Throwback Thursday: The Advancement of Back-End Technology

This week I found a screenshot of one of the first administrative dashboards for a noHold Virtual Agent. As you can see to the right, noHold's "portal manager" was the place an administrator would visit to learn more about customer interactions with the Virtual Agent. The "portal manager" provided metrics to administrators that could be leveraged to augment customer satisfaction.

Knowledge Management has come a long way since the beginning of noHold. Companies now have the capability to gain more knowledge about their consumers and provide better service because of it. There are default metrics that companies can look at (effectiveness, abandonment, escalation, etc.) and they can also create custom reports. For example, a leader in the PC industry utilizing a customer-facing Virtual Agent is interested in custom reports by region. Being able to look at specific factors that are effecting support while getting closer to the end user experience is a major asset to building a stronger customer relationship. 

Another function for administrators that has evolved and become increasingly important is having open API's. With API's, administrators have complete control of the User Interface (UI) as well as integration with a myriad of 3rd party systems. This function gives companies the freedom to create seamless experiences while positioning the Virtual Agent in a way that complements corporate branding.  

Happy Throwback Thursday!

noHold Customers Ranked Higher in Customer Satisfaction!

Clients leveraging Virtual Agent technologies for customer self-service (such as Webroot and AVG) lead the security software industry in customer satisfaction, with Net Promoter Scores (NPS) of 59% and 33%. The graph shown below is courtesy of Webroot, a leader in the security software industry and was featured on the homepage of their website; http://www.webroot.com/us/en/  

Congratulations to Webroot and AVG for outperforming the competition in customer satisfaction. Kudos!

Throwback Thursday: How noHold Virtual Agents Were Born

This week I wanted to share a story about how noHold Virtual Agents were born...

Before noHold, the CEO founded another start-up company called STEFRA(TM), which helped create the concept for noHold. STEFRA(TM) was working with multiple consumer electronic companies, including the leading provider of personal computer and tablet accessories. (Remember the golf ball webcam?) STEFRA provided software included in these products. They began to receive lots of calls/emails regarding frequently asked support questions. The wheels started turning and that is where Diego Ventura thought of the idea for automating online customer support. Developing something similar to live chat, but instead customers interact with Artificial Intelligence. With this idea, STEFRA(TM) was able to start providing Virtual Agent technology for video software. Below is a picture of the first STEFRA(TM), prototype Virtual Agent.

Today, Virtual Agents have gained major popularity with consumers. Online self-service is what people demand and they are feeling more comfortable interacting with Virtual Assistants. Think about Siri or IBM's Watson...in this era people are interacting with Artificial Intelligence daily!

Happy Throwback Thursday!

The Future of Self-Service in the Financial Industry

Self-service is all around us. From the self checkout kiosks in the grocery store, to the self check-in terminals at the airport; even restaurants are turning to tablets for order fulfillment. The truth is, consumers prefer self service. According to NCR, which makes self-service technology, 85% of consumers prefer brands that offer several forms of self-service: online, at kiosks and via mobiles, etc. (www.economist.com, 2009). When it comes to the web, leading analyst firm Gartner predicted that in 2012, “By 2014, 50% of online customer self-service search activities will be via a Virtual Assistant (VA) for at least 1,500 large enterprises.” (Source: Gartner Predicts 2012: CRM Customer Service and Support Staggers in the Posthuman Age, Jacobs, J.)

One Fortune 500 organization reports that more than 70% or customers stated that the support site is their first stop, before other support channels such as phone support. More customers engage with online support offerings and spend more time navigating through support pages with a greater success rate in finding what they are looking for.

Statistics gathered by Gartner, in August 2013 are shown in the graph below. The data represents bank channel usage by country and preferred channel. To get direct insight into consumer behaviors and attitudes around financial services, Gartner conducted consumer research in 9 countries. Visits to banking channels via PC represent the most popular channel for accessing accounts. “Despite this higher level of branch use in emerging markets, the pattern across all countries surveyed is consistent, with a substantial drop-off in branch frequency compared with digital channels for routine banking activities (such as checking a bank balance, initiating a bank transfer or obtaining the answer to a query). Adjusting to this shift effectively is critical for retail banking organizations and the IT teams that support them.” (Source: Gartner: Bank Customers Still Love Branches, but Just Don't Use Them as Much. David Schehr, August 2013.)

Accessing accounts online via PC represents the most popular interaction channel. Responding to queries online (via self-service) should be a high priority for financial institutions.

Source: Gartner (August 2013)

Virtual Personal Assistants Shine a Spotlight on Virtual Agents


According to a blog shared by Kate Leggett, Forrester Research, "Customers today are trained to go online to get answers to their questions by navigating a company’s FAQ list, or by typing in keywords to surface the right piece of content. In fact, 66% of customers use this channel. But at 51%, the satisfaction ratings for this channel are the lowest of all the communication channels that Forrester tracks. It's because keeping content in line with customer demand and making it easily accessible to customers is very hard to do. Enter the world of virtual agents. These solutions use natural language processing and artificial intelligence to greet a customer and to serve up the right answer to their question, which is asked using a customer's natural speech pattern, not just keywords. These answers could be a straightforward response, knowledge base content, data (like ‘Did my check clear?’), or the result of a transaction (like ‘Book me on the next flight home out of San Francisco’). With the right tuning and integration to back-end systems, virtual agents are able to personalize and contextualize customer interactions.” Gartner predicts that "Virtual personal assistant usage in business will grow more quickly in 2017 and 2018 than iPad usage did in 2010 and 2011." (Gartner Predicts 2014) Google™’s recent announcement of Hummingbird further augments these predictions – As stated by Google’s VP of Search, the goal was to create a more humanlike experience. Accompanied by Siri, Sherpa, Google Now, and other Personal Virtual Assistants, the future of interaction is self-service with enhanced humanlike capabilities.

We Live in a Mobile-Enabled World

In addition to these humanlike, self-service developments, the consumer demand for mobile devices has transformed the World Wide Web into the mobile web. In a recent Gartner survey (Source: Gartner: Survey Analysis: E-Commerce Customers Look to Cloud, Mobile and Transformational Change, July 2013, Fletcher, C., Alvarez G., et al.), “more than 48% of respondents plan to integrate mobile applications with their e-commerce storefronts, and more than 36% plan integrations for personalization.” Search is the top feature integrated into e-commerce platforms – more than 85% of respondents have integrated or have plans to integrate search capabilities; the top two focuses for future integration are mobile (48%) and personalization (36%).

Virtual Agents are designed to be light-weight applications that live in the cloud. They are easily optimized for mobile interaction, and can be accessed from a mobile phone application, mobile website, or even activated through scanning a QR code. They are also multi-channel, which means the technology can be leveraged across multiple channels such as: social media, in the call center, in stores or branches, as well as the web (internally for employees/externally for end customers) and mobile environments.

One of the challenges for organizations is creating a customer service experience that does not function in the same manner across all channels. In “Six Best Practices for CRM Web Customer Service Deployments” Gartner validates these points by stating “The biggest problem with most self-service solutions is when the transactional self-service solution (e.g., online ticket booking, online banking, etc.) does not have an equivalent supporting channel. If the customer needs assistance, then he or she often has to use the phone channel. This approach increases the number of calls into the call center, as opposed to reducing the number of calls, thus negating the potential savings from a reduction in incoming telephone calls.” (Source: Gartner: Six Best Practices for CRM Web Customer Service Deployments, 2012, Johan Jacobs).

A best practice for mobile strategy is to provide a customer service channel that complements the light-weight, easy to use, mobile format of the most popular devices. Similarly, create an optimized experience across various channels; for example: web, call center, social media, etc. Virtual Agents are not only ideal for these environments, but they are a part of a preferred multichannel customer experience.

Evidence in the Financial Industry

Computershare, a transfer agent that operates customer service centers for shareholder servicing for public companies and closed-end mutual fund companies, implemented a Virtual Agent in its Investor Centre in October of 2010. Brian Heffernan, Product Manager at Computershare said, “Whether it’s through Penny, the virtual agent, or her living kin conducting live chats, the overall effort is to eliminate or reduce electronic mail. We don’t want e-mails because, as any transfer agent will tell you, responding to an e-mail are the most costly method with which you could interface with a customer.” Heffernan continues by noting, “That’s because email does not generate its own responses. That requires not just a human, but a human skilled enough at responding properly—in a manner that not only fulfills the customer’s need, but also will stand up under scrutiny in a compliance review. Beyond that, responding by e-mail tends to invite … yet another e-mail from the customer. The multiple contacts ratchet up costs, dramatically. “Once it gets to the e-mail stage, it gets very expensive.”

Companies in various industries realize the importance of self-service, and not simple self-service; smarter self-service. Similar brands have also noted that a simple search would not be effective in the financial industry. There is definitely a need for enhanced and more humanlike conversation that one receives when interacting with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that uses a Natural Language Processor (NLP) and Inference Engine (IE). Mr. Heffernan acknowledges, “This can get tricky. A person whose company offers a Dividend Reinvestment Plan might simply refer to it as a Drip, when typing out one of its widely used acronyms. The system has to know that the person is referring to a DRiP. And the system has to know that companies use different acronyms for the same thing. Like DRP. Or even DSPP (Direct Stock Purchase Plan).The ins-and-outs of complex subjects, like cost-basis accounting, have to be grouped and weighted, to help create more precise responses, automatically. Over time, the tool [Virtual Agent] gains experience and gets better.” (Source: 2011 Money Management Executive, By Tom Steinert- relkeld)

The Future

In the past, the standard for web self service was based on a simple search – for example: Google site search, basic Knowledge Management (KM) search, etc. The standard for websites has been based on pushing information to the public in a format that resembles an electronic brochure. The popularity of mobile devices, along with the shift of preferred customer service channels indicates that the future is Natural Language Processing and 2 way interaction channels. Based on much research and forward looking statements from leading analyst firms and experts, self-service projects achieve the highest Return On Investment (ROI) when leveraged across all channels and optimized for the right channel experience. Virtual Agents are a key component in a successful Web Customer Service strategy, as validated by industry experts.

References:

"The Recession Spurs Self Service: Help yourself" Economist, 2009. Retrieved October 2013

Gartner Research. (2012). Gartner Predicts 2012: CRM Customer Service and Support Staggers in the Posthuman Age. [Press Release] Retrieved fromhttp://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1929014

Gartner Research "Bank Customers Still Love Branches, but Just Don't Use Them as Much" David Schehr, August 2013."

Gartner Research. (2013). Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2014 and Beyond. [Press Release] Retrieved fromhttp://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2603215

Gartner Research "Gartner: Survey Analysis: E-Commerce Customers Look to Cloud, Mobile and Transformational Change" Fletcher C., Alvarez G., et al. July 2013.

Gartner Research "Gartner: Six Best Practices for CRM Web Customer Service Deployments" Jacobs, J. 2013.

"A Penny Learned: How a Virtual Agent Gets Job Done." Money Management Executive, Tom Steinert-relkeld, 2011.

© Copyright noHold Inc. 2013 All other product and service names are the property of their respective owners.

Throwback Thursday: Self-Service Kiosks: The Past, Present, and Future

Photo Credit: IBM

Above is a picture of the world’s first self-service kiosk created by IBM who partnered with American Airlines, and American Express. It was used as an airline ticket vendor and received high praise from its test trial, with 99% of users saying they would use it again. IBM continued to create and make advancements to many self-service kiosks throughout the years and still to this day.

Today, many companies are coming up with ways to enhance what can be accomplished through self-service and they have come a long way since the first kiosk was introduced. Now self-service kiosks are popping up everywhere in the community – from grocery stores to DVD rentals, airports to train stations – people are demanding self-service to be an option. Just recently, a national pilot program for Peapod was implemented. Peapod is a mobile application for online grocery shopping. This program is setup in train stations across the US (where people typically have to wait long periods of time for the next train) and individuals step up to a specific panel on the train platform and downloads the Peapod app. They can then virtually grocery shop through aisles, pay online, and be done; quick and easy. That is essentially what the customer’s want; a quicker and easier way of doing everyday tasks. And with the sort of technology resources we have, why not make life a little more efficient.

“I really think the future holds many great possibilities. I think the ATM was the first instance where a person had the opportunity to interface with a piece of machinery, and that allowed that person then to be comfortable with interfacing to other pieces that came out since then—like PCs, as an example, and we all know the success of the PC. I think we’ re going to see much, much more of that happening in the future. I think people nowadays and in the future are going to have the opportunity to not only come up with a lot of new products but also to be able to use those products in ways they never dreamed of.”

-Don Wetzel, Co-patentee of the Automatic Teller Machine.

I agree with Wetzel, the future allows for infinite possibilities that can only be imagined right now. Eventually, a shift from self-service kiosks will move to be completely in the cloud. For example, already people rarely go into the bank. ATM’s are what people prefer to use, but slowly the need for ATM's will be unnecessary because of the cloud. People can deposit checks, transfer money, etc via digital devices. Pretty soon everything will be automated; you will be able to talk to a Virtual Agent and tell it what you want, and it can do it for you.

Do you envision a world were kiosks will live in the cloud? Or are there certain situations where the presence of a kiosk is needed?

Tell Us About Your Experience With a Virtual Agent/Virtual Assistant and Win a Free T-Shirt!

I hope everyone is having a great start to their week so far! Since Halloween just passed and the season of giving is upon us, we have decided it is time for another free giveaway contest! 

We want to know what your most memorable Virtual Agent experience is! This experience could be from a virtual personal assistants like Siri, or a company Virtual Agent geared towards customer service, support, or sales. It can be a funny moment or you can share about a time that you had exceptionally GREAT customer service via a Virtual Agent. For example, "I asked_______and the Virtual Agent answered _______."

Leave a comment with your most memorable moment on any of our social media channels...including this blog! Anyone can join 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noHold

Twitter: https://twitter.com/noHoldAI 

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/nohold-inc.

The contest will start today (11/4) and end the following Sunday (11/10) at 11:59 PM. Winners will be chosen at random and receive a complementary "Albert is Okay" t-shirt! The winners will be announced and receive a message declaring their victory by end of day Monday (11/11). We have only three t-shirts to give away, but since the winners are picked randomly, it is worth it to post something to try and win! 

Remember to like us on Facebook//follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn!  

Good Luck!

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