By Eduardo de la Garza Guerra
On December 28, 2024
For decades, the most popular way to interact with computers was through a graphical user interface (GUI), most commonly known as websites or apps. It is the go to way for businesses and other organizations to interact with their users.
At the same time text interfaces have been around us more and more as well as most social media platforms are text based. However limitations in the past have made it difficult to use them for more complex tasks. Particularly because they relied on what seem like very limited tree structures to guide the user.
However, with the rise of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models new possibilities have opened up. The level of flexibility and modularity allow for richer user experiences.
For a long time the most popular text interface for commercial use were tree or rules based. These quickly became hard to maintain and personalize which made them useful in a limited number of use cases.
The rise of AI has made it possible to create more flexible and adaptable text interfaces. Assistants con now much better understand the intents of the user and tailor their responses accordingly. At the same time, they also make it easier to integrate with other systems.
Imagine that instead of having to design, develop and maintain a complex website for your company you could just have a text interface that could handle most of the interactions without the hassle of creating a graphical interface.
We are all aware of many of the impacts of these technologies and have probably even seen some of the businesses you know roll out their own text based solutions.
Right now many of these systems are still in their infancy. They are often limited to a few intents and are not able to handle complex conversations. The mostly rely on a small knowledge base or manage a specific workflow. For that reason most of what we have seen used by businesses are Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) bots or reservation systems.
In the future the goal is to see more integrated, holistic and personalized systems. By improving memory, data access, and the use of external tools and systems we can create more natural interactions.
Like with any new complex technology, the future is hard to predict. And there are many challenges and pitfalls that we we'll have to overcome. We can already see many different approaches and the number of tools and services in the market is growing rapidly. The ones who prevail will be the ones that can adapt to the needs of the users while leveraging the power of AI and traditional systems.
Think about how different a conversation can be between people. In the same way different conversational assistants will behave and perform differently. Improvements in prompting, memory, integrations and personalization will make them more useful and more human like.
Conversational Interfaces can provide solutions in both internal and external scenarios. They can be used provide information, answer questions, manage workflows, structure and simplify interactions, and much more.
Leveraging the use of internal quoting API's a business can provide a personalized quote to a user in a matter of seconds without them even having to visit a website but directly through platforms like WhatsApp or Instagram. Integration with sales and fulfillment API's can make a complete workflow. This can reduce the average time to it takes to service a user.
Improved memory and data access can allow for more personalized and open ended question answering. Conversational assistants can server as simple interfaces that will allow non technical users to get information that was previously searchable only by technical people. This can be greatly reduce the time and effort needed do a particular task. At scale this will require strong data foundations from companies. As privacy and security issues can become more complex when using text and other unstructured data.
Assistants knowledge and capabilities can be shared by a group. Imagine there is a critical issue in your company, technical or otherwise. A task group is created to solve the issue. The assistant can be used to manage the group, provide information, and gather data. This can improve communication, reduce the time to solve the issue, and provide a record of the process.
Conversational assistants can be used to manage projects. They can keep track of tasks, ask for updates, and provide information to managers. This can simplify the job of project managers and allow them to focus on more strategic tasks.
Conversational assistants can be used to provide financial advice. They can help users understand their financial situation, provide recommendations, and help them make decisions. This can be particularly useful for people who are not familiar with financial concepts.