CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE
ANALYST ROUND UP
7 Key Insights for Anyone Exploring Digital
Self-Service and Virtual Agents
The customer experience space is evolving at an unprecedented rate. So much so, that it can be nearly impossible to keep up with the latest predictions on emerging trends and areas of focus that are important for customer service and customer experience professionals. That’s why we’ve put together the Customer Experience Analyst Round Up.
We’ve taken a close look at what third party analysts like Forrester, Gartner and others have to say about the future of customer service and customer experience, and explained exactly why these macro-insights matter to anyone exploring a digital self-service or virtual agent deployment.
Take a few minutes to see how your plans for digital
self-service fall within the larger context of where customer experience is evolving, from the perspective
It’s All About Understanding
the Customer Journey
“Customer experience (CX) professionals have been quick to adopt journey mapping. … journey maps are more than just a tool for mapping customer experiences. Rather, they are a foundational document that forms the backbone of CX programs: a common thread that runs through nearly every activity CX professionals perform.”1
– TONY COSTA, SENIOR ANALYST SERVING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROFESSIONALS, FORRESTER
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Digital interactions form a large proportion of the customer journey for most organizations today. Only when an
organization has a solid understanding of what these digital journeys ‘look like’ can it look for ways to improve the experience for customers.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE
AND VIRTUAL AGENTS?
IntelliResponse Virtual Agents can be used to AUTOMATE a large portion of the work involved in customer journey mapping. This increases the likelihood that people in your organization will SEE and UNDERSTAND the journey that customers are taking every time they look for answers and information online. This makes it easy to take action on what’s happening, such as by publishing more helpful content to online channels, or seeing opportunities to introduce purchase paths to specific points on the journey.
1
67% of customers go to a company
website first when looking for info
on a product or service
2Recognize the Primacy of Mobile
“The mobile channel is emerging as the consumer’s primary choice for all possible service activity with service providers. The use of the mobile channel will accelerate once customers realize that their needs will always be met through this touch point. Complementing mobile self-service with assisted-service is a natural and required evolution of the mobile channel.”3
– MICHAEL MAOZ, RESEARCH VICE PRESIDENT, GARTNER
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
With mobile devices so deeply woven into the fabric of everyday life today, companies need to deliver the same type of consistent, world-class service in this channel as any other. This means making information just as quick and easy to access as any other channel.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE
AND VIRTUAL AGENTS?
IntelliResponse Virtual Agents excel in mobile environments because they eliminate extraneous content in favor of
delivering the single, approved answer to customer questions, while delivering the very same experience that is available in other channels. Exceptionally high accuracy rates of 90% and above virtually guarantee that customers will be able
to achieve full resolution of customer service queries in a self-service manner. This means companies can give customers precisely what they expect – that the decision to engage with a company in the mobile channel will in no way impede their ability to get the information they need, instantly.
2
75% of customers believe companies
should make answers to all their common
questions available via smartphones
4You Need a Strategy For Reducing
Customer Effort
“Instead of trying to drive positive loyalty by delighting customers, customer service should try to mitigate disloyalty by making the service interaction easy by reducing customer effort.”5
– MATTHEW DIXON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC RESEARCH, CEB
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Dixon, author of The Effortless Experience, pioneered
research which shows that going ‘above and beyond’ in service delivery can actually have a negative impact on customer loyalty. The implication is that companies largely waste resources in “delight” activities that have no real positive result. Instead, companies need to become aware that it’s the extent to which customers are forced to expend effort in service channels that has a much greater impact on
satisfaction and loyalty.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE
AND VIRTUAL AGENTS?
Digital virtual agents help customers in the digital channel - which is where today’s customer go FIRST for answers to their questions. This means virtual agents afford a company the best opportunity to deliver total issue resolution at the first point of contact. IntelliResponse Virtual Agents leverage intent-recognition technology, which actually interprets the INTENT behind customer questions and delivers the one right answer. Related questions and Top questions are all provided so that customers expend less effort and get ALL questions answered in one interaction, with less need to call back or email the company later.
Expect Virtual Agents to
Drive Revenues
“The business case for virtual assistants has historically been built on contact center cost savings, with any lift in revenue considered de minimis. But today’s tools are built to monetize self-service by driving revenue through measurable increases in conversion and average order values across online, mobile, store and contact center touchpoints.”6
– BRENDAN WITCHER, PRINCIPAL ANALYST SERVING EBUSINESS & CHANNEL STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS, FORRESTER
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Automatically serving marketing offers that match to the dominant intent in the customer’s mind as part of the self-service experience adds a highly-relevant purchase path to virtually every self-service interaction your customers undertake.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE
AND VIRTUAL AGENTS?
IntelliResponse Virtual Agents feature intent-based
technology that delivers highly relevant marketing offers to those customers who enter your digital channel in search for answers and information.
We call this technology IntelliResponse OFFERS and it goes way beyond simple keyword matching, by serving ads that match the intent behind a customer’s question. When a customer enters a question into the IntelliResponse Virtual Agent, their question triggers a relevant targeted ad to be served alongside the answer.
This can result in click-thru rate improvement of up to 20X and conversion improvement of 15X compared to ads served on web pages where the customer intent is unknown.
4
The Live Agent Channel Needs
Optimizing
“Rather than dumping all incoming interactions into a contact center... companies should consider smaller, more tactical response teams that focus on particular kinds of problems.”7
– KEITH DAWSON, PRINCIPAL ANALYST, CUSTOMER INTERACTION, OVUM
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
While the majority of customers prefer to bring their service queries to digital channels first, the live channel still has a vital role to play in handling escalations and queries that demand more personal human attention. When agents are relieved of the burden of handling the entire spectrum of incoming questions from low to high complexity, they can better focus their skills to those more involved interactions which deliver the highest value.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE
AND VIRTUAL AGENTS?
Virtual agents enable effective ‘right channeling’ whereby customers who prefer to go online for answers are given the tools they need to achieve full resolution of their issue without having to contact live support. When customers leverage digital self-service for answers to low complexity questions, significantly fewer calls will enter your the channel. And the calls that do will legitimately be of higher complexity. This elevates the value of your contact center, and allows your agents to solve true problems rather than to simply recite the same old generic answers.
5
67% of customer support calls
originate online
8The Demand for Actionable Customer
Data is Exploding
“The digitization of customer experiences — both online and in physical environments — has greatly expanded the depth and breadth of customer data available. As a result, the way CX pros use data is undergoing a significant change. Rather than be passive recipients of data reports, CX pros are becoming active data miners and explorers. Customer data is no longer the exclusive domain of data analysts. A new model has emerged where all employees have access to customer data and are empowered to use it.”9
– TONY COSTA, SENIOR ANALYST SERVING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROFESSIONALS, FORRESTER
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
There’s a significant ‘pull’ demand for data throughout
organizations, as more and more managers need timely access to actionable data in order to do their jobs. As the ‘owners’ of large amounts of customer data, customer service and experience professionals are faced with the growing expectation to get this data actionable so that it drives value throughout the company.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE
AND VIRTUAL AGENTS?
IntelliResponse Virtual Agent technology is a real-time voice-of-the-customer platform that takes unstructured data (customer questions entered across all digital channels) and presents it in actionable themes. The themes can be intuitively ‘sliced and diced’ by any user, right to the level of exploring individual questions and customer journeys. This disseminates the data into the hands of those who need it, instantly, with no additional time burden of custom reporting or manual data analysts.
6
Predictive Analytics Can Support the
Customer Journey
“The magic of modern predictive analytic platforms is that they can recognize patterns in the combination of structured and unstructured data. Then they can subject those patterns to a predictive model to understand, anticipate, and recommend “next best actions” directly to an individual or indirectly by “triggering” certain actions by a chatbot, IVR system, call routing system, a “virtual assistant” [virtual agent] or live customer care agent.”
– DAN MILLER, SENIOR ANALYST – CONVERSATIONAL COMMERCE, OPUS RESEARCH
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Insights gleaned from big data can be used by customer service and customer experience professionals to provide better support to customers and guide them more efficiently through their journey for answers and information. With so many customers now self-directing their journey online, it’s critical to have this type of intelligent guidance woven into the digital channels.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO DIGITAL SELF-SERVICE
AND VIRTUAL AGENTS?
Today’s leading digital self-service solutions come built with the capability to make big data structured and actionable. When your virtual agent technology automatically recognizes patterns that form within customer journeys, you can predict what a customer’s ‘next question’ is going to be, before they even ask it. This makes your self-service channels more capable of delivering total issue resolution.
7
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Next Steps?
Gartner predicts that by 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. The time to deploy a virtual agent solution is now. IntelliResponse Virtual Agents deliver cost savings, revenue opportunities, and voice of the customer insight to hundreds of organizations worldwide. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization meet the needs of today’s digital customer.
Sources:
