Digital Engagement Blog

Are you ready to invest in AI technologies to drive contact center performance?

My guess is that you already have.

You might have deployed speech analytics or an IVR using natural language or a Chatbot or fraud prevention.  All these solutions likely use machine learning and artificial intelligence to discover insights and optimize performance.

Good job.

But the AI landscape is buzzing with emerging tech that could have major implications on customer service.  Yes, some technologies will optimize existing processes (like IVR self-service) but others will be disruptive to your current processes (like Chatbots over a messaging app).

You're going to invest (more) in AI technologies for customer service. 

The only questions are when, on what solutions, and how much.

To answer these questions, lets take a broad view of how the AI landscape is developing and look for trends and patterns.

You could boil the challenges customer service will face over the next five years down to two questions:

• How do we engage customers as they interact across digital touchpoints?
• How do we embed intelligence into servicing applications to take advantage of the ability of algorithms to optimize far beyond what we've achieved to date?

Orchestrating Digital Touchpoints

The move to digital touchpoints, micro-moments of attention, conversational interfaces and messaging-based interactions is causing major challenges for many organizations.  One reason is that customer services apps (and processes) today are designed for single channel, synchronous and dedicated session interactions. 

So orchestration of digital interactions is very difficult... but it's not an option to sit it out because that is where the consumer/customer is.

Algorithms Driving Apps

The shift to algorithms driving interactions might be an even bigger challenge.  It is very likely that this trend will significantly improve servicing benchmarks (costs, CX) and become competitive differentiators for your business.

Again, it's not an option to sit it out because that is where competitors are going and what consumers will expect.

How, then, do you begin to re-constitute every app you run in the contact center to take advantage of new algorithms that drive these apps in real-time?

Chatbots and intelligent messaging solutions can help you deliver smarter customer service with a better customer experience at a very attractive cost per contact.  To achieve the kind of results that get you promoted, it's important to consider a customer service solution in its entirety.  Overlook one key element of the solution stack, and it'll never achieve its natural flow.  

We use the technology stack in this post to talk about goal and transaction oriented Chatbots both internally and with our customers.  You can use it as a checklist to  make sure you're not overlooking a critical part of a Chatbot solution for customer service.  

There is so much buzz and hype around Chatbots it is difficult to understand how to use this technology to create meaningful benefits in an operational setting. 

We've got an option to help you cut through the Chatbot BS.

Forrester just released a report titled "Chatbots 101:  Building a Conversational Interface" which is a great read and tells it like it is.   (You can download the report below).

Chatbots 101 Report

Chatbots 101 report covers the following:

• What is a Chatbot?
• When will Chatbots replace apps... or human?
• When and where are Chatbots a good fit?
• Are Chatbots ready for prime time?
• Four questions to ask before you deploy a Chatbot.
• Four questions to ask before you build a Chatbot.

These are questions you'll need to answer as you build your intelligent assistance strategy.  Chatbots 101 will help you gain clarity on this technology and its best use.

Picture this.

You want to go somewhere.

• Your office.
• A restaurant to meet some friends.
• Aunt Alice’s house for pick any holiday.

So, what do you do?

• You jump in your car.
• You say where you want to go.
• You arrive safely, on-time.

This is the promise of self-driving cars.

And, it’s about to happen...at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe.

But is it?

Contact centers in North America employ seven percent of the total workforce with over three million total staff. (Texas is top state with over 250,000 people working in contact centers).

We also know agents are 50 percent of total contact center costs.  And that puts agents in the cross-hairs when you're optimizing operations. 

So when we blogged about a 29% cost reduction through the use of chatbots and other smart technologies, it raised a deeper question.

Square, PayPal, Google, Visa and Facebook Share Insights

As we wrap up 2016 and prepare for the New Year, banks and insurance companies should consider several of the key takeaways from the recent Money20/20 conference.  This event is billed as the preeminent global payments show with more than 11,000 attendees from 4,500 companies in the banking, payments, retail and loyalty industries.

This year’s keynote speeches from industry leaders such as Square, PayPal, Google, Visa and Facebook highlighted trends to keep in mind to address the changing landscape for businesses and consumers in the future. Here are our five takeaways:

So in today’s digital world, which is your customers’ preferred way to interact with your company?
Is it…

• A mobile app?
• Web self-service?
• Social media?
• Email?

Give up?

It’s none of the above.

All generations of consumers prefer interacting with brands via the phone or in-person in a store over any other channel.

Surprised?

We were, too.  But there's a lot more to the story. 

Industry analysts (Gartner, Forrester, et al) sometimes look over the horizon and alert us to new things we don't yet see.

We recently spoke with several industry analysts who had surprising observations and forecasts that, if true, are creating problems and risks for us right now.

Here are a few highlights about where analysts think customer engagement is headed and why our problem may be about to get worse.

Download this new Forrester Report:  The Future of Messaging Apps

I recently downloaded two apps onto my Samsung 6S phone: Google Allo and TalkType.  Allo is an intelligent agent (Google Assistant) that resides in the Google messaging app (Allo).  TalkType is a voice interface that allows you to use voice as the primary interface and input (the keyboard becomes secondary) for “typing” a message in any app.