Whether you’re using a voicebot or a callbot, artificial intelligence is present in many companies these days. 74% of marketing professionals in France believe that bots improve their brand image (Observatoire des chatbots, 2017 [in French]).
If you’ve already seen the terms voicebot or callbot, you might be still asking yourself what the differences are between them and which one you should choose for your business. That’s what we’re going to cover in this article: what they have in common, what they don’t, use cases, and a guide for choosing between a voicebot and a callbot.
What is a Voicebot?
A voicebot, or vocal bot, is an intelligent virtual agent that uses a voice to interact: receive requests from its user and then respond vocally. It acts as an intelligent virtual agent in the following ways:
- Receiving requests: The user speaks to the voicebot through their microphone.
- Transcribing the request: The voicebot converts the audio request into text (speech-to-text) thanks to an ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and creates a transcript.
- Understanding user intention: the vocal bot understands the transcript (user intention).
- Processing the request: The voicebot processes the request (provides information, executes an action, etc.) to respond.
- Generating a response: The text response is converted into speech (text-to-speech)
- Sending the response: the voicebot sends a synthesized vocal response to the user.
Famous voicebots include Alexa, Siri, and Google Home.
What is a Callbot?
A callbot functions in a similar way to a voicebot with the major difference being that it operates only via telephone. This vocal assistant is built on two main technologies: the VAD (Voice Activity Detection) system that detects the user's voice and the NLU (Natural Language Understanding) which makes it able to understand the request and deal with it.
Let’s have a further look at some of the details that make voicebots and callbots different.
How are They Different?
You could quite easily confuse a callbot with a voicebot. They have a lot in common but also many differences.
How They Work
A callbot is a voicebot that uses the phone. Unlike voicebots like Alexa, the callbot can not be voice-activated. The user must make a phone call and the callbot will inform them when they can speak. The callbot can follow a conversation for over 5 minutes and the user can speak with them as they would another human.
However, a voicebot in a speaker or another device answers within less than 3 seconds (Siècle Digital [in French]). It rarely deals with longer exchanges because users typically only ask voicebots one question at a time.
Their Objectives
Each bot has specific objectives. In the professional world, both voicebots and callbots have a financial objective of improving brand image.
Voicebots' objectives can include:
- Synthesizing a precise answer as quickly as possible for a customer.
- Improving customer service availability (24/7 instead of just during the working hours of human agents).
- Improving the customer experience: Smoother communication, reduced waiting times, etc.
Callbots’ objectives are focused mainly on the platform where it was developed:
- Dealing with increased customer service call volume.
- Preparing for a call with a human agent: collecting customer information required for processing the request, filtering by request type, etc.
- Reducing the workload of human agents, further increasing the call center capacity: 40% of requests can be dealt with independently by a bot.
- Improving the customer experience: wait times are reduced with a callbot.
Platforms
This is the most obvious difference between voicebots and callbots: the platform they use.
Callbots are only used over the phone and in call centers. A voicebot can be integrated into speakers, smartphones, computers, online applications, and websites.
A callbot is a specific kind of voicebot but a voicebot isn’t necessarily a callbot.
Use Cases
The main use cases for callbots are assisting call center agents with customer service or after-sales service. Voicebots have more use cases because they can be integrated into more platforms.
- Voicebots integrated into contact centers
- The WhatsApp voicebot on WhatsApp Business
- Chatbots using vocal artificial intelligence
- Various vocal digital assistants
What Do Callbots and Voicebots Have in Common?
There are many similarities between voicebots and callbots since a callbot is a specific type of voicebot. Here are some of them:
- Vocal interaction: both types of bots were designed to interact with users vocally. They can understand vocal commands and respond.
- Automation: Voicebots and callbots are automated solutions whose common objectives include dealing with user requests without requiring human intervention.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): Both bots use artificial intelligence (AI) technology and natural language processing (NLP) to understand and interpret user requests.
- Customer service assistance: They’re often used in customer service by offering automated responses to frequently asked questions and guiding users through specific processes and solutions. They can also redirect customers to the right agent or service within the company based on the information they’re given.
- Operational efficiency: voicebots and callbots improve operational efficiency by automating repetitive tasks and allowing human agents to focus on processing more complex requests.
- Integration: Both bots can be integrated into existing systems within the company like databases and CRM platforms. They can access pertinent information during interactions.
Callbot or Voicebot: Which Should You Choose?
You're correct that the decision between a callbot and a voicebot is important!
To make the right decision, there are a few questions that you need to ask yourself.
1. What is the goal of the interaction?
- Callbot: If your main communication channel is via telephone and you want to automate incoming calls or reduce the call volume in your call center, a callbot would be better suited.
- Voicebot: If you envisage vocal interactions across several channels, including online, connected smart devices, etc., a voicebot can offer a more versatile solution.
2. What is the nature of the interactions?
- Callbot: Suited to customer support calls, making appointments, dealing with complaints, etc. over the phone.
- Voicebot: Useful for more varied interactions including vocal games, voice commands for apps, etc.
3. What is your budget?
- Callbot: this is a simpler and cheaper solution you can integrate if the required interactions are over the phone. Opt for a callbot if you want to reduce your costs as much as possible. The YeldaAI callbot creation tool allows you to deploy your callbot in just a few clicks, without writing a single line of code!
- Voicebot: more versatile but requires a more complicated design process and can cost more depending on the scope of the project, especially if you're developing a bot for multiple channels.