What’s the Point of Contact Deflection?

By Björn Gülsdorff, Head of Business Development

Contact Deflection – is there a reason why so many companies have this as an objective? Well, our clients tell us what their goals and pain points are, but I can’t help thinking that treating one’s contact centre as a cost centre is past its prime. Also, if you want to make money, contact with your customers is a good thing. At least, that was my theory.

I was therefore quite happy to be able to speak in front of the Call Center Verband (Call Centre Association) in Halle, Germany, as well as meet the European customer service directors of the Deutsche Telekom AG at their gathering in Budapest. An opportunity to talk to people from the field and test my thinking. I expected at least some consensus, though: DTAG gave me 90 minutes of airtime for a speech on “Growth Through Customer Service” (funnily enough the title of one of our blogs from 2015), so I could tell I was on the same page with the organisers at least.

As the Budapest event was with the service directors while the one in Halle was with those who actually run the call centres, the two meetings represented two different points of view on the same topic. Still there was a lot of agreement: Customer service has become a differentiator for companies and a driver of revenue. People expect immediate, seamless service and their user journey starts on a (mobile) device. If you make them call, you can forget about first time resolution, channel containment and similar metrics, because it is too late. When people call or email, they have tried to get help through other channels before – and failed. Another thing came up: In this new scheme, agents need new skills. It was never fair to look at them as FAQ answering machines, but the demand for social and selling skills has grown a lot. It is now all the more important to support them in their work, serve them facts, help with procedures and let them focus on the relationship with the customer.

Not everything received such unanimous consent, however. The pace of such changes, the differences between industries and the rise of voice messages as a new channel left more than enough room for debate. Quite enjoyable, because nothing beats the voice of the customer – ours and theirs!

Check out this contact centre guide to learn more about the changes contact centres are facing and the transitioning role of agents.

Infographic: Are Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence Threats to Your Contact Centre?

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Some academics and experts are warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence (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. So what does this mean for your contact centre? Should you approach chatbots and virtual agents as threats? Are contact centres about to become completely automated?

Check out the new infographic below for a realistic overview of the impact AI, chatbots and virtual agents are having on the contact centre. And then download the whitepaper AI, Chatbots and Virtual Agents: The Threat to Mankind and the Contact Centre to learn more.

AI Chatbot Threat to Contact Centres

 

 

“Keeping it real with chatbots” – Impressions from the Chatbot Summit

By Björn Gülsdorff, Head of Business Development

“Your talk was the most down to earth”, an attendee wrote me via the event’s messaging app after I had delivered my keynote “A Hybrid Approach to Machine Learning” at the Chatbot Summit in Berlin.

Now, is that good or bad for a keynote? Shouldn’t I have been breath-taking or ground-breaking or both – instead of down to earth?

Gaging by the talks we had later at our booth, it was a compliment. Creators of chatbots, as well as potential buyers, were happy to see a way out of the current AI craze where unsupervised machine learning seems to be the one and only solution and the power of the human brain is overlooked – and which requires enormous amounts of groomed, relevant data.

Enterprise ChatbotsIn fact, the chatbot community struggles to add learning, conversation and personalisation to their systems, which are very often highly scripted things. I spoke to a chatbot builder who was forced to use algorithms to create training data. Puts a new spin on the “artificial” in Artificial Intelligence.

There was also a lot of uncertainty about how to move chatbots into the enterprise world. A world of timelines, budget, ROI and predictability. Again, what it takes is a robust, proven, down to earth approach to each project, combining the virtual (artificial) intelligence with the real and unlocking existing silos of information. Not everyone from the chatbot crowd was happy to hear that though.

Nonetheless, it was a fantastic, energising event! I was pleased to join this buzzing chatbot community (we had our first discussions with other attendees while setting up our booth; it wasn’t even 8am!) and to learn that the number of bots is currently growing faster than the number of apps grew when the age of the apps began (and it is in decline again already). It is even fair to say I was touched to see a technology lift off that Creative Virtual has fostered and helped grow for over a decade – in fact, some of our senior management team started this in the last millennium.

AI, Chatbots and the Threat to Your Contact Centre

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Warnings abound about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and smart robots, with industry and academic experts such as Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates expressing concerns about everything from a huge loss of jobs to the end of the human race. Yet in a recent interview with the BBC, Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster and keynote speaker at last year’s Social Robotics & AI conference, said this:

“Intelligent machines will not make us obsolete but our complacency might.”

So, should we be worried about intelligent machines taking over the world and triggering the end of life as we know it? Once seen as a far-off dream of the future and the stuff of science fiction, AI has become a reality in households and workplaces around the world. From the voice assistants on our phones to the self-driving cars in our streets to the chatbots providing customer service on Facebook Messenger, AI is having an impact on our day-to-day lives.

Customer experience professionals should also be questioning the impact chatbots and intelligent virtual agents are already having, and will continue to have, on the contact centre. The age-old debate about whether automated self-service or human-assisted support is better seems to be coming to a head as technology and generational changes are having a big impact on how we communicate with each other and companies. Are AI-powered chatbots the future of the contact centre, or are they a threat signalling the end of contact centres?

In order to get a realistic view of AI, we need to take a step back from the warnings, predictions, promises and hype to see where we are right now. The perfect place to start is the brand new whitepaper AI, Chatbots and Virtual Agents: The Threat to Mankind and the Contact Centre. This whitepaper discusses the warnings about the dangers of AI, the inflated expectations for chatbots created by unrealistic promises in the marketplace and the reality of using these technologies in the contact centre and for automated self-service. More specifically, it guides readers through:

  • A realistic view of AI and chatbots in the customer experience space
  • The impact of chatbots and virtual agents on the contact centre
  • Why chatbots should use a combination of self-learning and human input
  • 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

When it comes to AI, chatbots and virtual agents in the customer engagement space, organisations need to make informed decisions based on realistic expectations. Download a full copy of this whitepaper to get a better understanding of the technology and how it’s already starting to impact your contact centre.

APPEX Omnichannel Takes Home Top Catalyst Honours at TM Forum Live! 2017

By Liam Ryan, Head of Sales

Enhancing the omnichannel customer experience should be a goal of every company, but we all know how challenging this can be when it comes to the reality of designing and implementing a consistent and seamless experience. That’s why at Creative Virtual we’re excited to be participating in the APPEX Omnichannel Catalyst as part of TM Forum’s Catalyst Project. And we’re proud to share that the project recently took home the ‘Outstanding Performance’ award in the Customer Centricity & Analytics stream of the Catalyst Program at TM Forum Live! 2017 in Nice, France!

First, a little about TM Forum and the Catalyst Program. TM Forum is the global industry association that drives collaboration and collective problem-solving to maximise the business success of communication and digital service providers and their ecosystem of suppliers. Catalysts are member-driven proof-of-concept projects which connect diverse organisations to develop innovative, commercially viable prototypes of new digital services and business models.

The object of the APPEX Omnichannel Catalyst has been the creation of an omnichannel solution environment for the service provider sector to encourage omnichannel adoption in order to enhance the customer experience across all channels. Creative Virtual joined the Catalyst this year as the project’s chatbot technology provider. Check out this interview with Deepanshu Motani, Enterprise Architect, Vodafone Group to understand more about the APPEX Omnichannel initiative:

 

A record-breaking number of Catalysts were showcased at TM Forum Live! this year, which was held 15-18 May at the Acropolis Convention Center in Nice. Each team provided demos of the projects on their stand for event attendees and TM Forum’s Strategy Committee who served as the judges. Visitors to the APPEX Omnichannel stand were treated to a fully immersive experience while watching the video below through the use of virtual reality technology.

TM Forum Live! 2017

 

TM Forum announced the winners of the 2017 Catalyst Awards at the end of the day on 17 May, and we were thrilled to hear APPEX Omnichannel announced as winners of the ‘Outstanding Performance in the Catalyst Program’ award! Congratulations to the entire APPEX Omnichannel team, and thanks to Huawei for inviting Creative Virtual to be a part of this exciting initiative.

Check out our TM Forum Live! 2017 photo album for more photos from the event.

Conversational Commerce for Demanding APAC Customers

By Philip Chuck, Territory General Manager, Greater China

Effortless, Accurate, Seamless, Effective. When it comes to customer service, this is what customers expect. Yet putting the right technology, process and people in place to delight customers presents challenges for companies. This sparked insightful discussions during the 2017 Hong Kong Call Centre Association (HKCCA) International Symposium on 28 April.

One hot topic was the growth of conversational systems – chatbots and virtual assistants – in Asia Pacific. Creative Virtual Founder & CEO, Chris Ezekiel, addressed this in his presentation titled Taking Your Contact Centre into the Future with EASE. He talked about the changes contact centres need to make to meet customer expectations, including best practices for bringing together chatbots and virtual agents with live chat. He shared live examples of virtual assistants in action and demonstrated how a combination of virtual and real support can benefit both customers and contact centres.

His presentation received a positive response from Symposium attendees. In the region we were seeing the change to self-service happening separately from the contact centre which was creating new challenges for companies. Now contact centre professionals are coming to understand that virtual assistants can work together with contact centre agents. They are seeing the benefits of including these conversational systems as part of their overall customer service plans. APAC customers are increasingly reliant on technology and inclined to integrate digital and physical experiences. Joining together the contact centre with self-service channels is necessary for companies to create delighted, loyal customers.

Another key takeaway from the event was that chatbots are one of the technologies that can be realised early along the road of digitalisation. This is important for companies struggling to move forward with their digital transformation. No matter what industry they are in, organisations are seeing the demand for conversational channels from their customers. Chatbot technology enables them to create digital conversations with customers that are effortless, accurate, seamless and effective.

My thanks to HKCCA for hosting another great event! It was a pleasure to take part alongside our partner company Continuous Technologies International Ltd for a third year.

You can learn more about how virtual assistants can work together with contact centre agents by downloading the guide, The Future of the Contact Centre. If you want to learn how chatbots can help your organisation create conversational commerce, request a live demo.

2017 HKCCA Symposium

Creative Virtual Continues 2017 Digital CX Road Tour – Chicago and Now Indy!

By Christina Wilson, Director of Customer Success, Creative Virtual USA

May began with several of our Executive team members traveling to Chicago for the Argyle CX event last week. This was our second time attending the event and again, we were not disappointed by the success we found in the numerous conversations that took place. This year we had the opportunity to Sponsor the event and had the privilege of hearing a great panel that also included one of our very own, Frank Schneider, VP of Customer Experience Solutions. Simultaneously, our sales team attended the Forrester Digital Transformation 2017, also in Chicago, to pick up strategies on innovation and growth in the digital enterprise.

The collaboration that goes into attending these events for us is simple. We enjoy the engaging conversations we have with both our partners, but also with potential prospects and industry leading practitioners. Having an open forum during the panel gave us insight into the type of breakthrough strategies and approaches driving real innovation in CX. The specific panel we did was titled: “The Modern Day Customer Care and Customer Experience Executive”.

2017 Argyle ForumA few of the day’s highlights included:

  • It was awesome hearing Renee Cacchillo, from Safelight AutoGlass regarding their vision for Customer Experience and using technology to delight the customer.
  • Jasper Weir’s introduction of ENPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) shed a creative light on creating happy employees and in turn elevating Customer Experience at TaskUs.
  • Dan Gingiss, author of Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Design Engaging Experiences on Social Media, spoke about measuring the Customer Experience you want to achieve by having a sincere heart and comparing your experience with your customer’s best experience all around.

What’s next on the CV Road Tour? Genesys CX17 Indy in Indianapolis on May 22nd-25th where we are Genesys AppFoundry Sponsors. Come by Booth #A05 and speak with Scott Tompkins or Rick Hancock. Both have over a decade of enterprise digital CX consulting experience and have had great success with Creative Virtual.

The Era of Intelligent Assistants is Here

By Laura Ludmany, Knowledgebase Engineer

As an introduction of the Intelligent Assistants Conference held in London on the 4th and 5th of May, Dan Miller and Derek Top of Opus Research agreed that the era of intelligent assistants, chatbots, and AI has arrived. The biggest catalyst of this was Facebook, when its Messenger platform was opened to chatbots and virtual assistants in 2016. Since then, millions of chatbots can be found on that platform.

In the professional field – in which we tend to use the terms intelligent assistants and virtual agents – machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) are basics. Benefits of virtual assistants (VAs) are well proven – they bring fast changes and results to business, they reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction and engagement. Though, if we want to create an outstanding, reliable experience, assisted service is also needed.

This could be the motto of the first day of the conference – almost every presenter mentioned and Opus Team member emphasised that, with the big expansion of virtual agents, we have the technology and what companies need is creativity to ensure the added value. Hence human support and background are always needed and Intelligent Assistance (IA) needs to be managed with a combined approach. In this way, instead of seeing human versus AI/technology we rather are looking for a collaboration where we can maximize the benefits of this synergy.

virtual agent Ask MoThe leading adopters of VAs are the banking and retail sectors and, per Dan Miller, these sectors want to reduce local presence and increase online availability. For example, several big retail chains are reducing their stock in store in favour of online retail platforms. At the same time, internal VAs also play a crucial part in this process. As one of our clients’ representative – Llaura Hughes from Motability Operations – described in her case study, their internal VA called ‘Ask Mo’ made a huge impact on their organisation’s workflow, making things simpler, more transparent and took the pressure off the live agents. Also their VA ensures continuous monitoring activity and helps to improve their database set (knowledgebase) day by day. The best thing is that the live agents can give instant feedback and they become engaged in this AI technology – as said at the beginning of the day: a brilliant example of human and machine collaboration.

IAC LondonAll this sounds good, but how should a company step up to conversational commerce? Our Head of Operations, Rachel Freeman explained that the more departments that get involved in the VA project, the better it is. A good VA needs to be cross functional (helpdesk, marketing, sales) and every department has its own view which can give an extra feature/benefit to the VA and ensure they make the most out of it. Rachel again emphasized that the technology is a given, so it is rather what the organisation wants to be represented in their VA. Marketing and brand are vital today and a VA is just another platform to build this brand image, so again the creativity of the VA provider is what makes the deployments outstanding – just as Opus Research mentioned at the beginning of the day. On the other hand – these things take time and as Rachel described, building, maintaining and improving a VA should be approached as a journey which has no end, because to maintain a high level of performance and up-to-date content we need to have that above mentioned human assistance. Through regular monitoring and testing, an organisation can understand what customers want and even learn about customer habits.

There were some more thought provoking sessions at the conference, one of them was Wally Brill (Senior Persona Designer for Adecco at Google) discussing if we need to “be friends” with robots. He mentioned the interesting expression “uncanny valley” which, in short, means that too human-like bots are found to be scary and raise feelings of eeriness and revulsion. As we can see, the revolution of AI is rather an era of IA when intelligent assistants help, support and make the life of humans (live chat agents, analysts, sales persons, customers, etc.) easier. The future is those who focus on hybrid methods, as we cannot just rely on a black box of AI, but we want to know what’s going on in the background.

It was a great day of innovation and inspiration and I was glad to be able to participate in this conference where I could learn about the latest trends on the VA field. Thanks to Opus Research for hosting the Intelligent Assistants Conference in London again this year! 

Be sure to check out our IAC London 2017 photo album on the Creative Virtual Facebook page.

Creative Virtual’s Annual Digital CX Executive Roundtable Continues Tradition of Connecting Digital Transformation Peers

By Rick Hancock, Enterprise Account Executive, Creative Virtual USA

People were laughing, telling stories, sharing real world experiences amongst their peers at last month’s Creative Virtual 3rd Annual Digital CX Executive Roundtable in NYC.

Tuesday, April 18th kicked off the two-day event. Attendees met at an exclusive cabaret performance that brought us all back to the fun of the Prohibition era. Delicious “in theme” cocktails were delivered to your seat, at pace, in between each skit, which certainly helped get the party started quickly. The cast were very talented Broadway performers who put on an incredible up-close and personal show for us all. Everyone became part of the show at some point, some participating from their seat while a few lucky people were selected to join the stage for something a little extra. Attendees also got to meet the cast after the show. Every year we try and do something uniquely fun. This one will be hard to top next year.

Wednesday was an exceptional day. We started the morning with a breakfast banquet meet & greet. For many, faces were familiar from the night before, no ice breakers were really needed, everyone was keen to get started. The agenda began with a Keynote presentation from Kyle Scofield, a leading pioneering digital strategist, from both Time Warner Cable and EarthLink. He began the session speaking from his own experience – Leading Transformation Initiatives – Delivering on a Vision. He highlighted that today customers want Self Help, to be Connected, to be Automated and for brands, to achieve this at a Lower Cost.

From the positive feedback received, attendees appreciated the opportunity to have an open and friendly discussion with other like-minded peers. Everyone involved used the forum to share some part of their own digital experience which provided useful insights for each other. It was a great way to collaborate on new topics, discuss what works, how we got here, what’s next and most importantly, what role people will need to play for future success. Having a trusted advisor to help navigate potential obstacles for customers proved valuable.

Attendees were impressed after seeing actual program success metrics by some of our existing enterprise customers, such as 85% digital containment, meaning customers were able self-serve without the need to escalate to a chat/voice agent. Some brands experienced 80%+ Digital Containment using Creative Virtual’s automated conversational systems. Another customer referred to their deployment as a “virtual concierge”, the gateway to a seamless omnichannel experience, using our centralized knowledgebase to provide uniform answers across all channels. When one attendee discovered his company could automate 40%+ of all their internal help desk password reset inquires he nearly fell off his chair. “Wow!” he said. The icing on the cake for some folks was revealed in a live demonstration by Scott Tompkins, Enterprise Account Executive, who showed how easily the bot can provide intelligent instant answers for the chat agent to review, optionally curate and then pass onto the customer increasing agent efficiencies by 33%. Finally, to end the discussion, Scott demonstrated our integration with Alexa with a few voice commands to upgrade his TV package and get access to HBO’s Game Of Thrones.

Our thanks to Happy Hour Entertainment for the fun cabaret performance and getting our event off to a great start! And thanks to Kyle and all of our attendees for joining us at the Executive Roundtable. The insights and thought-provoking questions you shared are what made the event such a success. Hope to see you again next year!

Not at the event and want to learn more? We’d love to arrange a personalized demo to show you what your company can achieve with our customer engagement solutions. Request one here and get ready to transform your brand’s digital CX.

The Future of CX in Asia Pacific: Effortless, Accurate, Seamless, Effective

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

Customers in Asia Pacific are more empowered than ever before and are demanding effortless, accurate, seamless and effective service experiences from companies. Organisations need to move away from the traditional model for call centres that is no longer serving customer needs, and embrace a new approach that enables tight collaboration between the contact centre and digital channels.

This will be the focus of my presentation at the upcoming Hong Kong Call Centre Association (HKCCA) International Symposium being held on 28 April. Creative Virtual will be sponsoring the annual conference alongside our partner company Continuous Technologies International Ltd. I am honoured to once again be invited to speak on the event theme, which this year is “Customers @ EASE – Effortless; Accurate; Seamless; Effective”.

My presentation, titled ‘Taking Your Contact Centre Into the Future with EASE’, will address the changes contact centres must make to meet the expectations of empowered customers. I’ll explore best practices for combining virtual and real support by bringing together chatbots and virtual agents with live chat, as well as the transitioning role of live agents as contact centres evolve.

This will be my third year presenting at a HKCCA event, and I always look forward to engaging with industry professionals from the region. While in some parts of the world the self-service market is being driven by the desire of organisations for cost savings, in Hong Kong and much of APAC the push is coming from customer demands. Research has found that consumers in Asia Pacific are increasingly reliant on technology and inclined to integrate digital and physical experiences. They want anytime, anywhere self-service on any device and are determined to create the best experiences for themselves. In order to provide effortless, accurate, seamless and effective service experiences, companies need to unify their contact centres and self-service channels.

If you are attending the HKCCA International Symposium 2017, be sure to join me at 10:05 am for my presentation and stop by our booth to pick up some additional information and meet the team. I look forward to seeing you there!

If you won’t be at the event, you can contact us at any time for more information and to arrange a live demo of our Smart Help solutions.