AI is revolutionising the digital marketing landscape, emerging as a transformative force with great potential for the lead generation industry.
More and more leadgen professionals are exploring AI’s advanced capabilities to gauge how it can be leveraged to automate repetitive tasks, provide personalised interactions, and drive more effective strategies.
In our latest Amplify webinar, Arvell Craig, the AI Evangelist for VAgents, joined Phonexa’s Chief Marketing Officer, Talar Malakian, to explore the integration of AI in voice, chat, SMS, and email.
Together, they shared insights into the future of AI-driven lead generation and offered actionable techniques to enhance marketing and sales efforts.
Watch the Webinar
Here’s a recap of the fascinating discussion as Craig and Malakian uncover the future of AI in lead generation.
The Current State of Conversational Channels
Malakian: What are some of the gaps in conversational channels that you’ve identified throughout your career?
Craig: If you’re looking at conversational AI on the various channels — voice, text, SMS, email, social; those are the main channels — every platform is going to have its limitations. When you deal with voice, you have the extra layer of regulations and things like that to deal with. There are privacy laws, there are legal and compliance situations that can challenge businesses. You always want to communicate properly in the context
There’s a gap depending on what your background is. I was building chatbots in 2016, 2017, and 2018, so I knew conversational marketing and how to do that at scale even when there wasn’t AI. So there’s a bit of a learning curve if you don’t know how to communicate properly in the channel because you want to set expectations right. You want to not confuse the customer — is it AI, is it a person? In leadgen, the goal is to get them to the next stage. It’s a balance between how friendly are you, how human are you, but also how do you stay focused and legally compliant.
Also, the last thing is the technology — how good can it be, how much do I delegate to the AI, do I need to give it a simple prompt [and] let it run wild, or do I script every single solitary exchange which I have more control [of]. But that’s just a basic, logical kind of sequence flow that doesn’t allow the more human intuitive response; there’s a balance between that as well. So there’s some skill, there’s some technology, there’s some compliance, and then there’s understanding the user. Those four different components [will determine] what’s going to work best for your business.
Advancements in AI and its Impact on Lead Generation
Malakian: What do you foresee impacting lead generation the most in the next three to five years?
Craig: The biggest opportunity is going to be the highest volume of activity with the most human involvement. There’s a [significant] human component, [which] is one of the biggest opportunities to reduce versus if it’s just media buying because media buying, technically, the intelligence that manages and optimises [Facebook and Google] campaigns is AI. That’s machine learning, deep learning that’s been around for five to 10 years. So [those platforms] using AI is not new, and the way it will scale or change will be minor. Yes, Google and Facebook will do more to aid the media buyer with what they’re doing, but I don’t think that’s going to be as disruptive as highly human-involved systems, strategies, and platforms which are going to be call centres. Companies have chosen to go overseas to cut costs because that human touch is very valuable, but if the work is very routine, that part is definitely going to be impacted by AI because it doesn’t [require] a lot of intelligence.
Whether you’re outsourcing something or even in-house, your resources are going to be consolidated because all the technology and platforms — your design, your Canva, your Photoshop — are starting to [integrate] AI. If it’s a low-skill activity, I think 50 to 60 to 75% [of costs] could be cut and reduced with AI. If it’s a high-skilled activity, I think you’re looking at more of a 20 to 30% possible reduction in cost and efficiency. Those are some general ballpark [figures] I think will be helpful for people to understand what to expect…other than that, [there’s] a lot of unknown factors.
AI & Personalisation
Malakian: In terms of personalisation on the contact centre side, how do you think AI is going to create more personalised leadgen experiences across some of the other channels? How do you see that looking for email or voice or chatbots?
Craig: When I think about personalisation, it’s about the speed; it’s about allowing the user to do things on their own terms. So, as we’ve seen more multichannel and omnichannel platforms, as those things continue to evolve, the context of personalisation is giving people what they want, when they want it. Then, with the AI aspect, you can make sure that the conversation is seamless. It’s not just a live chat here, a phone call here.
You can’t quickly learn and feed and read everything…so the fact that this AI can allow the person to talk where they want to talk and then dynamically curate or customise the conversation specifically toward them — it makes them feel heard, it makes them feel understood. There have been studies on doctors talking to [patients] over chat versus AI talking to [patients] over chat [that showed] the AI was more empathetic. There’s a false assumption that because it’s more human, it’s better or more empathetic…there’s real data showing that AI can be empathetic; it can give a good experience and feel personalised because it’s listening. It’s going to see everything you’re doing, and if you can use that data to change the way the AI talks back to the person, [customers] will feel heard.
Industry-Specific Applications
Malakian: Are there particular industries where leadgen, or even in the contact centre space as an extension of that, is more effective or has more potential? What are some of the industries where you see more adoption or openness and stronger use cases?
Craig: Most people have assumptions about whether AI is going to work or not work for their audience or customer base. One of the things that was holding a lot of companies back was they wanted the AI to sound human. Typically, when you listen to the types of AI voices, some of them sound really good with long latency…it may sound good, but that sound [increases] the cost to send that voice over channels and the telephone system. Some business owners want [AI] to sound so real that [customers] don’t know because they make the assumption that people don’t trust it or they won’t respond. Some leads or prospects who deal with older demographics assume that because it may not sound too human, [customers] may not trust them.
So the people that have come to us — whether it’s time, comfort, or seeing more and more companies using [AI] — will be willing to experiment. The type of companies we’re talking to now typically have a call centre for retention on e-commerce; we’re helping them use AI to do basic retention questions. We’ve got home service companies coming to us where they’re willing to try out AI for their use cases…we’ve had more and more insurance companies coming to us to try us out. Those are three examples right now where we are running AI. If they’re using an offshore call centre, our AI can perform just as good as an offshore call agent except there are no disposition times and no breaks, so the efficiency is automatically 30% better because there are no gaps to anything that it does. Those are three industries that I think are pretty warm and bright for using a technology like ours.
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