In the last few years the demography of Indian digital users has seen a significant shift. This changing user landscape has led to a rise in new browsing behaviours with multilingual search and conversational search gaining significant traction. In this blog we explore all aspects of conversational search, its benefits and use cases.
Conversational Search : The New Way to Get Discovered
Multiple factors have contributed to the growing use and popularity of conversational search, one of them being the advancement of AI (Artificial intelligence) and NLP(Natural language processing). From a user’s perspective the entire experience of searching for information in this big black hole we call the internet becomes very simple. People who aren’t so proficient in typing and searching for information on the web find conversational search a lot easier. Before we dive deep into the multiple conversational search benefits, let’s understand what conversational search is.
What is Conversational Search
It’s a lazy Sunday morning and you are finally getting the much awaited and well deserved downtime you had been waiting for. Your teenage daughter walks up to you to help her order baby pink sneakers for her upcoming birthday. You’re in no mood to swift through a huge catalog of sneakers on your go to fashion app. Applying filters for style, size, brand etc seems to be a daunting task on a Sunday. Let’s see what this conversation between you and the app sounds like.
User: Find baby pink sneakers.
Bot: Certainly! Are you looking for sneakers for men or women?
User: Girl – size UK5.
Bot: Thankyou, any particular brand?
User: No.
Bot: What price range are you looking at?
User : Rs. 2000 to Rs. 5000.
Bot: Awesome! I found 10 sneakers matching your requirement, take a look.
That’s conversational search for you, a human-like interaction between an e-commerce app and the end user. So what did you observe? It made the search experience quick and the results were quick and accurate. The user did not have to go through applying multiple filters and swift through 1000s of products.
Many businesses also offer multilingual conversational search features empowering native language speaking Indians to search what they are looking for with ease. This adds a new dimension to customer experience and ensures their stickiness with the brands offering this feature.
A whopping 70% Indian businesses are already using conversational search to engage with their customers. Conversational search makes the entire user experience more engaging, intuitive, and simple. It mimics humanlike conversation, thereby enabling users to ask questions in a tone they speak rather than typing in specific keywords to get the most relevant information.
The Technology Powering Conversational Search
Conversational search uses artificial intelligence (AI) backed technologies such as NLU (Natural Language Understanding), NLP (Natural Language Processing) algorithms and NMT (Natural Machine Translation) to gauge the intent behind a user’s question and map it with most relevant information on the website and also translate text in different languages. This is especially useful for websites with vast content and businesses operating in India, where native language users also access the web for information.
Reverie Language Technologies has done some commendable work in the field of conversational search by harnessing the power of AI.. Reverie’s text to speech (TTS), NLU, and NMT APIs help enable businesses to build custom voice solutions as per their unique business needs.
Now that we’ve understood behind the scenes working of conversational search, lets explore why businesses should be investing in conversational search.
Conversational Search Benefits
Conversational search makes finding information on the web and app a lot more engaging, intuitive and easy. It empowers people with visual impairment and other disabilities to access information from the web which would otherwise have not been possible. Let’s look at the key benefits of implementing a conversational search strategy.
Accurate and Personalised Results
AI is the nerve centre that drives conversational search. As a result, these systems store contextual understanding based on past interactions. This ability to retain information from earlier interactions empowers conversational bots to understand the user query better and produce information that is more relevant and accurate. The context from previous interactions also help in getting a more holistic view of the users problem leading to a more personalised outcome.
Ensures Brand Stickiness
This is in particular true for e-commerce websites that offer a huge product catalog across multiple categories. Finding a product on these websites and app stores can often be overwhelming and product discovery is often very difficult. By introducing conversational search these brands can take the guesswork of finding the right product out of the picture. They can speed up product discovery journeys and elevate the customer experience to a whole new level. The sheer convenience that conversational search brings ensures customers keep coming back to the brand.
Better Outreach in Multilingual Markets
By utilising Transliteration and Neural Machine Translation, Speech to text, and Text to Speech APis conversational search translates search command inputs in another language and delivers results in a language the user can understand. This enables businesses to have a better outreach and expand into newer markets. Better outreach leads to better engagement which in turn gives more insights into users behaviour and preferences. This goldmine of data enables businesses to improve their services and products to suit customer needs. It also helps marketing teams align their strategy to customer expectations.
The Future
Conversational search is here to stay and it is not just a passing fad and rightly so. Voice search offers a plethora of benefits not just to the user but businesses too. Conversational search reduces customer service costs by 30% and catapults revenue by 10% within 6 months of implementation. It empowers businesses especially in India to tap in the true potential of regional markets. From a customer’s perspective, access to information becomes much easier. Reverie Language Technologies has been instrumental in helping both government bodies and private businesses across the board in scaling their business with cutting-edge voice platforms.
To know more about how our voice platforms can help you scale your business to the next level, get in touch with us.
Faqs
What is the technology behind conversational search?
Conversational search is powered by AI and NLP empowering bots to understand context, learn from past interactions, and provide more personalised and relevant search results.
What are the benefits of conversational search?
Conversational search mimics human-like interaction enabling a user to give search commands in a style they use to converse with other human beings.
Does Reverie offer voice solutions?
Yes Reverie has a platform for voice solutions and the best part, besides English it supports other Indian languages also.
How can businesses use conversational search?
They can use conversational search for addressing customer queries that are repetitive in nature. By leveraging this technology they can extend customer support 24×7, make finding relevant information easy, and increase overall user engagement.
