A Look Back: 2016 in Review
By Mandy Reed, Marketing Manager (Global)
It’s that time once again to take a look back at the year and marvel at just how much we, our customers and our partners have managed to fit into 11 and a half months. This has been an exciting year not only for us at Creative Virtual, but also for the self-service industry with a renewed interest and media buzz around chatbots. So let’s take a look at some of the highlights of 2016.
This year we launched two new products to the market: V-Person Service Desk™ in March and V-Person Live Chat™ in August. We have seen a flurry of interest in using V-Person for employee support (check out our video to learn more) and have service desk and other internal deployments live in several countries around the world. Launching our new Live Chat product was particularly exciting for us because it was the day we realised our vision to offer organisations the technology to enable seamless, fully-integrated, end-to-end customer engagement. A truly momentous occasion for our company!
We are also proud of the awards Creative Virtual has won this year. The Wharf Innovation in Business Awards, a new awards programme celebrating the hard work and ingenuity of companies in Canary Wharf, recognised us as the winner of their Medium-to-Large Business category. Besides being a great accomplishment for the company, this victory also made our Founder & CEO Chris feel like a hometown hero. We were all excited to read his interview with The Wharf newspaper. Creative Virtual was also recognised for a second year by the Technology Innovator Awards, receiving ‘Most Innovative Customer Engagement Platform’ and ‘Best for Virtual Agent Technology’. We finished out the year with two more awards as part of the 2016 Softech Business Awards: ‘Best Self-Service CX Technology Company 2016’ and ‘Most Innovative Enterprise CX Management Solution: V-Person’.
2016 was our busiest year yet when it came to taking part in industry events around the world – Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Denmark, Hong Kong and the Netherlands – covering a variety of topics including customer experience, chatbots, digital customer engagement, the call centre and AI. A number of these events were either hosted by or attended with our partner companies, and many featured Creative Virtual team members presenting or participating in roundtable discussions. We also took part in several live webinars, including our fourth Technology Innovation Showcase with CRMXchange which you can still view on-demand.
The world of customer engagement is constantly evolving, and this was particularly true during 2016 due to announcements like Facebook Messenger’s introduction of chatbots which brought new attention to AI and digital customer support solutions. We drew from the extensive experience of the Creative Virtual team to produce a number of new educational resources, including a checklist for Choosing a Virtual Agent Solution for Instant Messaging Platforms and SMS and a whitepaper, Virtual Agents and Chatbots and Avatars – confusing or what!, for anyone confused about using chatbots for customer support. Our Founder & CEO Chris penned an article for CRMXchange titled The Contact Centre in Its Current Form is Finished and Patrick, our Managing Director ANZ & North Asia, shared his expertise in the field through an Executive Interview.
It’s been an exciting year as we’ve seen our customer base grow and new companies join our extensive global partner network. In February our India-based team hosted Creative Virtual team members from all over the word in Mumbai for our annual global meetings. Once again Founder & CEO Chris took the award for most travelling as he spent time in each of our offices to take part in industry events and meet with partners, customers and the growing Creative Virtual team.
We hope you’ll take a few minutes to check out our 2016 in Review photo album on the Creative Virtual Facebook page to see what we’ve been up to this year – all the official events and presentations as well as the fun group activities and fundraising efforts. There are still more photos to come, including our End of Year and Christmas celebrations, so be sure to like our page so you don’t miss them.
