Nobody Puts the Customer in the Corner

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Happy Customer Service Week! Each year the first full week of October brings the week-long international celebration of the importance of customer service and the people who operate by the motto ‘Nobody puts the customer in the corner’ by providing great customer service every day of the year. From those who provide face-to-face service to those working in contact centres to those responsible for supporting self-service channels, delivering quality customer service is a team effort, and we salute you all.

As we shine the spotlight on customer service professionals this week, let’s take a look back at some of the trends, tips and statistics we’ve shared on customer support and the contact centre over the past year with our annual blog post roundup:

  • The Future of the Contact Centre – Technology is altering the way customers engage with brands and increasing their demands for instant 24/7 customer service. The traditional model for call centres and contact centres is no longer providing the experience customers have begun to demand. As organisations look to meet the expectations of digitally-savvy customers, changes in the contact centre and the job descriptions of customer service agents are going to be key to digital transitions.
  • Live Chat vs. Virtual Agents: A Story of Overcoming the Divide to Work Together in Perfect Harmony – In the not too distant past it wasn’t uncommon to come across organisations struggling to decide between live chat or a virtual agent on their website for customer support. However, now the either-or debate is changing into a discussion of how to bring these two technologies together to work in perfect harmony. Organisations that continue to view them as stand-alone tools instead of complementary solutions are going to struggle to provide quality digital support experiences for their customers.
  • CX in 2017: A Tale of Empowered Customers, AI and Self-Service – According to Forrester, companies are under attack from their customers with technology-empowered customers deciding the winners and losers. The analysts at Gartner have also been following these technology-driven changes in customer preferences and predict that by 2020 the use of virtual customer assistants (also called virtual agents or chatbots) for providing better customer service will increase by 1,000%. Knowing you need to offer digital self-service and successfully implementing these tools as part of your overall customer service plan are two very different things, though. The best way to start is by educating yourself about digital engagement solutions and customer expectations.
  • Conversational Commerce for Demanding APAC Customers – The Asia Pacific region had been seeing the change to self-service happening separately from the contact centre which then created new challenges for companies. Now contact centre professionals are coming to understand that virtual agents and chatbots can work together with contact centre agents and are seeing the benefits of including these conversational systems as part of their overall customer service plans.
  • Is the Contact Centre Part of Your Digital Transformation Programme? – Every organisation is in the midst of digital transformation programmes and the contact centre needs to be a key part of that, although that’s not always the case today. In the future, the contact centre will be the centre of excellence for the knowledge used across customer support channels and organisations need to put the necessary tools in place to facilitate that change.
  • Infographic: Are Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence Threats to Your Contact Centre? – Some academics and experts are warning about the dangers of AI, predicting everything from a huge loss of jobs to the end of the human race. At the same time, industry analysts are predicting significant increases in chatbots and virtual agents in the customer service space. This infographic gives a realistic overview of the impact of AI, chatbots and virtual agents are having on the contact centre.

 

Improving Engagement and Empowering Your Team

By Liam Ryan, Sales Director

Every day I speak with organisations going through digital transformations, particularly in regards to their customer service initiatives. Selecting the right software and working with a knowledgeable provider can make or break these efforts. Organisations need technology solutions that are cutting-edge but that also complement existing systems and infrastructure.

This is exactly what we do at Creative Virtual, and I am proud to share that it has earned us a spot as a finalist in the category of ‘Software Innovation of the Year’ in the 2017 Digital Entrepreneur Awards (DEAs)! To be shortlisted, we needed to demonstrate that our software improves engagement and output, and empowers individuals and teams, which fits perfectly with our company vision. We offer organisations the technology to enable seamless, fully-integrated, end-to-end customer engagement backed by the experience of an expert, knowledgeable team. This not only improves the customer experience but also empowers employees.

Digital Entrepreneur AwardsA perfect example of this is the integration of our V-Person™ virtual agents with live chat. Our virtual agents and chatbots give customers an easy and convenient way to self-serve and are playing an important role in helping organisations meet the engagement demands of digital customers. However, we know that sometimes customers will have complex issues that are best served by live agents, or they simply prefer to talk to a real person. Based on a set of customisable rules and triggers, the virtual agent can seamlessly escalate users from virtual to real agent, with a complete history of their conversation being passed to the live chat agent.

Creative Virtual’s V-Person Live Chat™ solution is integrated with the same knowledgebase being used to power the self-service virtual agent. As customers ask questions, the platform automatically presents live chat agents with the response found in that knowledgebase. Agents then have options to reply with the answer as it appears, send an edited version of the text or type in their own response. The customisable console also gives options for agents to provide real-time feedback and suggestions on content. Live agents are empowered to become knowledge experts and share the responsibility of keeping self-service channels up-to-date.

Our thanks to the award judges for recognising our digital innovation, and the proven business results are customers are achieving with our solutions, by shortlisting Creative Virtual for Software Innovation of the Year. We look forward to the winners from the South region being announced during an awards dinner on 8th November in London.

Cutting Through the AI Hype

By Liam Ryan, Sales Director

Last year when I attended the Social Robotics & AI conference I had the pleasure of speaking with Professor Noel Sharkey which brought back memories of being a contestant on Robot Wars. This month I attended the event, now called AI & Robotics THE MAIN EVENT, for a second year and again got to hear Professor Sharkey speak. This time I started reminiscing about my appearance on Techno Games where he was also a judge. I was also very aware that the robot my team entered into that competition back in 2002 seemed like a child’s school project when compared with the robots at this event!

This year’s AI & Robotics conference was held in London and aimed to investigate emerging technologies and their real world impacts on business and work. It cut through all the hype to focus on the reality of AI and automated technology in the corporate world. The event agenda featured a variety of academic and industry speakers sharing their expertise, including our Founder & CEO, Chris Ezekiel.

chatbots and your customersIn his presentation, Chatbots & Your Customers: A Realistic Look at Using AI & Machine Learning, Chris drew from his extensive experience working with companies around the world to give insights into the world of enterprise chatbots. He explored the current realities of machine learning and AI and the role they should play in the customer experience space. Customer service chatbots need to use a combination of machine learning and human curation of content in order for companies to ensure a predictable, reliable and accurate customer experience.

In addition to watching the live demonstrations Chris gave during his presentation, many attendees also stopped by our stand during the ‘AI in Action’ sessions to see more examples of chatbots and virtual agents we currently have deployed for our customers. While speaking with them, it became clear that many of them were actively looking to add this technology to their customer support strategies. Some mentioned that they had been looking into these types of tools for a couple of years and were now very aware that the time is right to push the project forward or risk missing the boat. These sentiments didn’t seem to be specific to any one industry either. I heard the same thing being echoed across the board.

In my opinion, this year’s event was just as good as last year, if not better – from the list of speakers to the lunchtime spread! Our thanks to the event organisers for inviting Creative Virtual to sponsor the event again.

Please take a look at our Products page to learn more about Creative Virtual’s suite of Smart Help solutions and then request a personalised demo to see how chatbots can help you build relationships with your customers.

I’m sure you’re itching to see my appearance on Techno Games, so check out the video below starting at about the 11-minute mark.

Is the Contact Centre Part of Your Digital Transformation Programme?

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

I say this every year, but the Technology Innovation Showcase webinar Creative Virtual does with CRMXchange is one of my favourite webinars to present. This was the fifth year running that we’ve participated in the webcast series, and it was our most popular one yet with a record-breaking number of registrations. I love this webinar because it gives me a chance to share more live demonstrations than slides, and I know the best way to understand how our technology works and what it can do for customers and organisations is to see it in action.

For this year’s Showcase, I focused on the theme of ‘Chatbots, Virtual Agents and Your Contact Centre’. There’s so much buzz and hype, as well as unrealistic expectations and disappointments, around artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots that it can be difficult to know how best to deliver, implement and support these types of solutions. My goal during the webinar was to showcase best practices in deploying chatbots in conjunction with human assistance for customer support and sales. I selected my demonstrations specifically to show how the virtual and real can work in perfect harmony to meet business objectives.

A few key takeaways from my presentation:

  • Artificial intelligence on its own is not the answer for customer support. Companies like Microsoft and IBM have been responsible for setting false expectations in regards to how AI can be deployed for customer service. Chatbots and virtual agents should blend human curation of content with machine learning. This hybrid approach enables the system to continually improve while also allowing control over the reliability of responses.
  • Every organisation is in the midst of digital transformation programmes and the contact centre needs to be a key part of that, although that’s not always the case today. In the future, the contact centre will be the centre of excellence for the knowledge used across customer support channels and organisations need to put the necessary tools in place to facilitate that change. By including the contact centre as part of this transformation instead of allowing it to become a siloed and outdated entity, it benefits from lower costs, reduced staff turnover and more engaged, skilled and happier agents.
  • Customers are starting to specifically demand chatbots for digital self-service, with research showing that many would choose to interact with a chatbot before a human to get instant answers. To meet the demands of customers, organisations need more than just chatbots and virtual agents that are available 24/7 though. Over the past several years providing an effortless way to interact with your company has become more and more important. Instead of offering a wide range of support options for customers to choose from, you need to offer one place for customers to ask a question and for that system to be the intent matcher. Then, once you understand the intent, immediately provide the most appropriate method for assistance. You also need to provide a seamless experience that’s available on any device, can easily switch between languages and provides personalised responses.

I invite you to watch the recording of the webinar on-demand to understand more about these three points and to see the live demonstrations of chatbots, virtual agents and live chat solutions that are currently being used by some of our customers around the world.

My thanks to Sheri Greenhaus and CRMXchange for organising and hosting another successful Technology Innovation Showcase for us. I’m already looking forward to presenting again next year.

AI in the Corporate World Today

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long been the stuff of science fiction, often portrayed as becoming evil and turning against its human creators – from robots rising up to destroy humanity to supercomputers trying to take over human minds. In recent years, however, AI has moved from something seen as a far-off dream of the future to an actual reality in households and workplaces around the world. AI is powering the voice assistants on our phones and in our homes, the self-driving cars appearing on our streets and the chatbots that are popping up on messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger and WeChat.

AI & Robotics THE MAIN EVENT, being held on 14 September in London, will focus on the reality of AI and automated technology in the corporate world today. The conference will cut through the hype and highlight the tangible actions and results of AI and robotics in the business world, including the impact these technologies are having on performance, profitability and workforce efficiency.

Creative Virtual is a Gold Sponsor of this year’s event and will showcase their V-Person™ virtual agents and chatbots as part of the conference’s ‘AI in Action’ sessions. Founder & CEO, Chris Ezekiel will also speak as part of Session 1, ‘Almost Human – How Chatbots Transform Customer Experience and Corporate Life’ starting at 14:30. Drawing on his extensive experience working with organisations around the globe, Chris will explain the realities of AI and machine learning in the world of enterprise chatbots. He’ll also explore the role these technologies will have in the future of customer engagement.

“When it comes to AI, chatbots and virtual agents,” says Chris “Enterprises need to make decisions based on realistic expectations but shouldn’t shy away from incorporating this technology into their customer support strategy.”

We hope you’ll join us at the Victoria Park Plaza on 14 September for a day of interactive discussions, networking and AI in action. A full copy of the AI & Robotics conference programme, as well as ticket information, can be found on the event website.

Can’t attend but interested in learning more and seeing real enterprise chatbots in action? We’d love to schedule a personalised live demo at a time that works for you.

A Buzz About Chatbots at G-Summit Melbourne

By Patrick Gallagher, Managing Director ANZ & North Asia

There was a definite buzz at this year’s G-Summit Melbourne, hosted by Genesys earlier this month, around the event theme: Together – Together, we can deliver iconic customer experiences by powering digital business with a human touch. The event was busy this year with a very strong turnout and plenty of interest in chatbots.

I had the pleasure of being on-hand in the AppFoundry Hub to represent Creative Virtual, an event sponsor and founding member of the Genesys AppFoundry, and show our chatbot and virtual agent solutions in action. V-Person™ technology enables organisations to provide customers with smart online help and is designed to be integrated with the Genesys platform to provide a seamless experience.

G-Summit MelbourneThe theme of this year’s event really resonated with us at Creative Virtual. Our mission is to help organisations provide seamless, end-to-end customer engagement by combining the digital channels with a human touch. Based on a set of customisable rules and triggers, our self-service virtual agents can seamlessly escalate users from virtual to real agent, with a complete history of their conversation being passed to the live agent. Live agents can pick up the conversation where the virtual agent left off without the customer needing to repeat the question or issue.

We also know that ‘pure’ AI solutions being promoted in the marketplace as virtual agents are not ready to be deployed for a support and service experience for customers. Virtual agents should employ self-learning capabilities, and deliver benefits from this, but in a way that gives companies control over the reliability of the responses. Our virtual agents and chatbots use a combination self-learning and human input to provide consistent and reliable information to customers and allow organisations to be absolutely sure that their solution is responding to users in a predictable way.

My thanks to Genesys for hosting another great G-Summit event and to everyone who visited us in the AppFoundry Hub to see our solutions in action. It was a pleasure to be a part of the event buzz and catch up with many friends from Genesys and Interactive Intelligence – now all one family!

Want to learn more? Request your own personalised chatbot demo to see our solutions in action.

Innovation Showcase: Preparing Your Contact Centre for the Future with AI and Chatbots

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

The contact centre is integral to the customer support and engagement strategies of many organisations, but its role has been changing recently as a growing number of customers seek out digital and self-service options. While chatbots and virtual agents have gotten a reputation as being threats to the contact centre, the reality is that they can have a positive effect on the contact centre and a company’s overall customer experience.

Learn more on Thursday, 7th September at 4:00 pm UK time/ 11:00 am ET as Creative Virtual takes part in CRMXchange’s Technology Innovation Showcase webcast series for a fifth consecutive year. This year’s live webinar, presented by Founder & CEO, Chris Ezekiel, will take a realistic look at artificial intelligence (AI), virtual agents and chatbots in the customer experience space. Chris will also share a series of live demos showcasing how forward-thinking organisations are already using this technology to improve the customer experience, increase sales, build brand loyalty and reduce support costs. Attendees will get an inside look at:

  • The impact chatbots and virtual agents can have on the contact centre, including lower costs, reduced staff turnover and more engaged, skilled and happier agents
  • Why chatbots should use a combination of self-learning and human input to create consistent and reliable support experiences
  • How humans and machines can work in harmony to provide perfect customer service
  • Leveraging AI and chatbots to prepare your contact centre for the future

Register now for ‘Chatbots, Virtual Agents and Your Contact Centre’ for an inside look at how to incorporate chatbots and virtual agents into your customer support strategy and help your contact centre meet the expectations of digital customers. A recording of the Technology Innovation Showcase will be provided for registrations unable to attend the live webinar.

Together We Can Deliver Iconic Customer Experiences

By Patrick Gallagher, Managing Director ANZ & North Asia

Over the years, companies have invested millions in their contact centres to provide support to customers calling to purchase, enquire, complain, apply or seek assistance. Traditionally this has been the ‘tried-and-tested’ option as companies continued to invest in their contact centre in order to build their customer support capability. But as customers have moved to digital channels, this approach is no longer enabling organisations to meet their customers’ expectations.

G-Summit Melbourne, Genesys’ customer experience event taking place 7 – 8 August 2017, will address this change with their event theme of ‘Together – Together, we can deliver iconic customer experiences by powering digital business with a human touch’. Creative Virtual is looking forward to taking part as a Genesys AppFoundry partner and event sponsor.

Today’s customers want effortless interactions with organisations. Research shows that they are increasingly leveraging self-service and digital channels for customer service for this reason. However, at first we were seeing the change to self-service happening separately from the contact centre, particularly in Asia Pacific, which was creating new challenges for companies and not delivering the seamless omnichannel service customers were expecting. The change to self-service needs to happen in conjunction with an evolution of the contact centre and an internal shift in attitudes toward joined-up customer engagement across traditional and digital channels.

It’s key for organisations to recognise that it’s more than just support today’s online customers want – they want an effortless experience. This means companies need to embrace the digital channels and build smart help online, not force customers to use a traditional search tool that returns pages and pages of results. Customers also want a seamless experience and the option to escalate from self-service to human-assisted service if they want or need further support.

I’ll be on hand in the Partner Pavilion at G-Summit Melbourne to showcase Creative Virtual’s V-Person™ intelligent virtual agent and chatbot solutions. This technology enables organisations to provide customers with smart online help and is designed to be integrated with the Genesys platform to provide a seamless experience. With properly integrated virtual agents, customers benefit from 24/7 access to consistent, accurate and personalised information and a convenient, seamless customer experience. Contact centres benefit from lower costs, reduced staff turnover and more engaged, skilled and happier agents.

I hope to see you in Melbourne for a great day of CX discussions, networking and demonstrations! Can’t attend G-Summit Melbourne but want to learn more? We’d be happy to arrange a personalised demo at a time that works for you.

The Most Innovative Customer Support Tool

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

At Creative Virtual our vision has always been to offer organisations the technology to enable seamless, fully-integrated, end-to-end customer engagement, and to back that technology with the experience of an expert, knowledgeable team. We saw this vision come to fruition last year when we officially added V-Person Live Chat™ to our suite of Smart Help solutions. Since then, our roadmap has continued to be all about providing a world leading enterprise level end-to-end customer engagement platform.

It is an honour to have this vision and hard work recognised for a third straight year by the Technology Innovator Awards. This year I’m proud to share that we’ve been awarded ‘Best Global Customer Engagement Software Provider 2017’ and ‘Most Innovative Customer Support Tool: V-Person Live Chat’! These awards are a testament to the Creative Virtual team’s dedication to providing enterprises with innovative customer support solutions.

Our technology is designed to assist organisations in aligning their contact centre directly with the digital function to meet the growing expectations of customers for 24/7 access to accurate information and support. We are defining industry best practice through the tight integration of a single knowledgebase for both virtual and real agents and a unique feedback loop that allows live agents to help keep content accurate across self-service channels and human-assisted channels just by doing their normal jobs.

At the heart of our suite of products is our V-Person virtual agent technology which is utilised by organisations around the world to improve their customer support experience, reduce costs, increase sales and build brand loyalty. Our multi-lingual chatbots and virtual agents are currently answering over 50 million questions a year – and that number is always growing! We’ve had a number of exciting additions to our V-Person family over the past several months including Helen, the new chatbot communicating with Octopus users in Hong Kong Cantonese which was implemented with our partner Continuous Technologies. Forward-thinking companies like Octopus recognise that customers are increasingly turning to digital channels and self-service first and are leveraging conversational chatbots to improve their digital engagement.

My thanks to the Technology Innovator Awards for recognising Creative Virtual and our innovative software and solutions for a third year. You can read our official award announcement here.

Check out the video below to learn more about our innovative integration of virtual and real support and request your own personalised demo to see our technology in action.

Creating the Best Conversations with Digital Customers

By Liam Ryan, Sales Director

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with many company executives looking for ways to improve their customer service and support. As more and more emphasis has been placed on the customer experience as a competitive differentiator, it’s become increasingly important to organisations to provide quick and easy support options for digital customers. Companies are looking for the best way to manage customer engagement and create positive experiences.

I’m proud to say that Creative Virtual’s technology has once again been recognised as the being the best in these areas. We’ve been named ‘Best for Self-Service Customer Experience Management Solutions 2017’ and ‘Best Natural Language & Knowledge Management Technology: V-Person Mobile™’ by the 2017 UK Enterprise Awards!

There’s no denying that we’re living in a mobile-first world with digital customers who prefer quick, easy self-service options. It’s become essential for companies to provide seamless and effortless support to customers on their preferred devices, or risk losing customers to competitors that do. With Creative Virtual’s V-Person virtual agents, organisations can engage customers in natural language conversations and provide the digital self-service customers want. By maintaining content for all self-service channels, as well as human-assisted channels, in a central knowledgebase, companies can easily manage the customer experience and ensure that they are providing consistent and reliable information no matter how customers engage.

Liam Ryan, APSIRecently I was invited to speak about chatbots and virtual agents at an event in Luxembourg focused on software robotics and artificial intelligence. There’s been lots of buzz around AI and chatbots lately, but it’s important to look past all the hype to be realistic about these solutions. At Creative Virtual, we know that customer service is not the place for pure AI and so we use an industry-defining combination of self-learning and human curation of content for our chatbots and virtual agents. I explained during my presentation how this hybrid approach enables the system to continually improve while also allowing control over the reliability of virtual agent responses.

It is this approach to self-learning combined with the backing of V-Portal™, our knowledge management, workflow management and business intelligence reporting platform, that makes our natural language self-service solutions stand out in the marketplace. Our virtual agents are answering over 50 million questions a year, and that number is constantly growing.

Request your own live demo to see how you can create the best conversations with your digital customers.

My thanks to the UK Enterprise Awards for recognising Creative Virtual with these two awards. You can read our official award announcement here.