Chat­bots and vir­tu­al assis­tants and con­ver­sa­tion­al AI and on and on. We keep hear­ing about all these emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, but most of the time these phras­es leave us con­fused as to what it all means, and even more, how to use these emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies with­in our busi­ness operations. 

You may have already heard the pre­dic­tions that sug­gest by 2020, 70% of cus­tomer inter­ac­tions will involve tech­nol­o­gy such as chat­bots or vir­tu­al assis­tants. ASUG News sat down with Gia­co­mo Gasperi­ni, direc­tor, SAP dig­i­tal com­merce, to dis­cuss how SAP is using this tech­nol­o­gy on its dig­i­tal chan­nels to improve its cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ence, how the tech­nolo­gies fit with­in the SAP port­fo­lio, and how you can apply them to your own busi­ness processes. 

Sharon: What is a vir­tu­al assis­tant and what is a chat­bot? How are they dif­fer­ent? How are they dif­fer­ent than arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)?

Gia­co­mo: Let’s start with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence because it’s an umbrel­la term that we use to describe machines that mim­ic those prodi­gy func­tions that we nor­mal­ly asso­ciate with human minds, such as learn­ing or prob­lem solv­ing. To break it down fur­ther, machine learn­ing mim­ics how humans learn and con­ver­sa­tion­al AI mim­ics how humans interact.