- Are not limited by labor law
- Are not limited by physical and mental capacity; they can be overloaded without the risk of professional burnout
- Are available without time constraints and do not keep the customers waiting for longer than fractions of seconds
- Can serve more customers in a given unit of time
- Can reach critical information faster and combine pieces of information easier and more efficiently
- Are able to anticipate, forecast, and analyze
- Are proactive: offer suitable suggestions based on contextual information.
In terms of communication and usability related to user experience in the aspect of language, Conversational User Interfaces provide even more.
Communication through Conversational User Interfaces is:
- Subject to a lower interaction cost
- Much more efficient, natural, and convenient for the user because contemporary artificial intelligence on which the interfaces are based does not set any boundary conditions (e.g., the knowledge of commands)
- Consistent with daily methods and patterns of social interactions
- Faster when we write and even faster when we provide information by voice
- More and more integrated with daily activities, behavior, routines, tasks, and goals. And in the era of IoT, it will be increasingly natural
- Customized with the use of historical data.
In a nutshell, Conversational User Interfaces concern the following issues:
- Business
- Economic
- Usability
- Civilization
- Market
- Strategic
- Technological (artificial intelligence handling the input data and formulating correct answers)
- Branding.
The comments by Raluca Budiu, the Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group, in her article “The User Experience of Customer-Service Chat: 20 Guidelines” concerning three main advantages of contemporary Chatbots and Voicebots seem to sum up this discussion well.
These are:
- Emotional benefit of greater ease of interactions with an automatic assistant than with a human, especially in the case of products and services that can be embarrassing
- Trace of conversation in the form of a recording that can be the basis of further actions
- Capability of smooth multi-tasking operation.
In addition, in her other article, “The User Experience of Chatbots,” Budiu refers to the users’ attitudes toward Conversational User Interfaces, which Nielsen Norman Group researchers discovered during their research.
Generally, Conversational User Interfaces evoke reactions from neutral to positive, but simultaneously, they are considered less helpful than humans.
Then again, according to Budiu, the most important advantage offered by this technology to the users surveyed by NN Group was the speed. A conversation with a human typically involves a long waiting time.
Obviously, such general conclusions should not be extrapolated and regarded as binding for every industry, business, segment, target, or country.
The research was conducted in the US market, and even there, it is moderately binding.
The general memento phrased by the NN Group researcher is simple.
Some, in particular simple, typical, and repetitive user questions, needs and goals can be effectively handled in an automated manner.
By handling them effectively, a company will benefit from, most of all, the issues related to productivity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, as well as image and User Experience.
Success depends on a perfect Chatbot or Voicebot. If it is too primitive, people will lose confidence in a company and feel ignored and underrated.
They will not be able to achieve their goals and perform tasks. They will waste time, patience, and trust.
Conversational User Interface design: What can AI do?
We should start with a remark that may seem as obvious as it is easy to ignore as regards its importance and implications.
Namely, the way of interacting with Conversational User Interfaces is completely different from the mode of interaction with Graphical User Interfaces.
This means that designing a consistent conversational user experience with software is quite complex.
First of all, you should keep in mind the following issues:
- Technology capabilities and limitations
- User awareness as regards the Conversational User Interfaces capabilities and limitations
- Specific nature of software interactions
- Obtainable level of accuracy and concreteness of query understanding
- Obtainable degree of understanding of user intentions by the software
- Need to have perfected handling of queries that are implicit, vague, and incorrect in terms of language and content
- Need to define use cases.
The development of Conversational User Interfaces also involves paying particular attention to the following:
- Context of typical use cases; especially for designing Voicebots, a public formulation of voice queries can be uncomfortable, and the audial conditions of the environment can affect the quality of query recognition and interpretation
- Chatbot or Voicebot purpose: both from the user's and the business owner's side
- Relevance of CUI in terms of typical user problems, needs, and expectations
- Relevance of CUI in terms of a given channel specifics: desktop vs. mobile
- Issue of task handover and redirecting the conversation to a human agent when the level of complexity of the user issue is beyond the bot's capabilities (Human Handover).
Further issues that absolutely must be kept in mind are:
- Conversation flow and substance
- Message tone
- Bot image or personality, or more generally, a bot persona.
When designing a bot persona and giving it specific features, remember the remark Eric Hal Schwartz made in his article "People Prefer Virtual Assistants That Seem Happy: Study."
According to the study cited by Schwartz, the bots that seemed happy to the users were rated better and more useful.
It turned out that the users tend to reflect the mood, which affects the course and result of the interaction.
A Conversational User Interface that is attractive in the user's eyes is an interface that is based on the answers to the following questions:
- What will the user want to do with the software?
- What goals will the user want to achieve?
- What will be the most effective way to solve the user's problem?
- What system operations, in the most effective way, minimize the user efforts related to reaching the goal and communication with the system?
Conversational User Interface creation. Summary
- In the era of Conversational User Interfaces, the users, most of all, benefit from comfort and speed.
- As customers and users, we are not always aware that we are using Conversational User Interfaces.
- Conversational User Interfaces facilitate communication and are better and better at simulating a natural human-to-human conversation.
- Conversational User Interfaces are increasingly taking over customer service.
- The answers provided by conversational interfaces are more and more natural. Therefore, the Conversational User Interface development should be focused on obtaining the effect of natural dialog.
- Conversational User Interfaces enable user-software interactions using text or voice.
- The aim of the CUI designers should be to imitate the natural communication behavior and make the dialog as real-life and satisfactory as possible.
- Contemporary Conversational User Interfaces enable human-software dialog using natural language.
- The use of CUI does not require prior preparation, knowledge, or training.
- Conversational User Interfaces are more and more accessible and usable.
- The impression of natural conversation can be obtained through Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology, among others.
- Modern Conversational User Interfaces are much more versatile, flexible, mimetic, and adaptive.
- Conversational User Interfaces can be used in web and mobile applications.
- The dynamic development of the technologies employed in CUI promotes their popularization.
- Organizations are more and more willing and convinced to utilize bots to relieve, improve and streamline the handling of simple questions and issues.
- Conversational User Interfaces are no longer crude, rigid, annoying, daunting, and of very limited use. The development of Conversational User Interfaces currently goes way beyond writing scenarios and dialog scripts.
- A major advantage of Conversational User Interfaces for customers and business owners is the possibility to perform different roles.
- Communication through Conversational User Interfaces is subject to a lower interaction cost, is much more efficient, convenient for the user, and consistent with daily methods and patterns of social interactions.
- Conversational User Interfaces concern business, economic, civilization, marketing, strategic, and branding issues.
- Generally, Conversational User Interfaces evoke reactions from neutral to positive, but simultaneously, they are considered less helpful than humans. The Conversational User Interface creation must be sensitive to these issues.
- According to the users surveyed by NN Group, the major advantage of this technology is speed.
- The way of interaction with Conversational User Interfaces is completely different from the mode of interaction with Graphical User Interfaces.
- Designing a consistent conversational experience and developing Conversational User Interfaces are complex tasks.
