Introducing the Hatch AI Analyzer: Build Better Bots Faster
Learn how our AI Analyzer tool helps you create more effective Hatch bots quickly while building essential AI skills for the future.
In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, adopting AI is no longer optional. It's essential for staying competitive—especially in sales, marketing, and service where it is currently most prevalent.
But this technology is new territory for everyone. In order to have confidence in AI—and choose AI tools you can trust—you need to have a fundamental understanding in place.
That's what this guide is for. It will lay down your foundational knowledge of AI so that you can chart out the right path forward for your business, your contact center, your professional career.
AI stands for artificial intelligence. It refers to machines that can simulate human intelligence in different ways. For example, AI can:
Unlike traditional computers and automation, AI can mimic more sophisticated abilities of the human brain. Image source
People tend to use the terms AI and automation interchangeably, and they both bring benefits to your business, but the two are very different. In simple terms, automation performs the same tasks over and over in exactly the same way, while AI gets better at the task over time. It can also come up with its own tasks and insights.
Here are some simple examples of automation vs AI:
Coffee maker
Thermostat
As you can see, automation cannot think for itself; it requires a human to define the tasks and the rules, and it will only ever do the assigned task. AI, on the other hand, can identify tasks and create rules on its own, based on observation and experience. And the more it performs the task, the better it gets at it and the more it can do.
Now that you know the basics of automation vs AI, let’s look at how Hatch automation and AI work together for home service businesses and call centers.
Hatch automates your outreach to leads and customers. So rather than having to keep track of who needs what outreach and when, and then also creating and sending those messages every time, you only need to set up your audiences and message campaigns once, and then Hatch will automatically enroll contacts into those campaigns as they meet that criteria.
Whether you’re targeting new leads, quoted prospects, aged leads, or current customers, your outreach is on autopilot and all you have to do is jump in when the contact responds. This saves you time while increasing response rates and preventing missed opportunities. And it’s automation because you’re still coming up with the content for the message templates and determining the rules that define the audiences (Hatch makes this easy though, with our Audience Builder and campaign templates).
With Hatch AI, on the other hand, you can now add AI bots to campaigns that will actually conduct conversations with your contacts over text.
So while automation is handling your outreach and increasing response rates, AI is handling the conversations that result from the automated outreach.
No matter how you’re categorizing it—and there are many ways to do so—there are several types of AI. For example, AI has several different subsets. Here are some of the common ones, as well as examples to help you better understand each one.
Hatch AI uses natural language processing, so you can give it instructions using everyday language, and it will also converse with customers this way.
In terms of application, AI also has three types: Generative, predictive, and prescriptive.
Let’s take a look at each one through the lens of a home improvement call center looking to set more appointments.
Hatch uses generative AI, meaning you can give the bot prompts and it will generate text messages on its own. Learn more about how Hatch AI works here.
Needless to say, mixing and matching these different types of AI results in countless uses across every industry.
AI has several benefits to sales and service teams and call centers. Here are some of the many benefits from a sales, marketing, and customer service perspective.
AI can help alleviate agent workload in several capacities. Data source
Hatch AI alleviates one of the biggest burdens for call centers: keeping up with incoming leads.
Given all its different types and subsets, there are infinitely many ways to use AI. We’ve talked about how home service businesses can use AI, but in this guide we’re going to focus more on the call center, which is focused on using AI for on sales, marketing, customer satisfaction, and administrative operations.
Until now, chatbots have been automated, which means a human has to program it with exactly what to say. AI chatbots, on the other hand, require initial configuration and then can converse with customers on their own, qualifying leads, booking appointments, answering customer service requests, and more. Hatch is one of many generative AI tools for contact centers.
Hatch AI bots can converse, qualify, and book appointments.
AI can combine lead/customer information with employee information to identify the right sales rep for a lead or technician for a project. Not only does this save your schedulers or operations managers time, but it also enhances the success of the customer interaction. An example of this would be LeadAssign’s AI lead routing or ServiceTitan’s Dispatch Pro.
AI features within CRMs, communication platforms, and other business applications can provide real-time assistance to agents through coaching, response suggestions, surfacing needed information quickly, and more. This saves time with onboarding and coaching, and equips agents to provide better customer experiences.
TalkDesk Agent Assist is a great example of an AI copilot.
With automation, you can set up a platform to pull certain data for you. This saves time, but you still have to know what you’re looking for. AI, on the other hand, can analyze data, enrich it with other data sources, and generate insights, suggestions, and predictions. This helps with sales forecasting, transcribing conversations into bullets and action items, detecting customer sentiment, and the list goes on.
AI is rapidly becoming a regular part of everyday business applications. The faster you can educate yourself on it and start incorporating it into your business, the more closely you can align with both industry and consumer trends and future-proof your business. Here are eight steps for getting started with AI:
As you can see, AI can be used both internally to help your agents carry out their roles as well as externally by interfacing with customers. It can act as a copilot, a coach, perform tasks for you, and even perform tasks humans can’t do.
The use of AI is a top contact center trend that is rapidly gaining momentum. But in order to start implementing it, you need to have confidence in it. And in order to have confidence in it, you need to understand it.
Hopefully this guide has given you the fundamental understanding you need to confidently move forward with AI in your business and/or career.
Learn how our AI Analyzer tool helps you create more effective Hatch bots quickly while building essential AI skills for the future.
Learn the best generative AI tools to help call centers save time, improve your customer engagement, and increase ROI.
Learn about generative AI and how you can use it to achieve your business goals.
Be the first to know about new sales and marketing insights to grow your messaging strategy with leads and customers.