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.
