You never know when you’ll find yourself in conversation with a chatbot. I recently went to SiriusXM’s customer support site to find a resolution for a streaming issue. I was half-heartedly expecting to chat with an agent. Instead, I was greeted by Melody – an AI chatbot.

Ever the fan of self-service, I was excited to meet Melody. But almost immediately – I was disappointed. At precisely this moment of our ‘conversation’, I realized that while Melody may be powered by AI, she’s not yet an intelligent system that’s capable of dealing with complex queries:

A screenshot showing an interaction between a salesforce chat and a customer looking for support.

So many options but one slight problem – my issue didn’t fall into any of these categories.

My next step? Query the chatbot with language that I hoped would get me in touch with a live agent from customer service:

A screenshot shows a customer service chatbot interaction

Eventually, I got hold of an agent who resolved my issue on live chat. But this also took me more than a couple of steps. And you can see the effort level increasing with each step.

Melody, bless its hard-coded heart, maybe a salesforce einstein chatbot but without the power of AI – it’s unable to fully replace a human agent.

When you really think about it, the entire customer experience could have turned out a lot worse.

“What if my issue doesn’t fit into the generic categories? “

“What if I’m not savvy enough to know that I can type in “talk to an agent” to get my chat handed off?”

Now imagine a world where customer service looks like this: after clicking on a chat button, a customer can find what he or she is looking for, immediately, without any delays, frustrations, or intervention from a live agent.

Even a Salesforce Chatbot Sometimes Needs Help

I’m not trying to pick on Melody or SiriusXM. The truth is, a lot of chatbots underwhelm. Customers don’t want a bot conversation that feels like talking to a wall.

Traditional customer service usually flows like this:

A flowchart shows the typical chatbot interaction process
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Chatbot Technology: Overhyped, or Undersold?

Even if you have opted for a solution as sophisticated as an Einstein AI Chatbot – that’s set up perfectly in Salesforce Lightning – your chatbot may still struggle to decipher complex queries.

When it comes to Salesforce integration, typically, the Salesforce Einstein Bots we encounter are missing a few key ingredients:

  • No defined purpose and personality
  • Content index limited to only a few sources
  • Limited or no intent detection
  • Lack of personalization
  • Limited search and recommendation capabilities

To improve customer experience and achieve self-service success, companies need to do better with their embedded service chats than this flat “decision tree” experience.

The good news is that adding a little bit of AI to your Einstein Bots can go a long way to achieving just that.

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Power up your chatbot with AI

How Does Artificial Intelligence Help Einstein Bots?

What’s missing from so many chatbot experiences is contextual relevance. And that’s where Coveo, the Relevance Company, steps up.

Coveo for Einstein Bots maximizes relevance by weaving enterprise-grade, AI-powered search and recommendations into Salesforce chatbot dialogs.

It allows you to enjoy the best of both worlds, really: when Salesforce Einstein Bot can handle simple issues straightaway, it will; when the customer’s queries “go off script,” Coveo AI can interpret the customer’s language and suggest relevant results.

What’s more, the Coveo for Einstein Bots brings in content from the entire ecosystem. This can include both sources within the Salesforce CRM, such as your Salesforce Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, as well as outside sources, such as YouTube videos, blog posts, and even community content. Simultaneously, the algorithm looks at other available customer data such as previous activity, preferences, etc. – to further pinpoint the most relevant content for a given query.

A graphic illustrates how Coveo enhances the Salesforce platform
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Deliver Relevant Experiences With Coveo for Einstein Bots

Keep It Relevant Even When Customers Go Off the Script

Einstein Bot is really effective when customers have a logical task to complete, such as “Login / Password Reset,” “Order Status Refresh,” or “Cancel.” For those use cases where the customer has a more complex or nuanced query, Einstein Bot needs the help of a more complex and nuanced relevance engine. A relevance engine pulls together all of your existing content, and searches through it using user intent and interactions.

In my SiriusXM experience, I needed something a little off the script: my streams on the desktop app were delayed and choppy. My SiriusXM chatbot adventure would have been a lot better with Coveo’s unified index integrated into the Einstein Bot experience. Here’s an example of Coveo and Einstein Bot working together to deliver on that better experience using Coveo’s Speedbit fitness tracker demo:

When I ask a question the chatbot isn’t programmed to answer, it can trigger a Coveo search query and display the top three results. Those search results are based on my query language, profile data, and so on. 

The chatbot can even serve up smart snippets, extracting relevant pieces of information from content related to the query. This gets customers to an answer even faster. 

A screenshot shows a chatbot exhibiting a smart snippet, extracting relevant information from documents related to a query

Deliver Real-Time Relevance Leveraging Artificial Intelligence

There was a time when I shared the sentiment that chatbots are dead.

The chatbot technology, it’s all hype! – the pundits shouted, rattling their pitchforks. Now that chatbots have evolved to include conversational AI capabilities, I for one have put my pitchfork down.

I’m more optimistic that chatbots can be helpful friends.

That said, I still stumble across pitchfork-worthy chatbot experiences with too much frequency. Fear not, Melody. Keep the faith, Einstein Bots! You’re not headed off to the scrap heap just yet. That is, assuming your creators give you the extra lift you seem to need.

See, for the Melodies and Einstein Bots of the world, generic playbooks won’t cut it anymore. For companies, the best action now is to bring in AI and machine learning capable of connecting more dots in real time-of delivering up-to-the-millisecond relevance throughout every chatbot experience.

Dig Deeper

Upgrading chatbots is just one of the many ways Coveo can enhance your Salesforce platform. Not only can it bring your enterprise content and data into Salesforce, it can also help employees remain in the flow of work and enhance their proficiency. 

Looking for real-world examples of how the powerful combination of Coveo and Salesforce is transforming service? Check out our ebook, 5 Companies Using Coveo & Salesforce to Transform Service.

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5 Companies Using Coveo & Salesforce to Transform Service