Tag Archive for: isg report

Putting in the Hard Work for That Moment of Recognition

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

I recently attended an awards event organised by ISG where we collected Creative Virtual’s trophy for being named a Leader in the ISG Provider Lens™ for Conversational AI. It was such an honour to be recognised as a leader in a field that contains such technology giants as Microsoft, IBM and Google. After so many virtual events, it was an unusual experience from the very beginning: putting on a business suit after 18+ months of varying degrees of lockdowns and restrictions; meeting so many people face-to-face in such close proximity; and the different ways people have modified their interactions.

There were certainly some different behaviours on display from the last awards ceremony I attended pre-pandemic. Some people wanted to shake hands, some preferred fist bumps, some people wore a mask between dinner courses and sips of wine. What wasn’t different was it being wonderful to celebrate the successes of all the companies being recognised.

Several speakers made jokes about their suits shrinking during the months of lockdown. As I looked around the room, there were certainly many nods of agreement to comments about the ‘Lockdown Bulge’. I had recently taken part in the London Marathon so felt somewhat smug! That got me thinking about the parallels of receiving corporate awards, like this honour from ISG, and completing a marathon.

Accepting an award on behalf of Creative Virtual is always an honour for me. Running a successful technology company with such a great and dedicated team and collaborating with some of the world’s leading organisations is a privilege. There is so much effort, over many years, that goes into making that brief moment possible. A brief moment of joy: stepping on stage, with the loud music and camera flashes, to collect the trophy. It is the same with running a marathon: all that training, the big push on race day which invariably includes pushing through the pain barrier at around the 20-mile mark, culminates in stepping across the finish line and collecting your medal.

All that hard work and dedication leads to that one moment of recognition and celebration. But I think the brevity of these moments is what makes them even more special. In our busy lives, when we’re in need of a boost, we can easily recall those climatic moments that put a smile on our faces. I believe that because these moments are so brief, we are driven to innovate more and train harder in order to experience more of them.

The Creative Virtual team is still hard at work to ensure we are delivering the conversational AI technology and expertise our clients and partners need for success. We are also living up to our status as industry leader by investing in the next generation of our V-Person™ technology. We aren’t doing all of this for awards and trophies, but being recognised by an important analyst group like ISG does provide a little extra motivation!

Congratulations to the global Creative Virtual team on being a Leader in the ISG Provider Lens™ for Conversational AI! And thank you to the team at ISG for organising a wonderful evening of celebrations.

Check out ISG’s Conversational AI quadrant and report here to learn more about why they have named us an industry leader.

Teamwork Makes the Conversational AI Dream Work

By Mandy Reed, Global Head of Marketing

At Creative Virtual, we are dedicated to working as a team to help our customers and partners reach their customer experience and employee support goals. It’s at the heart of everything we do, from the initial development stages of our conversational AI technology to the ongoing evolution of  V-Person™ deployments that have been live for a decade or more. The fact that our very first enterprise-level customer has worked with us continuously since 2004 tells us that we are doing something right!

While we don’t do what we do for external awards and recognitions, it’s always a nice boost for morale to have experts in the industry acknowledge Creative Virtual’s expertise and success. We are proud that our dedication and teamwork have led us to be named a Conversational AI Leader by the analysts at ISG in their ISG Provider Lens™ Intelligent Automation – Solutions & Services report!

Here’s Mrinal Rai, Lead Analyst at ISG Research, explaining why Creative Virtual has been identified as a Leader in Conversational AI:

 

 

In their Quadrant Report, the ISG analysts evaluated 19 conversational AI vendors against a robust set of market-driven criteria. They found Creative Virtual to be “an established vendor with a focus on developing omnichannel virtual agent solutions” and a clear Leader in the space.

Conversational AI

If you want to learn more, you can:

  • Review a copy of the ISG Provider Lens™ Intelligent Automation – Solutions & Services report featuring the Conversational AI Quadrant: Download here >>
  • Explore a discussion on conversational AI featuring expert insights from Mrinal Rai, Lead Analyst at ISG, Jan Erik Aase, Partner & Global Head – ISG Provider Lens, and Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO of Creative Virtual: Watch on YouTube >>
  • Arrange a personalised demo with the Creative Virtual team to see our conversational AI technology in action: Request demo here >>

We know that to continue to be a Conversational AI Leader, we must keep working as a team to ensure our solutions are both innovative and delivering real business benefits. The entire company is currently collaborating on our next product release, Gluon, set to be introduced to the market next year. This release includes updates to our chatbot, virtual agent, and live chat technologies as well as a re-architecture of our V-Portal™ orchestration platform. Be sure to check out our Gluon sneak peek.

Our thanks to the team at ISG for naming us a Conversational AI Leader and sending us this great video. And to echo Mrinal’s well wishes: Congratulations Team Creative Virtual!

Successful Conversational AI: Blending Machine Learning & Human Intelligence, Part 3

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

In February ISG, a leading global technology research and advisory firm, published their ‘ISG Provider Lens™ Intelligent Automation – Solutions & Services’ report. Mrinal Rai, Principal Analyst at ISG, and his team evaluated 19 conversational AI vendors in the report, identifying Creative Virtual as a Leader in the highly competitive quadrant.

I joined Mrinal and Jan Erik Aase, Partner and Global Head – ISG Provider Lens, recently on a Zoom session for a discussion about conversational AI. Mrinal kicked things off by diving into the conversational AI quadrant and his research. He outlined the key factors that led to Creative Virtual emerging as a clear Leader in his evaluation.

Jan Erik and I then discussed a number of conversational AI questions that ISG see coming up with their advisors as well as their clients. In my previous posts, I’ve shared the first two parts of that conversation during which we covered current trends and developments, the changing roles of contact centre agents, barriers to achieving success, and the impact of the pandemic. You can watch Part 1 here and watch Part 2 here.

In the third, and final part of our conversation, we delved into the following question: When setting project goals, what KPIs should organisations identify and what results should they expect?

This is a really important question for organisations as they build their business case for a conversational AI solution. About five years ago, there was a big focus on contact deflection when implementing these tools. While this is still important, we find it to be less important as the focus has shifted more to improving the customer experience (CX). Organisations recognise CX as an important differentiator today in competitive marketplaces.

This same sort of thinking also applies to internal solutions, whether that be a solution deployed within the contact centre or one designed for employee support in areas such as service desk, IT support, HR support, and employee onboarding. Supporting employees is more important than ever and, with the right tools in place, presents an opportunity to improve productivity, efficiency, and job satisfaction.

Check out Part 3 of our ‘Successful Conversational AI: Blending Machine Learning & Human Intelligence’ discussion for more on KPIs and results:

 

 

A big thank you to Mrinal and Jan Erik for taking the time for this discussion, as well as to Katie Dickens and Thomas Victor at ISG for working behind the scenes on arranging and producing the recordings of our session!

If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to download a copy of the ISG Provider Lens™ – Conversational AI Quadrant Report.

If you’d like to learn more about Creative Virtual’s expert consultation and see our conversational AI technology in action, sign up here for a personalised demo session with a member of our global team.

Successful Conversational AI: Blending Machine Learning & Human Intelligence, Part 2

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

In February ISG, a leading global technology research and advisory firm, published their ‘ISG Provider Lens™ Intelligent Automation – Solutions & Services’ report. The report evaluates 19 conversational AI vendors against a set of market-driven criteria and places Creative Virtual firmly in the Leader category within the quadrant.

Recently I joined Mrinal Rai, Principal Analyst at ISG, and Jan Erik Aase, Partner and Global Head – ISG Provider Lens, for a discussion on conversational AI over Zoom. In my last post I shared Part 1 of our nearly half hour chat. During the first part of the discussion, Mrinal shared why ISG identified Creative Virtual as an industry leader in their report. Jan Erik and I also discussed current conversational AI trends as well as the evolving role of contact centre agents. You can watch Part 1 here.

In Part 2 of our discussion (scroll down to watch the video), Jan Erik and I address two more questions:

  • What are the biggest barriers organisations face when it comes to building, deploying, and maintaining successful projects?
  • What impact has the pandemic had on the implementation and usage of conversational AI tools?

One key barrier to success that we explore is not having a team with the right skills and experience. Often organisations try to tackle conversational AI projects internally with a lack of knowledge and a toolset that doesn’t enable them to scale the solution to different channels, additional departments, etc. or support enough users simultaneously as the project expands. This sets the whole project up for failure. When it comes to conversational AI, knowing what doesn’t work is just as important as knowing what does.

Jan Erik and I also touch on issues some projects face when integration points and APIs aren’t readily available or accessible. Creating a personalised, omnichannel support experience really needs the conversational AI tool to be properly integrated with other systems. The contact centre not being a part of the organisation’s digital strategy is another common barrier we encounter. This is starting to change, but until company structures are more joined up in this regard, we’ll continue to see this as a widespread challenge.

The need to have the contact centre as part of the digital strategy was highlighted over the past year by the pandemic. We saw record traffic to our virtual agents and chatbots in 2020 as customers turned to online self-service for quick answers to their questions. For many of the organisations we work with, having a well-established conversational AI solution was a lifesaver as their contact centres dealt with an overwhelming volume of calls at the same time as new public health measures designed to keep agents safe.

Having a human-in-the-loop combined with machine learning gave our customers the ability to change responses within their virtual agent quickly, safely, and securely so they could deliver reliable, up-to-date information. In fact, one of our customers found that updating their virtual agent was quicker and easier than updating content on their website. Their contact centre recognised that the virtual agent was helping to reduce call volumes and proactively provided feedback and new content to add based on incoming calls from customers.

Check out Part 2 of our ‘Successful Conversational AI: Blending Machine Learning & Human Intelligence’ discussion:

 

My next post will take a look at Part 3 of our session where we discuss setting goals and identifying KPIs for conversational AI projects. In the meantime, be sure to download your copy of the ISG Provider Lens™ – Conversational AI Quadrant Report.

Is Your Inexperienced Approach to Self-Service Driving Customers Away?

By Mandy Reed, Global Head of Marketing

As many people around the world reflect on more than a year of pandemic-related lockdowns, restrictions, and public health measures, it’s impossible not to marvel at how we all adapted to our current reality. This has involved a lot of trial-and-error as we learned new skills and created new routines in both our personal and professional lives.

Trial-and-error is important to our individual growth and life in general. However, when it comes to areas like customer support, using a trial-and-error approach can have a devastating effect on your customer experience. And it is no secret that poor experiences can lead directly to customer churn and lost revenue.

Perhaps in the early days of limited in-person interactions and surges in calls to contact centres, customers were more understanding about long wait times or out-of-date self-help content. The attitude of ‘we’re all in this together’ extended to giving companies a little space to try some trial-and-error to get their support experience right. If that grace period did exist, it is now long over!

During the past year, more customers have turned to digital channels and automated self-service for support. Usage of virtual agents and chatbots exploded with record-breaking levels of traffic. Customers expect these conversational AI tools to be easy-to-use, convenient, accurate, and reliable. When built and maintained properly, they are all those things.

Unfortunately, not all companies tackle the implementation of conversational AI solutions with a realistic understanding of what it takes to make them successful. Instead, they take a DIY approach with limited internal knowledge and experience. This requires a lot of trial-and-error which creates poor performing tools and frustrated, unhappy customers.

As Claudio Chico, Development & Support Technician at Creative Virtual, explained in a recent conversational AI guide:

“A proper business virtual agent has many parts and building one involves knowledge in many areas. If any part is new to you or you aren’t extremely familiar with the tools you are using, you’re stuck applying the principles of ‘hoping this works’ and ‘changing stuff and seeing what happens’. When you outsource this to an experienced provider, you get a whole team of people who not only know what they are doing but have done it thousands of times. They have a deep understanding of how to use their tools and how they work, so nothing is a mystery anymore.”

Part of the underestimation of the importance experience plays in successful conversational AI projects stems from a misconception that chatbots and virtual agents are new self-service solutions that burst onto the scene several years ago. If this is new technology, then surely everyone is inexperienced and utilising a trial-and-error methodology, right? The truth is this technology has been used in areas such as website self-service for over two decades.

Even though these self-service tools may be new to your company and team, vendors like Creative Virtual have years and years of experience with delivering successful solutions. This means that forward-thinking companies – perhaps even some of your competitors – have years and years of experience with offering successful solutions. It also means that customers have used those successful solutions when engaging with other businesses and will use your chatbot or virtual agent expecting the same level of reliable and accurate self-service.

When it comes to creating positive customer experiences and getting the most from conversational AI technology, there is no substitute for having hands-on experience with building, integrating, installing, maintaining, and expanding virtual agents and chatbots. An inexperienced, trial-and-error approach doesn’t drive success. It drives your customers away.

Download the Guide to Selecting a Virtual Agent or Chatbot Vendor: Forget the Technology & Focus on Experience whitepaper for more tips from industry experts.

Also check out the ISG Provider Lens™ Intelligent Automation – Solutions & Services report for the analyst group’s independent evaluation of the conversational AI market and vendors.

Bottom line: Work with an experienced team to deliver your company’s self-service solutions and leave the trial-and-error for finding the most flattering lighting for your next Zoom meeting or testing the best ways to trick your kids into eating their vegetables.