Virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa by Apple and Amazon have successfully created a buzz for their brands, among them, AI chatbots have also paved their way up in different sectors and activities.

The technology of Artificial intelligence(AI) chatbots has been continuously evolving so that it can be used in various business operations. The main idea behind them is to make communication between parties relevant and faster. They imitate human conversation, ask questions and answer people’s queries with appropriate solutions and suggestions.

Chatbots in the manufacturing world play a dual role. Their first function is to help your employees receive all the relevant and precise information regarding production processes and wasted time and resources. Their second function is to aid customers with their questions and assist customer care representatives. Because of Machine Learning, these digital employees persistently learn and improve, resulting in higher customer satisfaction within time.

 

Where can chatbots be used?

Notifications and Updates: 

Being in the manufacturing sector, companies have to handle loads of demand and deliveries. With chatbots, everyone from buyers to employees can get notified about constant updates. In addition, Chatbots can send a message to your clients when they are on your website, or they can deliver mail to them. It can even deliver messages to some messenger apps if the chatbot is configured there.

This information may be regarding the status, conditions, location of orders, and delivery time. It saves customer support teams as well as the buyers much time. Therefore, such intelligent assistants can automate repetitive but necessary business processes and boost efficiency.

Inventory and Supplies check

As a matter of course, manufacturing firms need to keep records of their existing stock and supplies of machine parts and materials to ensure their orders are getting fulfilled timely. Using Manufacturing NLP chatbots, your employees can instantaneously get status updates on the inventory level to decide when or when not to order more. Therefore, help avoid wastage of capital and loss of any customer orders. You can even train the algorithm to analyze how inventory is used and help prevent wastage.

Coordinating Floor Issues

Manufacturing plants and factories can become quite hectic as the production level expands. This volume of operations and data can cause confusion and potential delays, especially when employees have to shift between various floor levels to perform tasks.

Involving a chatbot in your workflows will help you handle floor queries and avoid unwanted surprises. It is also referred to as knowledge management in some firms. Chatbots can be used to check the machine maintenance issues, production problems and capabilities, and workload distribution at a particular time on different floors.

These concerns and queries can usually take an unnecessarily long amount of time to address. However, with chatbots, you will be able to receive answers to your questions more seamlessly than with the standard monitoring systems. In addition, these AI-powered assistants can easily manage and communicate quality controls, detailed insights, and the amount of attention a particular procedure needs to managers and supervisors.

Automation of Customer Support

Several companies have already implemented AI chatbots to automate routine support queries, complaints, and service tickets to make the customer care process quicker and pilot higher engagement rates.

A manufacturing chatbot can step in when customers face issues with delivery; they can act like a human agent and provide your clients with all answers to their questions and concerns regarding the product bought. Moreover, Chatbots can easily forward the calls to human customer support agents to assist with complex queries.

These virtual assistants also bear the capacity to give product recommendations and guide them as to what they should do next. It is critical to have a proactive and smooth customer care service as it can easily bring bad press to your company if a customer is left unhappy with a product or if the customer support line was unable to attend them because it was “busy”.

Managing Multiple Partner Relationships

Chatbots can help you communicate through their coactive and interactive platforms. You can employ them with your partners across varied geographical locations and time zones without any human intervention and create efficiency in your manufacturing processes.

As we have discussed, chatbots have the capacity to answer nearly any relevant question, simplifying the need for huge vendor website searches.

Order Fulfillment and Service Delivery

Tracking the order status is integral given the current supply chain conditions. In addition, manufacturing facilities no longer need to wait for a human response to monitor outstanding orders and current inventory levels as Chatbots can be used combined with Enterprise risk management software.

Such software encompasses issues ranging from employee safety and meeting statutory regulations to securing sensitive data and financial fraud.

This way, employees can get relevant information about pending orders, shipping activities, and manufacturing updates by asking simple questions in natural language to chatbots.

Provide Personalized Product Recommendation

As manufacturing companies already have a plethora of products to offer, chatbots can also be used to shortlist and make purchasing decisions. With a smart algorithm, a chatbot can use historical data and leverage machine learning to recognize customer persona and accordingly recommend the right products based on their preferences.

Using this data on consumer preferences, you can further make production decisions regarding the type of product to be produced and the production level.

Using Human-augmented chatbots

The simplest forms of chatbots are standalone systems that can answer only a set of queries related to singular aspects. They extract information from management systems and databases, use built-in decision trees, and work well for many applications. However, they are limited by their own programming. When overpowered, they are, unfortunately, forced to ask customers to reach out to companies via other communication channels, like the mail.

To fix this shortcoming, you can choose to use human-augmented systems that can seamlessly convert the conversation to a human support agent without any unnecessary user input.

If programmed well, users will most likely not realize the transition to a human customer service agent from a chatbot. This can allow customer support agents to effortlessly focus on aspects where they add the most value. In addition, such chatbots will surely help you relieve pressure from human-based systems and split the expertise of bots and humans where it is most necessary.

The manufacturing industry can even recruit the “Helper Bot Method” model, where the customer service agents get assistance from the chatbot. Under this system, they can receive suggestions on how to respond and get help in approving or editing messages before sending them to clients.

This model optimizes human effort by allowing your customer support agents to control their conversations while mitigating the burden from peripheral activities like finding information to answer customer queries from databases.

Conclusion: THE FUTURE

The evolution of chatbots, like every other AI tool, is headed towards further enhancing human capabilities and freeing us from monotonous and menial tasks. This allows humans to partake in creative, strategic, and innovative activities rather than mechanical work.

In the near future, users will most likely enjoy upgraded chatbot features, like-faster recommendations, predictive analytics, and smoother access to high-definition video conferencing in a conversation. We can surely expect to have fully functional personal assistants right on their mobile phones, making our worlds connected and efficient.

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