Tag Archive for: virtual agents

A Customer Service Mantra: Treat your customers like a young baby!

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

The first week of October is when the world celebrates Customer Service Week every year. I became a new dad on 29th June and recently have been realising the parallels between being a parent to a young baby and serving customers. Anticipating his every need. Learning the signs and acting proactively before reaching the escalation stage (the crying!). Reading between the lines when the real need or issue isn’t immediately clear. Providing care when and where he needs it, 24/7/365. I could go on, but I’m guessing you get the picture! I’m not sure the tagline ‘treat your customers like a young baby’ is one that will catch on, but it’s the ethos that matters.

I’m always studying how other companies treat their customers, and there’s no better way than being a customer yourself. We live at a time where customer experience (CX) is the key competitive differentiator, and that’s why I’m really surprised when I experience particularly bad customer service. I had such an experience recently.

The issue was the lift in the housing block where my mum lives being out of service for well over a month. I was chasing up the estate management company for a status update. I sent over ten emails. I eventually got through on the phone to the person responsible, who said that she had been off sick and as I had sent so many emails it had meant she hadn’t seen any of them yet because the new emails kept pushing the email thread to the top of her inbox and she works from the bottom up.

I was at a loss for words. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this from a customer service person at a large property management company. There was no apology and no empathy whatsoever. In fact, she was quite annoyed and advised me that in future I shouldn’t chase up if I don’t hear anything as this just delays things. What an incredulous way to treat a customer! It was certainly in stark contrast to my ‘treat your customers like a young baby’ approach!

Shortly afterwards I had to send another email asking about a different issue. I received no reply and so have no idea if she’s dealing with it, and if I chase up I’m sure I’ll be met with the same annoyance. How can companies like this survive today? Monopolies and pseudo-monopolies like this property management company survive because of the lack of competition, resulting in the lack of customer choice. Unlike my mobile network provider, it’s not easy to change the property management company.

Intrigued to see if this lack of customer empathy was a one-off, I looked up their website. I looked at their `About Us’ page and the management team profiles, and the only reference to the ‘customer’ I could find was on the Sales Director’s profile that has a bullet point: “Driving exceptional customer service standards across the sales division”. I guess that says it all: the customer is only important for sales!

I may be being a bit unfair. The person I’m mentioning here may have been having a bad day., She had only just returned from being off sick, and I’m sure had many emails to deal with. But then again, where was the organisational backup for her? Perhaps a simple out-of-office email with contact details for somebody who was covering, or somebody monitoring her emails. Simple things that would have made all the difference. Exceptional customer service must start with excellent communication.

Just like the baby analogy, always being available to your customers is the most important thing. Of course, technology plays a big part in this today, especially when you need to scale-up the customer service to thousands, or even millions, of customers. From simple ‘out-of-office’ automation to fully fledged virtual agents that can hold consistent, personalised conversations with millions of customers at the same time.

Creating consistency is also key. This means consistency in the information provided as well as in the tone and demeaner of the interaction. A virtual agent is never in a bad mood and can seamlessly hand over to a human when needed. This leaves customer service agents only having to deal with the more complex enquiries, meaning much less volume and hopefully a more satisfying job.  Who wants to answer the same question 50 times a day, especially if it puts you in a bad mood?!

Of course, there are occasions when the customer’s issue can’t be immediately or simply solved, and that’s where communication and empathy play such an important part. Humans certainly have an advantage over virtual agents, at least today, when it comes to empathy. The companies greatest at customer service are the ones who deploy technology and humans to work in perfect harmony, combining the best attributes of each.

As we raise awareness of the importance of great customer service this week, let’s both reflect on the worst examples and celebrate the great ones. Take a look at your organisation’s attitude towards customers. Are you nurturing them with the same attention as you would a baby? Are you working to build a life-long relationship based on consistently positive experiences? Keep in mind that unlike babies, your customers can easily choose new ‘parents’ if they’re not happy.

It may not work as an official tagline, but you should be following this customer service mantra: treat your customers like a young baby.

The Chatbot & Virtual Agent Experts Have Spoken: Experience Matters

By Rachel F Freeman, Operations Director & Laura Ludmany, Knowledgebase Engineer

Whitepapers are designed to be plain-speaking and informative documents spanning an array of subjects. At Creative Virtual, whitepapers are not created too often as they hold a special place in our repository of resources since they offer information that stays valid for a much longer time than other documents. We write them as valuable reference points which can be reviewed when required.

We take great pleasure in introducing this newly created whitepaper from Creative Virtual as it has a lot of straight talk about one of our favourite subjects: user experience in the realm of self-help tools. The insight and intel our Guide to Selecting a Virtual Agent or Chatbot Vendor: Forget the Technology & Focus on Experience contains spans the width and breadth of the company: sales, marketing, technical and not least the operations team, some of who contributed by submitting their hottest and most relevant tips.

Where else can you find a paper that consolidates industry understanding and expertise from a group of people with a combined 83 years of experience in a field that has only been viable, commercially, for about the past 20?!

In addition to contributions from both of us, the whitepaper also includes insights from Claudio Chico, Rachael Needham, Len Power, Maria Ward, Rob Foster, Peter Studd, Ridhi Mathur and Mandy Reed. We drew from our extensive experience in the virtual agent and chatbot field to explore six areas of experience that are necessary for success. For example, we touch on the importance of skill in building a strong business case, integrating with other systems and technologies, creating the right user experience and identifying future developments.

We were so glad to contribute to this guide as it really brings the whole team closer to the readers. Having that personal touch makes a difference and helps to make the technology as well as industry jargon and terms more understandable. Having to choose a self-service solution can be a daunting task – there are so many industry-specific, and often even provider-specific expressions (which usually all mean pretty much the same thing!), that during your search, you might just feel even more confused than before you started. Demo calls might have the same effect, especially if you need to pass on the gained information to your team.

It helps to have clear, short and objective guides to help with your selection process – our 7-page long whitepaper is a perfect example of this. AI tools don’t need to be complicated and overwhelming if you go with the right team who can make things simple and easily understandable for you.

For example, we’ve found in our personal experience that as we go through the deployment and content curation processes clients, especially those who are new to self-service solutions, often find somewhat abstract our third area covered in the whitepaper: Experience with building and deploying successful solutions. To them, customer behaviour analysis and conversation flows are mysterious things and so they find it difficult to identify and deliver complex user journeys.

For an experienced virtual agent team, this is a typical case when a picture, or in this instance one demo flow, is worth a thousand words. Once we create a prototype flow for our customers, they are able to visualize their content flows and get quickly into the swing of things, supplying us new journeys and loops proactively. This is the sort of invaluable consultation experience you will receive when you work with the right virtual agent vendor.

The right team will also help you with analysing your virtual agent or chatbot’s usage to help you identify some quick wins. For example, for a new project we’ve been recently working on, our analysis enabled us to suggest creating new structured conversation flows by linking together existing content. This meant the client did not have to provide any new content, yet the user experience and their specific KPIs (key performance indicators) were improved significantly. It is personalised recommendations like this that enable you to get the most from your self-service tool, and that only happens when you work with a provider that builds a close relationship with your company and team.

virtual agent & chatbot guideWe encourage you to take a look at the tips and nuggets of wisdom from a dynamic and accomplished group of people on the Creative Virtual team who know their stuff and are happy to share it. We hope you find it useful as reference as you consider self-help tool options and providers. We may be a little biased, but we firmly believe you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better and well-informed source!

Download your copy of our Guide to Selecting a Virtual Agent or Chatbot Vendor: Forget the Technology & Focus on Experience right now! Don’t forget you can always request more information or your own expert consultation by contacting us here.

Tips for Deploying AI Chatbots & Virtual Agents

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

Chatbots, smart help, virtual assistants, virtual agents, conversational AI – there are lots of names for this automated, self-service technology being used today. Regardless of what you call it, the objective for including it as part of your customer service strategy is to deliver quick, easy access to information. How to select and deploy the right technology to do that for your organisation was the focus of the webinar I recently presented with Engage Customer.

In the webinar, Tips for Deploying AI Chatbots & Virtual Agents, I talked about some key questions to keep in mind when adding one of these solutions to your customer experience (CX) strategy. You want to ask: How can I ensure my chatbot or virtual agent is:

  • Providing accurate and personalised information?
  • Creating a positive and seamless experience?
  • Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in a reliable way?
  • Able to grow and expand with my digital strategy?

Deploying a solution that enables you to integrate with other systems and knowledge repositories is crucial to success. You want a solution that is backed by an orchestration platform that allows you to bring together all of the content sources and manage the natural language processing (NLP), intents and machine learning to keep the conversations flowing in a seamless, personalised way across customer touchpoints. You also want to be learning all the time from these conversations in such a way that the human content owner works alongside the machine learning component to provide the best possible customer experience.

I am a great believer that the best way to really understand the technology and why these questions are so important is to see the technology in action. During the webinar I shared a series of live demonstrations of solutions currently deployed for companies in the telecommunications, financial services and travel sectors. I selected these examples because they showcase how the technology is being used across a variety of customer touchpoints and with various integrations to deliver customised, seamless experiences.

To help companies get started with selecting a new chatbot or virtual agent – or finding a solution to replace a poor performing tool – I ended my presentation with four important tips:

  1. Work with an experienced vendor
  2. Select a reliable technology
  3. Look for flexible integration options
  4. Evaluate the orchestration platform

I went into detail on each of these tips and shared some specific questions to ask during the evaluation process to ensure you are deploying a technology that will work for your specific goals and use cases. It’s important to consider how the solution not only fits with your immediate plans but how it will evolve and grow with your company and strategy.

My thanks to Steve, Katie, Dominic and the entire team at Engage Customer for hosting this webinar! You can watch the webinar recording on-demand to see the demos and find out more about my tips and best practices for deploying AI chabots and virtual agents.

If you want to learn more about Creative Virtual’s experience and technology or are interested in arranging an individual workshop, contact us here. The Creative Virtual team is ready to help you get started on your successful virtual agent strategy.

Fifteen Years & Counting: Navigating the chatbot, virtual agent and AI revolution

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

As we celebrate our fifteen year anniversary, I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts on founding and running Creative Virtual.

In those early days, we were focused on winning deals as the plan from the outset was to grow the company organically; although the objective was always to create a global company; so many companies fail or are sold before getting to that point; and it’s a testament to our amazing team, that we have become a global leader. It’s an honour to lead such a great team!

People come and go within organisations of course, and that’s healthy for both the company and the people. However, there becomes a core backbone of people that make up the fabric – the culture – of what Creative Virtual stands for: passion, innovation and quirkiness are at the heart of everything we do. And the people become the DNA and vice-versa.

There’s also ups and downs of course; growing any business isn’t linear! We’ve certainly had our bumps along the way. People often ask me how I make the tough decisions and how I relax. We all have our own ways – for me it’s a recipe of: spending time with friends and loved ones, running, watching West Ham, physics, snowboarding, photography and art.

I took up running about five years ago, and really enjoy the energy it gives me; I find that being in good shape physically makes a big difference mentally. It also allows me to contemplate and to think about things differently. I find doing completely different things – like painting, which I’m absolutely useless at! – really helps one to switch-off from business. And speaking of DNA…West Ham is in my DNA…so there’s no escape from that as any football supporter will know! It’s another great way, for 90+ minutes, to switch-off from everything else! Spending time with friends and loved ones helps me to put things into perspective – as does my love of physics! Snowboarding gives me my adrenalin rush!

I also love travelling around the world and spending time with our people, customers and partners. It’s an absolute joy working with our great people and some of the world’s leading organisations.

We have been fortunate over the years to win many awards, and it’s so delightful when our customers win awards too. Our customer, Transport for New South Wales, won an impressive three awards for their RITA chatbot during 2018! In 2017 we were honoured with The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise: Innovation. I couldn’t be more proud of what our team has achieved, and it was beyond what I had dreamt for Creative Virtual. Going to the Palace and meeting the Queen, Prince Philip and other members of the Royal Family was incredible. And being a five-year award, we celebrate our fifteen year anniversary in its continuing glow.

Having been a leading company in the establishment of the virtual agent market – and developing best practices in terms how virtual agents, live chat, artificial intelligence (AI) and knowledge management work together to create world-class customer experiences – there is still much more to do as organisations transition from the centralised contact centre model to one where the customer is at the centre of the universe. Helping organisations navigate through this has as much to do with the expertise of our people as the actual technology; and with such an experienced and dedicated team I know we are on the right path to remain at the forefront of the chatbot/AI/contact centre revolution!

Being an optimist by nature, my way of keeping my feet on the ground is to keep in mind the words of the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Here’s to the next fifteen years and the new challenges that lie ahead!

A Complete Omnichannel Experience for Those at a Desk and on the Move

By Liam Ryan, Sales Director

In my nearly 11 years with Creative Virtual, I’ve worked with organisations across all sectors looking to implement successful virtual agent solutions and have seen the industry and the technology change massively. As the number of communication channels have grown and customers have become more digitally savvy, virtual agent technology has also become more advanced and sophisticated. Today companies are using these solutions to increase engagement through natural language conversations and are seeing all the usual benefits that you’ve heard associated with chatbots and virtual agents for years – an enhanced user experience, improvement in CSAT scores, reductions in calls to the contact centre and lower customer service costs.

Yet, as I explain in my recent Executive Interview with CRMXchange, the benefits go beyond that with today’s solutions. Chatbots and virtual agents can now provide a complete omnichannel experience for those at a desk and on the move. By being able to linkup channels – web, mobile, Facebook, messenger apps (like Facebook Messenger and WeChat), voice assistants (like Google Home and Amazon Alexa), etc. – companies are benefiting from delivering a consistent, accurate and seamless experience that’s available to customers 24/7.

It’s important that companies looking to implement a virtual agent fully explore the benefits of deploying the solution across multiple contact channels using a single knowledgebase. This then needs to be a central consideration during their selection process. Many virtual agent and chatbot solutions on the market today don’t have this capability which means you end up with a stand-alone tool on a single communication channel and an even more disjointed customer experience.

In my interview I also talk about the benefits of using self-service virtual agents for employee support, particularly for internal service desk and HR support, and how working with an experienced vendor like Creative Virtual can help an organisation get the most from their virtual agent. I discuss why human moderation of the machine learning component of chatbots is essential and the effect the explosion of media hype and buzz around artificial intelligence and chatbots has had on the industry.

Read my full interview for more and request a live demo to see Creative Virtual’s technology in action. My thanks to CRMXchange for the opportunity to participate in their Executive Interview series!

Overcome Language and Culture Barriers with Chatbots

By Philip Chuck, Territory General Manager, Greater China

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to attend the annual Asian Financial Forum (AFF) in Hong Kong with our partner HKT. The forum brought together some of the most influential members of the global financial and business community to discuss developments and trends in the dynamic Asian markets.

The two-day forum featured over 100 international speakers sharing insights into the event theme “Steering Growth and Pioneering Innovation: Asia and Beyond”. On Day 2, HKT sponsored a session on “Business Transformation along Your Belt and Road Journey”. This session discussed megatrends in global business development and how companies can accelerate their growth in overseas and mainland China markets through transformation and the effective use of various infrastructure and ICT services.

Björn Gülsdorff, Creative Virtual’s Chief Business Development Officer, joined me at the forum and gave a presentation on chatbots as part of HKT’s Belt and Road session. I asked him to share his thoughts with me after the event:

The One Belt One Road initiative is one of greatest business initiatives of our time – and as ours is the time of globalisation, that is to say: in all times. In this undertaking, Hong Kong is a central element for all sorts of reasons. So, when entering the plenary hall of the Asia Financial Forum 2018 in HK, I wasn’t surprised to find the stage taken by an executive board member of the German Federal Bank in discussion with Group CEO of HSBC (among others in that league).

The event nicely mixed the big picture with more workshop-type sessions about the very next steps and what this means for the individual business. I think it is fair to say that many companies see a big challenge in this new outward facing and more connected way for China to do business in the world. Being the world’s workbench and garden was much more clear-cut and even easier in a way.

So, we had a packed room and an eager audience in our session on “Business Transformation”. Flanked by two great co-speakers I shared some ideas how virtual assistants and chatbots can help businesses to grow across countries, time zones and languages without jeopardizing their customer communications. Thankfully, I could do this in English (and listen to Chinese speeches), because the organizers provided real time translations via headsets – what a great service! My only “problem” was that I had to scratch the artificial intelligence (AI) part of my speech because Professor Daniela Rus, Director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, had just explained in a key note how much manual work it takes to get machine learning right. Regular readers of our posts will immediately picture me nodding heavily for the entire 45 minutes. What really struck me at this conference, was the nearly unanimous view that technology will be key, but shall support people, not replace them. In short, the financial services sector in this part of the world is ready for virtual assistants and a hybrid approach of human and machine labour.

For me, the forum really showed that chatbots and AI are no longer just areas of study or something for companies to research. In the Finance sector, organisations are now taking action and making this technology a real part of their digital initiatives. Deploying a chatbot in different languages breaks through the barrier of initial customer engagement in doing business in “One Belt One Road” countries.

We are delighted to have engaged HKT as our partner to promote Creative Virtual chatbot solutions in Hong Kong. HKT is one of the largest suppliers of high-end Omnichannel Contact Centre solutions in Hong Kong, where chatbots are increasingly being used for improving customer engagement, and for expediting customer services. Together, HKT and Creative Virtual shall deliver outstanding customer engagement solutions, combining the strengths of both companies. We are looking forward to that.

Our thanks to HKT for inviting us to take part in AFF 2018 and to the event organisers for putting on a great forum. To learn more about how chatbots and virtual agents can help you overcome language barriers and grow your business, request a personalised demo.

Asian Financial Forum

Chatbots in Action – Creative Virtual at CCW 2018

By Björn Gülsdorff, Chief Business Development Officer

The end of February is Call Center World time, Europe’s biggest “international conference and trade show for innovative customer dialogue”, now in its 20th year. (Congratulations!)

Whilst chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) made it to the stage last year already, they have now become one of the major topics of the show and I am excited to have three speaking slots with our partner sogedes.

Excited and a little bit nervous: Since last year, the AI hype cycle is said to be past the “peak of inflated expectations” and having started the descent into the “trough of disillusionment”. Looking at what some people did promise and how they boasted about the “intelligence” of their solutions, that is a well-deserved set-back, but there is always the risk of an overreactions and buyers turning their back on technology altogether, just because of too high expectations. I will learn it the hard way, I guess, whether they have embraced the pragmatic (and working) hybrid approach already or not. My recent speeches in places as diverse as the Financial Forum in Hong Kong and the Service Desk Forum in Mainz, Germany give me hope, but you never know.

I am also looking forward to CCW 2018 because the world of call centres is comprehensively covered. It is the perfect place to see how virtual agents do (and must) fit into a customer communication strategy, how they can support agents best – “collaborate”, I should say – and which backend systems to integrate with. I’m also interested to hear where newer channels like messenger platforms (such as Facebook Messenger) are fitting into contact centre strategies. Could they be replacing AI as the most hyped topic?

In any case, it will be three challenging and inspiring days (from February 27 to March 1, since you ask) at the booth with sogedes and my colleague Katrin Zieren (Hall 3, Booth E8-E10). I am looking forward to that.

If you’re attending, be sure to catch our “Chatbots in action” presentation on Tuesday, February 27 at 11:30 in Hall 3 – International Plaza. We’ll also be showcasing chatbot solutions on Wednesday at 15:10 and Thursday at 13:00 in Hall 1 – TeleTalk-Demoforum. There’s more information and the full agenda on the CCW 2018 website.

If you can’t attend but want to learn more, request a live demo to see our chatbots in action.

A Look Back: 2017 in Review

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

The end of 2017 is quickly approaching and so, as has become our tradition, it’s time to take a look back at Creative Virtual’s year. To say this has been an exciting and busy year for us, our customers and our partners would be an understatement! 2017 will go down as one of the most important years in Creative Virtual’s history, so let’s take a look at some of the year’s highlights.

Queens Awards for EnterpriseBy far our biggest company announcement came in April when we were officially recognised as the winner of The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise: Innovation 2017! The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise is the UK’s most prestigious business award for British companies, and we were recognised for innovation for our V-Person™ and V-Portal™ technology. Over the summer, our Founder & CEO, Chris Ezekiel, and CTO, Peter Behrend, attended a Royal Reception at Buckingham Palace for the winners and got to meet Her Majesty the Queen and several other members of the royal family. In September, the company hosted our official award ceremony and celebration, bringing together Creative Virtual team members from around the world, customers, partners and a variety of other guests in London. Mr Leslie Morgan OBE DL, Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London, presented our award on behalf of the Queen, and Jim Fitzpatrick, our local Member of Parliament (MP) for Poplar and Limehouse, also said a few words.

Creative Virtual was recognised by a variety of other awards programmes this year as well, being named ‘Best Customer Service Solutions Provider 2017’, ‘Most Innovative Customer Support Tool: V-Person Live Chat’, and ‘Best Virtual Assistant Solutions Provider 2017’ among others. We were also a proud part of the APPEX Omnichannel Catalyst which took home the Outstanding Performance in the Catalyst Program award at TM Forum Live! 2017.

Two individual members of our UK team were recognised by independent awards programmes this year for their contributions to Creative Virtual. Rachel F Freeman, Operations Director, was a finalist in the Women in IT Excellence Awards in the category of ‘Hero of the Year (SME)’ for demonstrating excellence in her support of others and going beyond the call of duty to achieve a business goal. And I was honoured to be named ‘Best CX Solutions Business Marketer – UK’ in the 2017 Business Woman of the Year Awards for my success in driving brand recognition, thought leadership and lead generation activities. It was certainly a big year for award wins for us as a company and individually!

While we enjoyed celebrating – and walking the red carpet! – this year, we were also busy sponsoring and hosting industry events and delivering thought leadership presentations in 11 different countries – India, the United States, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, France, Luxembourg, Singapore, Germany, Australia and Hungary. Our fifth annual Technology Innovation Showcase webinar (Chatbots, Virtual Agents and Your Contact Centre) with CRMXchange had a record-breaking number of registrations, highlighting the huge surge in interest in chatbots, virtual agents and artificial intelligence (AI). You can still watch that webinar on-demand, as well as our most recent webinar AI, Chatbots & Live Chat: Separating Truth from Myth.

While there has been a marked increase in interest in chatbots and virtual agents this year, there’s also a lot of confusion, unrealistic expectations and false promises being perpetuated in the marketplace. We drew on our expertise to share a realistic view of AI and chatbots in the customer space in our whitepaper AI, Chatbots and Virtual Agents: The Threat to Mankind and the Contact Centre. Founder & CEO Chris similarly tackled this topic in a column for CMRXchange, Are Chatbots, Virtual Agents and Artificial Intelligence Threats to Your Contact Centre?. Chris also shared his expertise in interviews with ReadITQuik and The Wharf Newspaper, and Mike Murphy, CEO of Creative Virtual USA, shared his thoughts on the industry in a CRMXchange Executive Interview. Following on the heels of our launch of V-Person Live Chat last year, early in 2017 we created a new video showing how you can combine self-service virtual agents and human-assisted channels to deliver a fully integrated support experience.

This year we welcomed a number of great organisations to our expanding Global Partner Network. Our V-Person Family continued to grow throughout 2017 with new virtual agent and chatbot deployments across the globe in a variety of languages, and our collaborations with current customers resulted in new features and functionality being added to existing installs. This year Motability Operations’ award-winning ‘Ask Mo’ and National Rail Enquiries popular ‘Ask Lisa’ virtual agents both celebrated their 10th birthdays. REST Industry Super’s virtual agent Roger played a part in two award wins for them this year: ‘Best Innovation Super Feature’ in Money Magazine’s Best of the Best Awards and ‘Best Fund: Innovation 2017’ in the Chant West 2017 Super Fund Awards.

As he does every year, Founder & CEO Chris took the award for most travelling as he once again flew around the world visiting with the Creative Virtual team, partners and customers and taking part in a number of different events. In November, he also added a new job title to his CV, taking on the role of monthly technology columnist with The Wharf Newspaper.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to check out our 2017 in Review photo album on the Creative Virtual Facebook page. We’ve compiled shots from our official presentations and events as well as our fun group activities and award celebrations – everything from Founder & CEO Chris meeting to Queen to him taking a pie in the face during our fundraising efforts for the RSPCA. There will still be more photos to come, so be sure to like our Facebook page so you don’t miss any.

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.

Calling All Chatbot Enthusiasts to Berlin!

By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)

Chatbots will take centre stage – along with the Development & AI Stage and the Product & UX Stage! – in Berlin next week at the Chatbot Summit. In its second year, the summit will bring together industry experts, established vendors, new start-ups and chatbot enthusiasts for a day of keynote presentations, panel discussions and networking opportunities on Monday, 26 June 2017.

Creative Virtual is pleased to be a sponsor of this year’s summit and to have Björn Gülsdorff, our Head of Business Development, joining the list of esteemed event speakers. Björn’s keynote presentation, Enterprise Chatbots: Taking a Hybrid Approach to Machine Learning, is scheduled for the afternoon on the Development & AI Stage. He’ll explore why pure AI and chatbots touted as wholly self-learning and self-maintaining aren’t a good fit for providing predictable, consistent and reliable customer service.

The Creative Virtual team will also be manning booth #13 where attendees can see live demos of our innovative chatbot solutions and get a look behind the scenes at the science of conversation. As an established and trusted vendor in this space, our chatbots are answering over 50 million questions every year for enterprises around the world – and that number is constantly growing! In April, Creative Virtual was awarded The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise: Innovation 2017 which was a win for the chatbot and virtual agent industry as well as our company. In order to receive the award, we had to prove not only that we’ve developed innovative technologies, but that Creative Virtual is achieving outstanding commercial success because of it. The Queen’s Awards recognition brings attention to chatbot technology and the positive results forward-thinking organisations are already achieving with our solutions.

In the early days of the technology, chatbots and virtual agents were standalone self-service tools that could answer only very basic questions and were often viewed as a novelty rather than a way to improve the customer experience or cut customer support costs. Today, they are tried-and-tested tools for providing digital self-service with greatly improved conversational abilities, options for integration across customer contact channels and proven results for reducing costs and improving customer experience. The Chatbot Summit – an event focused solely on this technology and its applications – highlights this exciting evolution and the growing awareness of chatbots.

Interested in joining us in Berlin for the Chatbot Summit? Purchase your tickets now using code cvbot20 and receive a 20% discount.

Not able to attend or want to do a little preparation before the summit? Download our educational whitepaper Virtual Agents and Chatbot and Avatars – confusing or what! to learn more about the role of chatbots in digital customer engagement.