How businesses use conversational AI to save time and money

Summary

• Conversational AI simulates human-like conversations using advanced technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning.
• Businesses save time and money by using AI to automate processes.
• Industries like e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and education are already benefiting from conversational AI, using it for everything from answering FAQs to personalizing user experiences.
• While challenges like integration and maintaining a personal touch exist, tools like ElevenLabs offer natural-sounding AI that helps businesses communicate effectively.

Are you talking to a robot?

Back in the bad old days, speaking with customer service meant phoning a call center, being placed on hold for an eternity, and then getting hung up on when the lines got overwhelmed. If you’re old enough to remember things like 3-hour waits to pay your taxes and trips to the bank just to pay a bill, you’ll remember how inconvenient it was to live life in the slow lane.

Of course, with computers, that all changed. Now, you have online banking, immediate bill payments, and streamlined shopping from the comfort of your PJs. But when it’s time to ask for help, we might still end up on the phone speaking to a rep trying to get our issues resolved.

But could that rep actually be a robot?

Enter conversational AI, the driving force behind automated customer interactions that means faster service, better resolutions, and round-the-clock care. Conversational AI allows companies to save time, reduce costs, and improve customer experiences by handling repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and providing personalized service.

So, how are businesses putting conversational AI to use, and when is this new AI form coming to a service near you? Let’s break it down.

What is conversational AI?

Conversational AI refers to tools that enable machines to engage in human-like conversations.

It can be both text and voice-powered and is possible because of natural language processing (NLP) — the way AI can understand and process human language and craft responses to it in turn.

In business, conversational AI includes anything from chatbots that help you with your online shopping, virtual assistants that book meetings, and human-sounding voice agents that guide users through the sales process.

Here are a couple of aspects of conversational AI to help you understand how it works.

• Natural language processing (NLP): This technology helps AI understand human language, even when it’s not perfectly worded.
• Machine learning: AI improves over time by learning from past interactions, meaning it can get better and better at helping customers.
• Speech recognition and generation: It uses an interface to understand spoken language and respond appropriately in real-time, meaning you can have a phone call with a conversation AI tool, not just a text exchange.

With these technologies working together, businesses gain a powerful tool that operates efficiently, works 24/7, and provides reliable support — significant advantages when it comes to improving their bottom line and response times.

Conversational AI to save businesses time

Time is money! Any moment spent queueing at the bank, waiting on hold, or thinking about requests is time that is better spent elsewhere, whether we’re a business or an individual.

For businesses, these small delays can mount up. 

Imagine a customer sales rep spending an 8-hour working day calling customers. Of those 8 hours, very little time is spent actually engaging in conversation. The rest? Meaningless tasks, like responding to emails, waiting for customers to answer the phone, and answering the same questions they’ve heard before. 

Over time, this inefficiency eats away at the bottom line for businesses, meaning wasted spend and a less positive customer experience. But AI has the power to change that.

One of the biggest advantages of conversational AI is how much time it saves for both businesses and their customers. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Automating repetitive tasks

For many people the average day is filled with routine inquiries, such as FAQs, appointment scheduling, and tracking orders.

However, many of these tasks have a well-worn process that can be automated by a conversational AI agent. For instance, a routine phone call from a regular customer to issue a refund will follow a very similar structure every time, an easy task for AI to handle. 

Take a look at it: ElevenLabs conversational AI doing this exact job in action:

By automating these tasks, employees are free to focus on higher-priority tasks and more creative jobs. At the same time, customers can get answers and complete their tasks immediately without needing to wait on hold or call within normal business hours.

Speeding up customer service

No one (especially not your customers) likes to be kept waiting. Real-time responses are a hallmark of conversational AI. 

With instant responses and always-on customer service powered by AI, your customers no longer have to wait in long queues for basic assistance or replies to their messages. Instead, an AI agent is always ready to respond instantly.

Plus, customers can access round-the-clock care. Whether they need help with resetting a password or checking product availability, they can do it instantly and at any time by contacting an AI agent instead of a human working shifts. 

Streamlining internal processes

But it isn’t just customers who benefit from more efficiency and speedier processes. 

Businesses can use AI to make their teams more efficient, cut down on wasted time, and improve the job experience for their team members.

Got a regular meeting that needs scheduling? Need help inputting tedious tasks into your project management system? All of this can be handled with an AI assistant.

From automating comms to providing instant answers to common employee questions, conversational AI reduces time spent on admin tasks, freeing up employees to concentrate on what really matters.

Scaling support efficiently

As your business grows, so does the service you offer your customers. 

Traditionally, this also means expanding teams as fluctuations in demand occur or streamlining and reducing team head count when the opposite happens. All this is expensive and time-consuming: hiring new people, renting new premises, and liaising with customers. 

Wouldn’t it be better if AI could pick up the slack?

For some businesses, this is an annual occurrence with seasonal fluctuations.

During these high-demand periods like holiday sales, conversational AI enables businesses to manage increased customer requests without adding more staff, meaning smooth operations (and customer service coverage) all year round.

How conversational AI cuts costs for businesses

Time savings often go hand in hand with financial savings, meaning businesses see benefits in their profit and their revenue. 

Conversational AI offers many ways for businesses to reduce expenses while keeping up with a quality service.

Improving customer retention

Providing fast, personalized support makes customers feel valued and encourages loyalty. 

As we know, retaining customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones, so this is a key benefit for businesses. Being able to respond faster and help customers build a great relationship over time and help customers feel valued.

Lowering training expenses

Like any new tool, conversational AI has a learning curve. 

However, while some businesses might end up spending lots of money training staff on processes, scripts, software, and internal SOPs, conversational AI needs just a fraction of the setup.

The AI agent itself needs just a few days of configuration to be able to respond to customers like the most knowledgeable human representatives. 

On top of this, AI tools often come with built-in knowledge bases, which reduce the need for extensive employee training. Team members can find answers on-demand, making onboarding and day-to-day operations smoother.

Optimizing sales and marketing strategies

It's not just in customer service where conversational AI is changing the game.

In sales and marketing, AI agents can make cold calls, optimize marketing campaigns, drive personalized connections, and use data to learn and improve over time.

By analyzing customer interactions, conversational AI provides valuable insights into preferences and behavior. This allows businesses to create more targeted campaigns, reducing wasted ad spend and boosting ROI.

Real-world examples of success

So, let's take a look at some of this conversational AI in action. Below, we've put together a few examples of conversational AI in business that have made the news over the last few months.

But it's important to note that these are just a few examples of how conversational AI is disrupting business. In the future, we predict even more innovative ways of making money and saving time by embracing conversational AI.

AI in Retail

In 2025, 80% of retail execs think their business will be using AI, but how? 

One key way the retail industry is utilizing conversational AI is by offering a personalized experience to shoppers. For instance, imagine a small boutique using a chatbot to assist customers with finding sizes, tracking orders, and recommending products, using past customer data to show styles that they have available in their customers’ size and similar to their past preferences. 

All this improves response times and customer retention, enhances the shopping experience, and boosts online sales — without a sales rep doing any of the hard work!

AI in Healthcare

But it's not just in retail that conversational AI is making a difference. In the healthcare industry, conversational AI agents are conversing with patients with routine problems.

For example, busy clinics rely on virtual assistants to help patients book appointments, check symptoms, and receive medication reminders. For routine medical requests, such as vaccination boosters, mild illnesses, and minor injuries, a conversational AI agent can help the patient access the care they need without an expensive human doctor.

This frees up medical staff to concentrate on real emergencies, reducing the burden on the healthcare system while still offering the care that patients need to recover. This reduces wait times and frees up healthcare workers to focus on critical tasks.

AI in Banking

And finally, gone are the days when you would wait in line for a customer service rep or bank teller to resolve your banking issue.

Now, conversational AI agents make things like telephone banking accessible around the clock. Banks use conversational AI for 24/7 services like balance inquiries, fraud alerts, and fund transfers. 

This benefits both the bank and the customer. Customers appreciate the convenience, and banks save on costs and have an engaged workforce of humans to concentrate on more complex, creative tasks.

The future of conversational AI in business

The only thing we know for certain about the future of conversational AI is that it's only just getting started.

We are at the beginning of an AI Revolution, and as this form of machine learning continues to advance and become ever closer to real human interaction, the possibilities of this new technology are endless.

We predict that AI will become even better at understanding the personal nuances of individual interaction. As we interact with conversational AI agents more and more, they will become increasingly aware of our problems and how to solve them. 

As customers, we should expect more personalized, bespoke interactions with the businesses we love. As businesses, we should be prepared to offer customers more tailored experiences.

Conversational AI is also about to change Industries like education and care. Imagine interacting with a conversational AI care person and the impact this would have on a loneliness epidemic and our communication. In the future, we'll see more businesses offering this kind of service, bringing conversational AI into the realm of reality and allowing customers to form real relationships. 

And finally, conversational AI agents will interact more deeply with the tools we have in our workplaces. Imagine conversational AI coordinating with smart devices to create even more seamless workflows, taking businesses to new levels of efficiency and cost savings.

Why conversational AI tools like ElevenLabs stand out

However, one of the biggest challenges of businesses looking to adopt conversational AI in their workflow is the quality of that AI.

When customers want to interact with your customer service agents, need answers to their questions, or are looking to make a purchase, they want to feel like they are special. Interacting with a robot can be a barrier for many.

As a result, it's important to choose a conversational AI that offers exceptional human-grade quality interaction. And the truth is that not all conversational AI tools are built the same. 

With advanced text to speech tools like ElevenLabs, you can develop conversational AI agents that respond to users in a human manner. What sets ElevenLabs apart is its ability to provide natural-sounding, customizable voices that adapt to your needs. With features like precise voice modulation, API integration, and multi-language support, ElevenLabs helps businesses improve communication while saving time and resources.

Interested in learning more about how you can put this into place in your business? Check out ElevenLabs for Conversational AI. 

The last word

Conversational AI is a smarter way for businesses to operate, and businesses that fail to look for ways of integrating AI into their workflows will find they quickly get left behind. By automating repetitive tasks and improving communication, companies can cut costs, work faster, and provide better service.

However, not all AI agents are built the same. For businesses looking to make the most of this new technology, finding a high-quality conversational AI tool like ElevenLabs will be vital.

Remember, the AI-revolution has only just begun, and AI is moving faster than ever. To stay up to date, businesses need to adapt to new technology. How will you use conversational AI in your business?