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The Next Evolution of Customer Service
This document provides an overview of virtual agents and their role in customer service. It begins with an introduction to virtual agents and their benefits, such as being available 24/7 and at a lower cost than human agents. It then discusses trends driving interest in virtual agents and why they are useful now. The document outlines best practices for implementing virtual agents and integrating them with live agent channels. It provides an example case study of a telco provider that improved customer satisfaction using a virtual agent and seamless transition to live chat.
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The Next Evolution of Customer Service
- 1. The Next Evolutionof + Customer Service Thank you for joining us. We will begin promptly at 1:00pm ET / 10:00am PT. To hear the audio, you will need to use WebEx audio – receive a call back or dial-in options available. All lines are muted. Please use the Chat panel for questions.
- 2. Welcome Thank youfor joining today! Submit questions via the WebEx Chat panel & Twitter - @MoxieSoft and @VirtuOz Session will be recorded and sent to attendees with presentation
- 3. Speakers Pam Kostka Chief Marketing Officer VirtuOz David Lowy Vice President, Product Management Moxie Software
- 4. What is anIntelligent Virtual Agent? A digital persona that engages in a personalized conversation with consumers, responding quickly and accurately to their requests, guiding them to information, or performing tasks on their behalf. • Delivers the knowledge and performance of the best marketing, sales, and support professionals with the convenience and accessibility of self- service • Provides a new online channel optimized for today’s web-savvy consumer • Is deployable on the web, mobile platforms, and social media for anytime, anywhere access
- 5. Interest in VirtualAgents By 2015, 50% of online customer self-service search activities will be via a virtual agent for at least 1,500 large enterprises. - Gartner “Virtual humans…will drastically change our world in the decade to come.” – Chief Futurist David Evans, Cisco “There are more than 1.4 million conversations with virtual agents happening each day.” - Forrester Experts predict that trends such as… multichannel knowledge management, virtual agents in mobile and social, and natural language processing will have the biggest impact on the customer service experience in 2012. - 1 to 1 Media
- 6. Why Virtual AgentsNow? Consumer to Business • Changing customer preferences - Only 29% of US online adults prefer the telephone for customer service - 159 million US online adults have 2 internet devices “In three to five years, - Online chat preferred: Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic Virtual Agents will in the U.S become the new - 24X 7 self-service access standard for customer interaction. ” • Changing customer demographics Gartner - 76 million millenials November 11, 2011 - Over 50% of the global population is under 30 years old - Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail Technology Advancements • Artificial intelligence and natural language processing effectively simulates human conversation, thinking, and doing
- 7. The Problem: UserExperience vs. Operational Costs MOBILE WEBSITE FACEBOOK ¢ ¢¢ ¢¢¢ $$ $$$ $$$$ New, contemporary online channel • One right answer—fast—with 80% resolution • 24/7 access on web, mobile, & social media • A preferred conversational interface • 1/10th the cost of human-assisted channels
- 8. Today’s Virtual AgentsDeliver A Trusted Guide, serving as the first point of entry for online activities, guiding consumers to the most appropriate channel for their interactions A Personalized Assistant, smart about consumers and able to determine their identity as well as their intent and needs Sensitive to Context, understanding what the consumer needs and how to best meet that need in a given context and through the access point or delivery vehicle they prefer Results-focused, providing the right outcome—the most informed response—in an appropriate timeframe, which is always quickly A Long-term Relationship, developing and maturing through increased interaction, evolving to the point that it not only assists, but serves as an advocate on behalf of the consumer
- 9. How It Works Respond Channel Proxy Response Guided Response Direct Response Converse Listen Engage Measure
- 10. Best Practices forVirtual Agents Pick the right partner • Software, Services and Experience Invest in the representation of your brand • Avatar, dialog strategies, and tone Train your “team” • Stay relevant by committing to continuous training of the VA Plan to expand • Mission, Access Points, and Geographies Integrate to be multi-channel aware • Achieve 100% resolution with live chat and click to call • Ensure consistency with Knowledgebase • Create a compelling, personalized customer experience with CRM
- 11. Transitioning from Virtualto a Live Agent Virtual agent should escalate to live help when a user: • Asks for live chat or telephone • Has asked a question several times • Indicates in a feedback survey that they weren’t satisfied with the answer • Is in a preferred segment • Asks a question that is too complex for a virtual agent (i.e., “What stock risk should I have in my portfolio?”) • Uses language that indicates frustration or distress • Threatens complaints • Triggers business rules (i.e., “I want to buy an expensive/complex product”) Chat is an obvious choice: highest customer satisfaction rate at 62% • Based on request and agent availability offer alternative such as email, phone, etc. Transition for customer must be seamless, obvious and informative
- 12. Agent Experience AcrossTouchpoints Pick the right partner • Software, Services and Experience Unified knowledge framework • Across Self-Service, Agent Support, Virtual Agent, Internal access Common processes across touchpoints Single view of customer data • Cross-channel history, customer profile and insight into issue at hand
- 13. Digital Consumers Consumersdemand quality and consistent support across a variety of channels • Multi-touchpoint, multi-device Today’s organization must become customer-centric versus channel-centric
- 14. Case Study: LargeTelco Provider Business Goals • Improve customer satisfaction through web self-service • Create a consistent experience across all channels • Offer a seamless transition from virtual to assisted customer service Combined Solution • Address top customer issues • Pre-qualify the user’s issue and transition the user seamlessly to the right Live Chat queue Performance Results Achieved Virtual Agent Live Chat • 75% IVA Resolution Rate • 300,000 chat sessions per month • 22% eDeflection Rate • 15% Reduction in Live Chat time
- 15. Webinar Wrap Up Questions: • WebEx Chat Panel • Twitter: @Moxiesoft & @VirtuOz Session recording and presentation will be sent via email Contact Us: • info@moxiesoft.com • info@virtuoz.com
Editor's Notes
- #6 Over 1,500 organizations worldwide are in various stages of production with VAs. The results rangefrom profound cost savings (5% reduction in service costs) and increased customer loyalty (2% to8%) to simply the entertainment of having a robotic presence on a website. But the number oforganizations adding this capability is growing by 20% per year, especially in travel, consumergoods, telecommunications and banking
- #7 42% of teens say athe primary reason they have a cell phone is for texting. Safety was second at 35% (nielsen 2010)41% of Millenials have made a purchase using their SmartPhones27% approximate decline in email usage among those ages 12-34 over the past year (ComScore 2010)6 texts that are sent every waking hour by 13-18 year olds - 75% send 20 texts a day Gen Y89% own a laptop 96% owned a cell phone vs. 82% of the adult population
- #9 Intelligent Virtual Agents will be the he first point of entry for a company’s online transactions. They will be gatekeepers to the natural language searching of diverse corporate content, knowledge bases, and internal applications.
- #10 To better understand the Intelligent Virtual Agent customer interaction, let’s walk through the full lifecycle of an IVA conversation…..Engage: The Intelligent Virtual Agents offers 24X 7 access-ability via the most popular online interaction platforms in use by consumers today. Serving as the first point of contact, she is the lowest cost means by which to achieve 100% resolution of your consumer’s issue by understanding intent and either addressing the problem directly, or directing traffic to the most appropriate and cost-effective service channel. The average IVA will start by addressing high volume service traffic drivers and achieve, on average, a 26% deflection rate from the call center, at 1/10th the cost of traditional service channels.Converse: The Intelligent Virtual Agent engages in a interactive conversation with the consumer via the VirtuOz Conversation Manager to quickly and accurately understand the consumer’s intent. Unlike search that uses key words and indexing to match a user to specific content, Conversation Manager leverages VirtuOz’ patented Advanced Natural Language Processing and Predictive Intent Analysis capabilities to understand “online dialog” – short sentences, incomplete sentences, misspellings and acronyms – and engage in a two-way, natural dialog, to determine user intent. While there may be 100 ways for a consumer to ask the same question, Conversation Manager will match all 100 to the correct topic, and it will understand subtle linguistic nuances such as <<insert eBay and other examples here>>Respond: The Intelligent Virtual Agent’s mission is to respond quickly, accurately, and consistently in order to guide the user to the one right answer. The VirtuOz Resolution Manager offers a range of options by which to achieve resolution. A basic Show Me response interactively guides the user to the proper content on your website or in your knowledge base, that will allow the consumer to undertake the appropriate actions themselves to resolve their issues. A more compelling user experience can be further created by adding personalization – such as responding to billing questions about a customer’s own bill. An advance “Do It For Me” response leverages your existing technology and infrastructure investments by tying into backend systems and allowing the Intelligent Virtual Agent to undertake actions on behalf of the consumer at their request, like presenting a list of items that a user is bidding on at eBay, determining if it is still possible to cancel and bid based on auction rules, and then canceling the bid. IVAs typically have an 80% success rate in resolving consumer issues directly…..Channel: But if the question is outside of the scope of the IVAs mission, or the user expresses frustration with the conversation, the IVA will intelligently direct the consumer to the appropriate service channel – either a live chat queue or a live agent. In doing so, the IVA ensures 100% resolution for the consumer. Via integration, the IVA also passes along the full transcript of the consumer’s conversation with the IVA to the live agent. By avoiding un-necessary re-statement of the issue, this results in 16% higher call efficiency time for the live agent and 10% higher customer satisfaction ratings from consumers.Listen: The IVA also has patented analytics that allows on-going mining of all conversational data. Companies are afforded new visibility into the trending topics that their consumers need addressed, which issues are rising in frequency, and which are falling. Most companies that deploy an IVA quickly identify content improvements, missing content, and new topics that they previously had no visibility into thanks VirtuOz’ Voice of the Customer and analytics.Measure: You measure the performance of every aspect of your customer service function, and we subject the IVA to the same stringent operational and ROI goals that you’d apply to any world-class customer service channel. Analytics dashboards provide visibility into the quality of your Intelligent Virtual Agent’s performance measured against “best-in-class” benchmarks. As your business changes and grows, your IVA is designed to keep pace through continuous improvement and automatic learning that allows the IVA to be more effective after each and every conversation.