The telephone hotline is often the first and most important point of contact between your company and your customers. However, with increasing call volumes and the desire for 24/7 availability, traditional call centers are reaching their limits, resulting in long waiting times, frustrated customers and overworked employees.

This is exactly where modern conversational AI solutions such as voicebots which relieve the burden on customer service by automating routine requests.

But not all voicebots are the same. Companies are faced with a strategic decision: should they rely on the proven stability of rule-based voicebots or use the dynamic flexibility of the latest generation of autonomousvoicebots?

Rule-based voicebots were the first approach in conversational AI. Their functionality is based on a clearly defined if-then logic that follows a strict dialog tree. The bot is programmed to respond to specific keywords or phrases from the caller and play out predefined answers. You could think of it as a digital, automated IVR menu that processes voice input instead of keystrokes.

This contrasts with the latest generation of autonomous voicebots, which have heralded a paradigm shift in customer communication through the use of artificial intelligence, in particular natural language processing and large language models.

In contrast to their rule-based counterparts, these AI bots are not limited to a strict dialog tree but react flexibly to the caller's requests.  

In many cases, the strategically wisest decision is not to choose between purely rule-based or purely autonomous systems, but to opt for a hybrid voicebot model. This approach combines the stability and reliability of rule-based voicebots for standardized, repetitive processes with the flexibility and intelligence of autonomous voicebots for complex, hands-free interactions.

The result is a solution that combines the best of both worlds: speed and cost efficiency for routine tasks and high solution quality for complex issues.

Such a hybrid system could, for example, first guide the caller through secure authentication using a rule-based process, which is a clearly defined, critical process where accuracy is the top priority. Once this step is completed, or if the customer makes an unstructured request, the caller is seamlessly transferred to an agent-based dialog.

For queries that even the best AI cannot resolve conclusively, the human handover is essential. Here, the customer is seamlessly handed over to a human agent who immediately has access to the entire interaction history with the bot, which significantly improves efficiency and the customer experience.

Through the strategic voicebot implementation of a hybrid model, companies can achieve almost complete automation of their routine requests while maintaining the quality of the more complex service cases.

Deciding on the right type of voicebot is a complex strategic task that requires in-depth specialist knowledge. As an experienced partner, BOTfriends supports you throughout the entire voicebot implementation process, from the initial analysis to the go-live and beyond.