Evolving Customer Expectations and the Contact Centre

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the contact centre in its current form is finished. The traditional model for call centres and contact centres is no longer providing the service experience that customers want. This was one of the key themes of CRMXchange’s recent Tech Tank Roundtable, Customer Delight: Live Demonstrations of Breakthrough Innovations. I had the pleasure of joining other industry experts from Aspect and inContact to share new customer experience solutions that are impacting the contact centre.

So, what do today’s customers want? First, they want organisations to offer support on digital channels. The survey results shared in Microsoft’s 2016 State of Global Customer Service Report show that 55% of global respondents say their customer service interactions typically begin online rather than on the phone or in person. That survey also found that 72% of the consumers surveyed expect agents to know their contact information, product information and service history. That highlights the fact that customers also are coming to expect personalised and seamless engagement from brands.

While customer expectations have been evolving, so has the customer service marketplace. During the webinar, I talked about the live chat vs. virtual agents debate that polarised the marketplace for many years. That view is now changing as it becomes clear that a combination of these solutions can help organisations meet customer service expectations. Even though customers are increasingly starting their support journeys online and leveraging self-service options like virtual agents and chatbots, the need for live agents won’t disappear. The key to providing personalised and seamless support for customers lies in the right combination of virtual and real support.

At Creative Virtual, we are delivering a combination of virtual agents and live chat that is defining industry best practice through a single knowledgebase for both virtual and real agents and a unique feedback loop. Our newest video explains how this works:

My thanks to Sheri Greenhaus and CRMXchange for hosting another great Tech Tank webcast – my third one! – and to all of you who joined us for the live event. If you missed it, you can request a copy of the recording here. You can also view my presentation slides here and then request your own live demo to learn more.

Breakthrough CX Innovations that Create Customer Delight

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

“Customers are increasingly starting their support journeys online and leveraging self-service options, but that doesn’t mean that the need for live agents will disappear. Instead organisations need to implement the right combination of virtual and real support and integrate those channels properly in order to provide personalised and seamless support for customers.”

– Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO, Creative Virtual

On Thursday, 6th April 2017 at 7:00 pm UK/ 2:00 pm ET CRMXchange will host a Tech Tank Roundtable webinar titled Customer Delight: Live Demonstrations of Breakthrough Innovations. The live webcast will feature a panel of industry experts, including Creative Virtual’s Chris Ezekiel, showcasing emerging customer experience solutions that are beginning to impact the contact centre.

The contact centre industry needs to be constantly evolving in order to meet changing customer demands. As customers increasingly come to expect seamless and personalised omnichannel engagement, contact centres must turn to a combination of virtual and real support. During the webinar, Chis will address this change and give an inside look at Creative Virtual’s deep integration of virtual agents and live chat. This combined solution is defining industry best practice through a single knowledgebase for both virtual and real agents and a unique feedback loop combined with customisable workflow functionality.

The bringing together of live chat and virtual agents is a departure from the common belief that, until recently, prevailed in the contact centre industry that organisations needed to choose between the solutions. Forward-thinking organisations are now coming to understand that these two tools are complementary solutions that can play a key part in delivering quality digital support experiences for their customers. Gone are the days of the live chat vs. virtual agent debate as this shift in mindset begins to permeate the customer service industry.

Register for the Tech Tank now to learn more and see live demonstrations from Chris and other industry experts from inContact and Aspect. Not able to make the live webcast? Don’t worry! A recording of the Roundtable will be sent to all registrants after the event.

Live Chat vs. Virtual Agents: A Story of Overcoming the Divide to Work Together in Perfect Harmony

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

In the not too distant past it wasn’t uncommon to come across organisations struggling to decide between using live chat or a virtual agent on their website for customer support. The customer service marketplace took a very polarised view of these technologies with proponents of each making strong arguments for why their preferred solution was the best for cutting costs, boosting revenue and bettering the customer experience. Even today, some companies still view this as an either-or decision: either they give customers the option to get support online from human chat agents through live chat or they provide a virtual agent so that customers can self-serve online through automated chat.

However, this view is changing and the divide created by the live chat vs. virtual agent debate is disappearing into a discussion of how to bring these two technologies together to work in perfect harmony. Before going any further, let’s take a quick look at each of these solutions individually:

Live Chat – Live chat, also sometimes referred to as web chat, enables organisations to offer customers and prospective customers a one-on-one conversation with a live chat agent. Initially live chat was just used on websites, but now it is also utilised on other engagement channels such as messaging apps and SMS. In the past, supporters of this technology would often highlight the importance of the human touch provided by live chat as a key argument of its superiority over virtual agents.

Virtual Agents – Over the years these automated conversational systems have been given a variety of names, including virtual agent, chatbot, avatar, virtual customer assistant, bot, virtual assistant and chatterbot. In its infancy this technology was used by organisations as basic FAQ systems on websites, but today’s virtual agents are much more advanced and capable of engaging users in sophisticated natural language conversations across many contact channels. In the live chat vs. virtual agents argument, advocates of virtual agents would draw attention to the significantly lower cost per conversation, consistent responses, the ability to have unlimited concurrent conversations and the 24/7 availability of support.

A view within the marketplace of these two solutions being joined up certainly hasn’t happened overnight. Forward-thinking companies seeing the potential of bringing live chat and virtual agents together have set the stage for this change. For example, back in 2012 Creative Virtual was shortlisted for an Econsultancy Innovation Award in the category of ‘Innovation in Customer & User Experience’. Our entry showcased the integration of the virtual agent we provided for a leading telecommunications company in the UK with the live chat product offered by one of our partners. The integration provided a seamless handover from the virtual agent to a live chat agent within the same template. This handover was also signalled by the virtual agent avatar ‘walking off’ and a different avatar representing the live agent ‘walking on’. At the time, this was an extremely innovative approach to combining self-service with human-assisted service in a way that created an improved user experience. Around the same time another Creative Virtual customer, an online financial services company in the US, deployed a virtual agent in front of their existing live chat offering. Their goal was to reduce repetitive questions being handled by live agents which they easily achieved through an 80% reduction in live chat volumes.

These are just two early success stories that helped to draw attention to the potential benefits of bringing these technologies together. This narrative has also been greatly influenced by the evolution of customer expectations. While customers were once ok with simply having the options to communicate with organisations via multiple channels, now they still want those engagement channel options but with a seamless, omnichannel experience.

Widespread adoption of technology, such as smartphones, along with generational changes are having a big impact on how customers want to engage with brands. The future of the contact centre lies in a combination of virtual and real support. Organisations still viewing live chat and virtual agents as an either-or decision and as stand-alone tools instead of as complementary solutions are going to struggle to provide quality digital support experiences for their customers.

In order for live chat and virtual agents to work together in harmony, they need to be powered by a single knowledgebase and backed by a central knowledge management and workflow platform. This gives organisations the ability to keep information up-to-date and consistent across all self-service and human-assisted support channels which builds confidence with customers. Implementing a feedback loop that’s linked with the centralised knowledgebase and workflow enables live agents to provide real-time feedback on content that can easily be reviewed and used to action updates. Live chat agents become knowledge experts sharing the responsibility of keeping self-service channels up-to-date.

There is no doubt in my mind that the future of customer engagement is a blend of artificial intelligence (AI) and human thought. The combination of virtual agents and live chat powered by a single knowledgebase is defining current best practices and, with continuous innovation, will influence the future of customer engagement for organisations around the world.

Curious about how live chat and virtual agents can work together in perfect harmony for your organisation? Download a copy of the V-Person Live Chat™ Overview and then request a demo to see the industry-defining integration for yourself.

The Future of the Contact Centre

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Much has been written over the last several years about Millennials and their customer service preferences. One article I read recently discussed the irony of the millennial generation’s hatred of making phone calls, despite them constantly using their phones. Another credited their digitally native approach to customer service for bringing about better customer experiences for all of us. The fact of the matter is, Millennials and the generation following them, sometimes referred to as iGen, are used to having instant access to information and prefer to find answers on their own rather than interacting with a live person. So what does that mean for the future of customer service and the contact centre?

In an interview with CRMXchange, Patrick Gallagher, Managing Director ANZ & North Asia at Creative Virtual, drew from his many years of experience in contact centres, IVR and customer experience applications to describe the change he is seeing:

“Over the past three decades, companies have invested millions in their contact centres, offering support to their customers that call to purchase, enquire, complain, apply or just need 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 move into digital channels (and the majority have already moved there), what are companies doing to ensure they are continuing to support their customers in the new digital channels and offer true online support to their customers? They now face a pressing need to be prioritising investments in online customer service tools, communicating and supporting their customers where they now live, in the online channels.”

Technology is altering the way customers engage with brands and increasing their demands for instant 24/7 customer service. They want effortless interactions with organisations and are increasingly leveraging self-service and digital channels for this reason. The traditional model for call centres and contact centres is no longer providing the experience customers have begun to demand, and customers won’t hesitate to take their business elsewhere when their expectations aren’t met. 2017 is going to be an important year for customer service as organisations look to meet – and exceed – the expectations of digitally-savvy, empowered customers, and changes in the contact centre and the job descriptions of customer service agents are going to be a key part of these transitions.

The new guide titled The Future of the Contact Centre: The Transitioning Role of Agents to Knowledge Experts explores what organisations can do to create and keep happy, loyal customers. It breaks down:

  • What changes contact centres are facing in 2017 and beyond
  • How virtual agents and chatbots fit perfectly with customer expectations
  • Why live agents taking on the role of knowledge experts benefits organisations, customers and the agents

While these contact centre changes won’t happen overnight, it’s important for organisations to shift their attitudes towards customer engagement and begin the transition now. The future of customer service lies in a combination of virtual and real support, and there are enormous opportunities for organisations in this new approach – not only in customer experience improvements but also on the cost savings and sales fronts. Download the new contact centre guide to learn more and help you start the discussion about the future of your contact centre.

Technology That Saves Time, the Most Important Resource of All

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

As we quickly approach the end of 2016, I’m excited to share the news that Creative Virtual has been recognised with two 2016 Softech Business Awards: ‘Best Self-Service CX Technology Company 2016’ and ‘Most Innovative Enterprise CX Management Solution: V-Person™’! Softech Intl Magazine’s 2016 Business Awards is a new awards programme designed to commend industry leaders who are dedicated to changing their field and fundamentally saving time, the most important resource of all.

For nearly 13 years the team at Creative Virtual has worked to develop, implement and constantly improve our self-service technology. It’s an honour to be called the best and to be recognised for our dedication to innovation. As a company, we have seen our industry rapidly evolve over those years and are proud of the role we have played in advancing virtual agent technology.

One of the changes we’ve seen is the growing emphasis placed on saving time, both by customers and organisations. In a Forrester Research survey, 73% of customers said:

“Valuing my time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good customer service.”

Our natural language virtual agent technology V-Person enables enterprises to meet that demand by giving customers a way to ask questions and find information anytime, anywhere. Offering high quality self-service options is key to providing a positive customer experience. Customers are increasingly opting to use virtual agents, also known as chatbots and virtual customer assistants, because they make getting answers quick and easy.

V-Person technology is also designed to be used in the contact centre in order to improve contact centre performance and customer satisfaction. By instantly providing agents with the information they need, average call handling times are reduced by up to 40% and you see increased first contact resolution. This saves time for both customers and agents. V-Person Contact Centre™ can also be used as a training tool and has been proven to drastically reduce training times for live agents, saving everyone even more time.

Earlier this year we officially launched V-Person Service Desk™, a virtual agent solution designed to reduce service desk support costs and improve employee productivity with personalised self-service. V-Person can be used for all types of employee support, saving company time and resources. I think our new video sums this up perfectly:

My thanks to Softech Intl Magazine for these two recognitions and to the Creative Virtual team, our customers and our global partner network for helping us to be the best this year. You can read our official award announcement here.

Customer Demands Driving Push for Self-Service in APAC

By Philip Chuck, Territory General Manager, Greater China

Customer experience is a hot topic for organisations around the world, and that’s certainly no different for those in the APAC region. Customers are demanding anytime, anywhere support, and companies are looking for effective ways to meet those demands. This was reflected in our busy industry event schedule here in Hong Kong during November.

At the beginning of the month, Creative Virtual sponsored the Asia Pacific Contact Centre Association Leaders (APCCAL) Expo for a second year alongside our partner Continuous Technologies. Hosted by the Hong Kong Call Centre Association (HKCCA) at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, this year’s event theme of ‘Omnichannel Customer Experience’ really resonated with the APAC contact centre professionals in attendance. Chris Ezekiel, Creative Virtual’s Founder & CEO, was a featured speaker and shared insights from his many years of experience in the industry during his presentation titled ‘Omnichannel Customer Engagement with Virtual and Real Customer Assistants’.

Later in the month, we teamed up with Fuji Xerox Hong Kong (FXHK), another of our partners, to take part in their SPARK Innovation Expo. This event showcased a range of smart innovations, technologies and next generation solutions designed to transform business. At the Creative Virtual booth, we shared our omnichannel Smart Help solutions and demonstrated how they automate companies’ support process to deliver fast and accurate responses to customers.

That same day Björn Gülsdorff, Creative Virtual’s Head of Business Development, joined our team in Hong Kong for a Roundtable organised by Asia Pacific Customer Service Consortium (APCSC). The event theme of ‘International Customer Experience Innovation and Engagement with Leadership Effectiveness’ inspired some great discussions, as did Björn’s presentation on best practices for virtual agents and real agents working together.

An important point that was apparent at all of these events is that the market for self-service in APAC is being driven not by cost savings, but rather by demands from end customers. Customers want:

  • Anytime, anywhere self-service on any device
  • Seamless, effortless engagement
  • Native language support
  • Personalised experiences

We are seeing a surge of interest in our omnichannel Smart Help solutions in APAC because our suite of tools enables organisations to effectively meet these demands. From virtual agents on websites to chatbots on messaging apps to tight integration with live chat, we have proven solutions that give customers a convenient, personalised and seamless experience. In the short time since coming to the region, we’ve demonstrated our multi-lingual capability by officially introducing three additional local languages. The feedback mechanism of our virtual agents gives organisations unique insights into the Voice of the Customer (VOC) to help them further improve customer engagement. And, in addition to enabling companies to meet the engagement expectations of their customers, our solutions also help reduce customer support costs and increase sales.

As we prepare for 2017, the marketplace looks exciting for us in Hong Kong and the rest of APAC. We’re looking forward to continuing our partnerships with Continuous Technologies and FXHK, and to bringing our expertise and experience in customer engagement to even more collaborations with customer organisations.

You can learn more about using virtual agents and chatbots for customer self-service in the new whitepaper Virtual Agents and Chatbots and Avatars – confusing or what!

Be sure to schedule your own personalised demo to see how our omnichannel solutions can help you meet your growing customer demands.

APCSC Roundtable

 

Empowering Call Centre Agents: “If you don’t know, ask Mo!”

By Rachel Freeman, Head of Operations

“If you don’t know, ask Mo.” This is the slogan I heard repeated by at least one of the very able Motability Operations trainers as they were training a new group of recruits during my recent site visit.

This is not a throw away comment! Ask Mo – the Motability Operations self-help tool used by 200 of their advisor/call agents – is the essential tool for a new recruit as notetaking in training is not encouraged and manuals are no longer distributed. The focus is about “empowerment” to know where to access the knowledge as opposed to making sure that all the knowledge is recalled. Recounting the vast amount of information advisors need to assist callers can take months of training, but that is reduced drastically when the knowledge is held within a tool like Mo.

The objective for advisors is to get them to understand the Motability Operations ethos, how to work with people and provide smooth and caring customer service. That type of training is best done in workshops and amongst people, which is exactly what happens with each new group of recruits. Ask Mo is the virtual agent used to get the trainees up to speed on all other aspects of training, and is pitched as the “go to tool” for queries and processes to enable the advisor to best help the customer on the other end of the phone.

Having collaborated with Creative Virtual since 2007 on Ask Mo, Motability Operations have assessed how the user interfaces will best suit their advisors and have made various amendments to the template based on advisor needs. Recently there has been an added “toolkit” area on the template for advisors to click on and get more information about protocol and handy tips for how to work with various types of calls. The toolkit is an easily accessible area on the template that can be used when an advisor has some downtime and is not taking calls.

Having spent some time in a training room with 10 fresh advisors, I was impressed how the use of Mo was so much engrained as part of the exercises. As they filed out of the room to assess wear and tear on a car, I looked at what they had left behind in the room: 10 monitors with the Ask Mo template showing before the screen savers kicked in. It was clear – if they didn’t know, Ask Mo was indeed ready to assist in the further empowerment of providing an answer.

It is this approach to knowledge management that won Motability Operations a 2015 Customer Contact Innovation Award and consistently has them receiving top-ranking customer and employee satisfaction scores. It was inspiring to experience first-hand the positive impact Ask Mo is having in onboarding new advisors as well as enabling all advisors, new and old, to always have access to the most up-to-date information.

Be sure to check out Motability Operations’ award-winning case study, Ask Mo: how knowledge gives confidence with customers, to learn more about how they have successfully integrated their virtual agent into their company culture.

The Contact Centre in its Current Form is Finished

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

Recently I presented Creative Virtual’s fourth annual Technology Innovation Showcase with CRMXchange. As I mention every year, this is one of my favourite webinars to do because it’s mostly live demonstrations with very few slides. Seeing the technology in action is the best way to understand how your organisation can implement these solutions to improve your customer experience.

This year’s webinar, Combining the Virtual and the Real for Customer Engagement Success, focused mostly on bringing together virtual agents and live chat. I started my presentation with some recent statistics from Forrester showing the growing usage of virtual agents and live chat. They summed up this research by saying:

Customers increasingly leverage self-service and digital channels for customer service because these channels offer the least amount of interaction friction.

The bottom line is that your customers want effortless interactions with your company. There is a generational change taking place, with a new generation of customers who spend more time having text conversations with their friends and loved ones than they do actually talking to them. The last thing in the world they want to do is pick up the phone and speak to your company. Effortless also means brevity. They want to get the answers they need as quickly as possible, so the second to last thing they want to do is get into a lengthy email conversation with your company.

The call centre and contact centre as we know them today are finished. Seamless, personalised smart assistants will increasingly automate everything the current contact centre offers. Smart assistants will learn from how they are being used and adapt as the organisation learns. They won’t be maintained separately, but instead will have feedback loops that help them learn just by the organisation learning in a really seamless way.

We’re already seeing much change in this area but, of course, this won’t happen overnight. There will be a transition to more automation, and combining virtual and real support with a central knowledge management and workflow platform will give you the best way to manage that transition. Gartner is also seeing this trend, and they predict that by 2018, 30% of interactions will be via a smart machine such as virtual agent technology.

The combination of natural language virtual agents with live chat or web chat is an ideal way to give customers the effortless interactions they want. With the right integrations in place, your company can provide a seamless and personalised experience. Using a central knowledgebase and feedback loop that are linked with workflow functionality will allow you to keep information up-to-date and consistent across all self-service and human-assisted support channels.

I invite you to watch the recording of this webinar on-demand to see my demonstrations of intelligent virtual agents, the seamless integration of virtual agents with live chat and the industry-defining feedback loop that empowers live agents to consistently improve the virtual agent just by doing their normal jobs.

If you’d like to learn more, we’d love to schedule a personalised live demo to show you how this technology can help your organisation manage the transition to more automation and provide effortless interactions.

My thanks to Sheri Greenhaus and CRMXchange for organising and hosting another great Technology Innovation Showcase.

Knowledge Management + Virtual Assistants = Award-Winning Contact Centre Solutions

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

In 2015 Motability Operations, a long time Creative Virtual customer, was recognised with the Innovation Award for Sustainable Culture as part of the Customer Contact Innovation Awards presented by The Forum. The judges selected Motability Operations because “their approach to knowledge management builds trust and supports effective conversations, getting it ‘right first time’, optimising call length and – above all – helping advisors give customers confidence.”

This year, The Forum has generously invited Creative Virtual to their annual flagship Customer Strategy and Planning conference, which culminates with the Customer Contact Innovation Awards gala dinner. Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO, will present a lunchtime showcase to demonstrate the technology behind Motability Operations’ award-winning approach to knowledge management. His session will focus on the powerful uses of combining intelligent virtual assistants with knowledge management and feature several live demonstrations of current customer implementations. He’ll cover breaking down information and departmental silos to create consistency, keeping content accurate with a feedback loop in line with industry best practices, and building confidence with customers while achieving top customer and employee satisfaction scores.

Creative Virtual’s innovative V-Person Contact Centre™ solutions bring together natural language virtual assistant technology with a powerful knowledge management, workflow management and business intelligence reporting platform (V-Portal™). Motability Operations, and their virtual assistant Ask Mo, is a great success story of how this technology can help contact centres reduce agent training times, keep content accurate and consistent, increase first contact resolution and optimise call length.

The Forum’s Customer Strategy and Planning 2016 will be held 25-26 April in Stratford upon Avon. Chris will present his Knowledge Management Showcase on Day 1 of the conference starting at 13:10. Creative Virtual will also be exhibiting and giving individual demonstrations as part of the Conference Expo on both days of the event. More information and the full agenda can be found on The Forum website.

If you aren’t able to attend the conference but would like to learn how the combination of intelligent virtual assistants and knowledge management can help your contact centre achieve success, please request an individual demo.

Is Your Customer Support Team Turning into the Working Dead?

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Recently I read an article discussing the effect multichannel support is having on customer support professionals. Balancing a heavy workload, which is only predicted to increase in 2016 as multichannel support grows, has made the risk of burnout a huge challenge for the industry. With burnout comes less satisfied and engaged team members and, ultimately, a greater turnover of support staff. So what can organisations do to lighten workloads and reduce the risk of their support team turning into the working dead?

Implementing self-service solutions that are easy for customers to use and access is a great first step in reducing your contact centre’s workload. For example, intelligent virtual agents are proven to provide average contact deflection rates of 20-30%. Some organisations are seeing up to 80% reductions in live chat sessions by placing a virtual agent in front of their live chat system.

Self-service virtual assistants benefit your customer support team in a number of ways. They lighten the workload by decreasing the overall volume of questions and support issues that come into your contact centre. Even as the number of customer contact channels grows, the flexibility of this Smart Help technology allows self-service solutions to be deployed across touchpoints, including web, mobile, social, kiosk and IVR. By empowering customers to self-serve for transactional queries and troubleshooting common problems, your support team is freed up to assist customers with more complex issues that truly need human assistance. Not only do customers appreciate being able to get quick resolution without a call or email, but live agents also benefit from no longer having to deal with the tedious task of dealing with those basic issues over and over.

When it comes to fighting burnout, giving your support team the proper tools to do their job is just as important as reducing the volume of contacts coming in from your customers. One organisation excelling at doing this is Motability Operations. Their award-winning virtual assistant ‘Ask Mo’ is helping them achieve top-ranking customer and employee satisfaction scores. The virtual assistant enables their contact centre advisors to search for information in natural language and then provides answers instantly that are easy to digest and customise for the individual customer. Advisors can also provide real-time feedback on missing or incorrect content which gives them an added layer of confidence that answers are current and accurate and allows them to focus on engaging with customers. Motability Operations also uses ‘Ask Mo’ as a training tool, drastically reducing the training time needed for new advisors and creating comfortability from the beginning with the tool they will be using on a daily basis to assist customers.

When backed by the proper knowledge management platform, both self-service and contact centre virtual assistants can be deployed using the same knowledgebase which further relieves stress on customer support teams by ensuring consistent communication. You and your support team can have confidence that regardless of the touchpoint or the live agent providing assistance, customers will receive the same information to answer their questions.

With the growth of multichannel support, organisations need to be proactive in taking steps to keep workloads manageable for their customer support teams in order to reduce burnout. How are you keeping your team from turning into the working dead?