Conversational AI in manufacturing works beyond the product floor and extends from employee management to customer support.
Our world depends on manufacturing. Manufacturers are at the center of the global supply chain, building the products that form our lives. Having the right manufacturing processes in place can mean the difference between an entire country running smoothly or not, so operations must be as manageable and predictable as possible--with flawless quality control.
Conversational AI is designed to simulate human analysis as much as possible to drive results. This solution has grown by leaps and bounds over the last ten years. It's closer than ever to simulating human interaction and insight–and in the manufacturing space–human insight is paramount.
Conversational AI helps drive better decision-making for businesses across multiple industries at increased speed and scale–as is evident in the manufacturing space.
The manufacturing space requires up-to-the-second predictive maintenance, automation, and customer interaction, often at a scale that can't be met with human effort alone. In manufacturing, customers expect and demand timely and agile support with solutions delivered in hours and minutes, not weeks and days.
Conversational AI drives smart automation that closes manufacturing gaps and opens revenue and cost savings opportunities. Below are a few applications of conversational AI empowering the manufacturing industry.
Customers considering a particular manufacturing solution expect a 24/7 cycle of personalized engagement to address their questions and needs directly. Conversational AI has the volume and capacity to address these needs with nuances and detail.
A conversational AI assistant can help qualify a customer based on sentiment analysis from the customers' language and accurately determine solutions for the customer, moving them through the sales cycle and performing much of the high-touch execution work required for a sales associate.
This process of multiple virtual AI assistants operating simultaneously can help a manufacturer remain efficient, fill in gaps in case of staffing shortages, and focus more on product optimization and delivery.
For example, conversational AI seamlessly works with sales agents by performing tedious tasks like CRM updates, prospect details, and more. These capabilities equip sales agents with the bandwidth and time necessary to build trust and develop relationships, knowing that more tedious tasks are handled.
A growing manufacturing organization will only have a finite amount of resources to be able to dedicate to an increasing customer base. As your customers' needs increase in complexity, they deserve dedicated and personalized attention that speaks to the nuances of their manufacturing demands. Conversational AI can address these items at scale and equip organizations with data and predictions to help drive the right results.
The manufacturing industry is historically affected by high turnover and recruiting challenges, which can often become expensive. Often, staff members in transitional phases are doing work that can be automated and executed by a virtual AI assistant. This can help illuminate labor gaps with the right programming and applications.
Manufacturing is centered on supply and demand and keeping pathways open and moving. People who depend on manufacturers need to constantly know about their current supplies and inventory and need to fulfill deliveries and orders for their customers according to schedule.
However, it's a common issue for businesses to incur losses by prematurely generating supply and having inventory backed up when demand cycles aren't in sync.
Conversational AI keeps a targeted, updated inventory and supply needs log through a messaging platform that works with a legacy customer system and ERPs to supply necessary information as quickly as needed. Consequently, manufacturers save significant time in human capital in the inventory and supply management process.
This allows manufacturing leaders and warehouse management to make calculated and correct decisions involving inventory and supplies while vastly reducing human error.
As a manufacturer, when you're equipped with several multifaceted product offerings, SKUs, and product variables, your customers may feel overwhelmed by their product choices. This issue is compounded when dealing with tens or hundreds of customers who all have to make these decisions--and can prove to be a Herculean task for sales representatives to navigate effectively with each customer.
Instead of asking a sales representative to mitigate confusion for each prospect, which is bound to lead to biases and errors, you can use a conversational AI agent to deliver customized recommendations at scale based on customer preferences.
Conversational AI can take in historical data and a customer's particular profile and buying choices to develop a model for the ideal products for that customer, guiding them to a more precise decision. This can significantly save time in human capital for a company and help sales reps to devote themselves to more high-level tasks like relationship building.
The ultimate goal of conversational AI is to help manufacturers utilize their workforce more efficiently and not depend on human beings to do work that conversational AI could do just as well or better.
Another excellent example of this dynamic is conversational AI's ability to send customers updates and notifications, something a human being shouldn't have to do in 2022.
Conversational AI can automate the updating and notification process for everyone along the supply chain, including distributors, customers, brokers, and so on. A conversational AI agent can even make sophisticated judgments about what updates or notifications to send to specific customers at different times. It can deliver information such as updates on a particular order, what's happening with a specific service ticket, and other kinds of notifications delivered in a timely way.
Conversational AI can help deliver a streamlined and efficient employee experience across multiple departments and locations through automation at scale. Handling complicated IT, and HR communications between departments can quickly run into bias and human error, but conversational AI mitigates these issues at significant volume and speed.
Managing employee interactions in the context of a conversational AI application includes streamlining and automating recruitment, onboarding, training, complaints, and so on. It also can facilitate general inquiries and overarching support to improve the employee experience. In the manufacturing space, conversational AI can significantly reduce human capital by helping to develop new devices, set up system access, and correct code errors.
The solution can also facilitate more simple HR operations such as timesheet updates, scheduling, HR requests, and more, leaving the bulk of a manufacturer's human capital to be devoted to higher-level work, creating maximum efficiency.
With cutting-edge tools and machinery yielding unprecedented productivity increases, it's only fitting that conversational AI should become part of the manufacturing process for today's companies. Conversational AI works beyond just the needs of the product floor and extends into every aspect of a manufacturing operation, from employee management to customer support.
Manufacturing and supply chain management is complex, requiring several steps from customer interactions to design, troubleshooting, product building, delivery, maintenance, and more. Each of these processes is complicated and requires several moving parts working together, both literally and figuratively. They require significant involvement from multiple teams, operating systems, and information sources. In today's world, with today's demands and expectations, the margin for error is minimal.
Conversational AI helps keep manufacturing operations efficient and integrated, leading to happier customers and employees and smoother manufacturing processes.
If you're interested in learning more about DRUID's conversational AI solutions for manufacturing, book a demo with one of our teammates today.
In response to the Great Resignation wave, manufacturers are using conversational AI to fill manufacturing staffing holes.
Conversational AI and RPA in manufacturing work together to ensure your manufacturing organization is running seamlessly and efficiently.
By properly performing conversational AI training, you'll experience automation, efficiency, and significant ROI in no time.