The landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Real-Time chats has greatly evolved in 2022. With the constantly changing standards and advancements in these areas, businesses have found innovative ways to deploy predictive analytics and use AI to understand customer behavior and preferences. This blog explores how businesses can harness these technologies to their advantage.

Back in 2010, analyst firm Forrester noted in a special report that 59% of customers were more likely to purchase if queries were answered in under a minute. Twelve years later, in a report from HubSpot, 66% of customers expect a business to provide an instant response to any question they have. With predictive analytics and AI, businesses can better anticipate customer needs and reduce wait times. These nearly unchanged statistics across a decade tell us that live chat isn’t just an essential part of doing business in the e-commerce age; it’s an integral (and expected) part of how we operate in the digital world.

Companies have integrated chat into customer service and other live events, making live chat an engaging touchpoint for customers. However, now that everyone is doing it, how can businesses evolve their live chat strategy to differentiate from the crowd? Live chat moderation, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and tools like ChatGPT, could be the answer.

Real-time chat in customer support

Before we dive into the new waves AI is making in live chat, let’s explore just how critical live chat applications are in customer support and their evolution over time. AI, with the aid of predictive analytics, can read and interpret customer behavior. These real-time chat platforms have revolutionized how businesses interact with customers by allowing 24/7 responses across multiple touchpoints. Thanks to the automation of predictive virtual assistants, companies can instantly reach customers in their target language, answer low-stakes queries, empower customers to “help themselves,” and then tag in human agents for complex queries. No wonder live chat has become a preferred channel for many users.

An individual customer's experience is also enhanced as each interaction provides customer feedback that can be analyzed by AI. This ensures product recommendations and pricing are always finely tuned to customer preferences. Furthermore, AI can also predict churn, aiding the support team in taking proactive steps to retain customers.

The role of AI in live chat moderation

The driving force behind the evolution of these live chat applications is improved artificial intelligence, particularly natural language processing (NLP). NLP allows chatbots to understand and interpret customer queries with human-like accuracy and responses. In addition, machine learning algorithms empower chatbots to personalize recommendations and responses based on user data and previous interactions. Essentially, these algorithms “learn” humans.

Sentiment analysis allows AI to gauge customer emotions in real time, improving empathy and helping prevent chatbots from missing the point (or the obvious). Businesses can tailor responses accordingly and create more trust and a better user experience with each interaction. But now, even more business cases exist for implementing AI in live chat.

Real-time profanity filtering

Businesses operating social media accounts and online communities know the risks and challenges of keeping a respectful and/or professional environment. How do you encourage user-generated content and give an audience the space to have meaningful discussions and add new members while ensuring that conversations don’t head into hateful territory? This is too big a content moderation job for human agents. However, AI can offer real-time profanity filtering for these environments (yes, even gaming communities) so that companies can maintain a positive and inclusive atmosphere and eliminate hate speech and inappropriate content.

Felix Digital, for example, uses PubNub to filter chats and send signals to ban users in its latest live score sports app. This allows the company to create an engaging yet protected online platform. Sports fans can engage each other using interactive elements even during massive spikes in usage, without scalability concerns.

Live event moderation

Live events can be excellent ways for businesses to increase customer satisfaction and engagement and capture new customers, but they are extremely challenging to monitor. Instead of relying on human moderators and moderation teams for decision-making—who can sometimes miss signs of problems or quickly get overwhelmed with large audiences—AI algorithms can take over.

These AI tools monitor and make moderation decisions in real time, including profanity filtering and filtering out harmful content, whether at a conference, a live webinar, or even a large-scale online gathering such as Kiswe’s record-breaking BTS event. It can assist human moderators to ensure that participants adhere to community guidelines and that the event is safe for all attendees.

Interactive elements

AI-driven chat moderation can also increase the interactive elements available to customers.

Example use cases include:

Interactive polls and surveys can give businesses valuable insights in real time
Games and quizzes can up the entertainment value of live events
Real-time, in-event notifications—such as those available now for players of Pocket Gems’ popular online game War Dragons—keep users engaged throughout their interactions
Real-time translation overcomes language barriers so businesses can support customers from multiple demographics and diverse linguistic backgrounds or create live events in multiple languages

Future directions and opportunities

AI is opening up new horizons in support and engagement. As AI improves and more companies embrace this integration, voice assistants could evolve. Integrating chatbots with voice assistants allows customers to interact with businesses using an intuitive, hands-free support experience.

Users can speak queries instead of typing on a preferred device and receive accurate, context-aware responses. This will be an enormous step for companies prioritizing accessibility.

Omnichannel support is also evolving. In the early days, chatbots were designed specifically for the deployment platform. Now, as customers expect seamless experiences no matter how they approach the company, AI enables customers to start a conversation on one platform and transition to another without losing context. Algorithms work behind the scenes to synchronize these conversations and process the data to personalize responses.

One of the biggest opportunities is the advance of hyper-personalization. AI can learn customers' needs and tailor all approaches based on their behaviors and intent. This enables companies to anticipate customer needs—even in real time—before customers have to express them.

Transforming customer support with AI-driven real-time interactivity

Live chat moderation powered by AI is revolutionizing customer support, expanding the value businesses can offer their customers and helping businesses increase brand loyalty. Thanks to the use of AI, companies can create dynamic, exceptional customer experiences, ensure satisfaction, and create welcoming environments for all.

Functions, PubNub’s serverless compute platform, enables developers to run code closer to users, execute faster, and incorporate AI into applications despite challenges like computational load. Functions now integrates with OpenAI GPT language models and facilitates AI integration for live chat moderation capabilities for businesses of all sizes. Companies can create innovative applications to serve customers and create an unbeatable reputation.

Need a chat moderation solution? Contact us to find out how PubNub can enable Generative AI integrations to help you optimize your build, or sign up for our free trial to try it out for yourself.

Real-time chat in customer support The role of AI in live chat moderation Real-time profanity filtering Live event moderation Interactive elements Future directions and opportunities Transforming customer support with AI-driven real-time interactivity

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This article was originally published on PubNub.com

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