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Chat and Web Self-Service: Reshaping customer service strategies

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Contact centres have long been the nexus between businesses and their customers. Historically reliant on voice-based interactions, these centres have undergone a significant transformation, driven by technological advancements and shifting customer preferences. Chief among these developments are chat and web self-service solutions. Here we delve into how these innovations have reshaped contact centres and modern customer service strategies, based on input from delegates and suppliers at the Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit…

  1. Instantaneous and Omnipresent Interaction: Gone are the days when customers would patiently wait in long phone queues to have their queries addressed. Chat solutions, especially live chat, offer instantaneous interaction. Embedded on websites, apps, and even social media platforms, they ensure that assistance is just a click away. This omnipresence enhances customer experience, driving satisfaction and loyalty.
  2. Empowering Customers with Web Self-Service: Today’s customers, armed with information and a desire for autonomy, often prefer to find solutions independently. Web self-service portals, complete with FAQs, video tutorials, and community forums, empower them to do just that. This not only frees up agents to tackle more complex issues but also leads to faster issue resolution, a win-win for businesses and customers alike.
  3. Data-Driven Personalisation: Chat solutions are more than mere communication tools; they’re goldmines of data. Every interaction offers insights into customer preferences, pain points, and behaviours. Armed with this data, businesses can deliver hyper-personalised experiences, anticipate needs, and proactively address concerns, redefining customer engagement.
  4. Integration with AI and Bots: The synergy between chat solutions and artificial intelligence has given birth to chatbots. These AI-driven entities can handle routine queries, guide users through processes, and even facilitate transactions. While they can’t entirely replace human agents, they augment the service, ensuring that agents’ time and expertise are utilised optimally.
  5. Cost-Efficiency and Scalability: From a business perspective, chat and web self-service solutions are cost-effective. They reduce the need for large teams of agents, especially during peak times, and minimise infrastructure costs. Additionally, as these solutions are often cloud-based, scaling up or down based on demand becomes seamless.
  6. Enhanced Training and Quality Assurance: With chat, every interaction is documented. This proves invaluable for training purposes, allowing new agents to learn from real-world interactions. Moreover, supervisors can review chats to ensure quality, compliance, and consistency in service delivery.
  7. Shift towards Proactive Customer Service: Instead of waiting for customers to reach out, modern contact centres are adopting a proactive approach. Chat solutions, integrated with analytics, can trigger interactions based on user behaviour. For instance, if a user spends too much time on a checkout page, a chat window can pop up, offering assistance, potentially salvaging a sale.

Chat and web self-service solutions have ushered contact centres into a new era. No longer mere problem-solving hubs, they’ve become integral to delivering holistic, memorable customer experiences. As technology continues to evolve and customer expectations rise, it’s clear that these solutions will remain at the heart of transformative customer service strategies.

Are you looking for Chat and Web Self-Service solutions for your business? The Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit can help!

Image by Anna from Pixabay

How to effectively implement Web Self-Service Chat

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Web self-service chat solutions, increasingly powered by sophisticated AI, offer an exciting frontier for contact centres, enabling swift customer interactions and potential cost reductions. However, a hasty or ill-informed implementation can lead to customer frustration and missed opportunities. Here’s a guide to the crucial considerations for contact centre managers contemplating these solutions, as detailed by Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit delegates and suppliers…

  1. Understand Your Audience:
    • Demographics and Preferences: Does your target demographic prefer live interactions, or are they more tech-savvy and lean towards self-service?
    • Complexity of Queries: Some questions require human nuance, while others can be addressed by a chatbot. Recognise the distinction.
  2. Integrate with Existing Systems:
    • Database Synchronisation: Your chat solution should seamlessly integrate with customer databases, order management systems, and any other relevant backend infrastructure.
    • Consistent Knowledge Base: Ensure that the information provided via web chat mirrors that available through other channels to maintain consistency.
  3. Choose Between AI and Rule-Based Chats:
    • AI-Powered Chats: Ideal for a more extensive range of queries and can learn over time, enhancing their response capability.
    • Rule-Based Chats: These follow pre-set rules and pathways, ideal for simpler, more linear customer queries.
  4. Ensure Escalation Paths:
    • Human Handover: In scenarios where the chat solution can’t resolve a query, there should be a smooth transition to a human agent.
    • Feedback Loop: Post-interaction, gather feedback. This not only aids service improvement but can also help in refining the chat solution.
  5. Maintain Brand Consistency:
    • Tone and Language: The chat interface and interactions should reflect your brand’s voice and values.
    • Visual Design: Ensure that chat windows and buttons match your brand aesthetics and feel like an organic part of your website.
  6. Prioritise Security and Compliance:
    • Data Protection: Ensure that the chat solutions comply with regulations like GDPR. Personal customer data should be encrypted and stored securely.
    • Regular Audits: Periodically review security measures to counter emerging threats.
  7. Optimise for Mobile:
    • Responsive Design: Ensure the chat interface is user-friendly and functional across devices, especially mobile, where a significant portion of users may access it.
    • Speed: Mobile users are often on-the-go. Ensure swift interactions and avoid long wait times.
  8. Analyse and Improve:
    • Gather Metrics: Monitor metrics like resolution rate, customer satisfaction scores, and average interaction time.
    • Iterative Refinement: Use insights from the data to refine chat pathways, train your AI better, or modify the handover criteria.
  9. Staff Training:
    • Equip Human Agents: If there’s a handover from chat to human agent, ensure the agent has access to the chat transcript to offer seamless support.
    • Ongoing Education: As the chat solution evolves, ensure that staff is updated on its capabilities and limitations.

While web self-service chat solutions offer significant advantages, their true power is unlocked only with thoughtful implementation. By addressing these considerations, contact centre managers can not only improve operational efficiency but also elevate the customer experience.

Are you evaluation Web Self-Service or Chat solutions for your customer service operations? The Contact Centre & Customers Services Summit can help!

Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

Online Safety Bill UK: WhatsApp, encryption and the implications for privacy

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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By Andrew Parsons, Partner, Womble Bond Dickinson

WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging service providers have signed an open letter to oppose the Online Safety Bill ahead of its final reading in the House of Lords. This article explains the journey of the Bill so far and why WhatsApp and other organisations are opposing the proposed legislation…

The UK Online Safety Bill explained 

The UK Online Safety Bill, which aims to increase user safety of the internet,  has already experienced delays having been subject to four Prime Ministers since it was first proposed. It has also been criticized for axing its provision which would have forced big technology platforms to take down legal but harmful material. 

The latest affront on the Bill’s progress is an open letter signed by WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging service providers calling the UK Government to ‘urgently rethink’ the proposed law. The open letter, which was addressed to ‘anyone who cares about safety and privacy on the internet’ was also signed by messaging services including Signal, Element, Session, Threema, Viber, and Wire. 

Why is WhatsApp opposing the Online Safety Bill?

Prior to the Bill being escalated to the House of Lords, WhatsApp has openly said it would refuse to comply with it, citing the proposed plan as ‘the most concerning piece of legislation currently being discussed in the western world.’.

Leaders of the messaging services are asking the UK Government to rethink and to align the Bill with its stated intention to protect privacy rights. Currently, no one can access these encrypted messages apart from the sender and the recipient of those messages. Not even WhatsApp can see them. The only way the UK Government could get access to the messages would be to get hold of the sender or recipients’ device, which is not easy and means tipping off the user that their messages are being monitored by security services.

To get around this, the messaging service would need to have a ‘master-key’ allowing them to bypass the messages encryption. If this was introduced, it would pose greater security and privacy risks for the messaging services. Currently, messaging services have limited security risks as they do not know the content of the messages. Recent polling by YouGov, commissioned by the NSPCC also shows overwhelming public support for tougher measures to enforce children’s safety online.

Why do some organisations support greater monitoring of encrypted messages? 

Those in support of the Bill claim it will put new duty of care obligations on companies to keep users safe. The advancement of technology and increase in online crime including cybersecurity attacks, trolling and abuse on social media and the risks to vulnerable groups including children have rightly worried many people and organizations who want to see greater regulation of this space. Recent polling by YouGov, commissioned by the NSPCC also shows overwhelming public support for tougher measures to enforce children’s safety online. This feeling extends to organized crime, where encrypted messaging offers a haven for illicit activity which is currently inaccessible to law enforcement.

Regardless of where you stand on this debate, the Online Safety Bill appears to contradict the Government’s’ goal to make the UK a technology powerhouse which most assume would need a lighter touch on regulation. Imposing such regulatory requirements on tech companies could lead to their exit from the UK market altogether. The Government has not yet clarified how it plans to resolve this apparent contradiction. Our team will continue to closely monitor the developments and what the implications will be for clients. 

Chat apps driving the conversation when it comes to customer engagement

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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New research has revealed an apparent growing trend towards conversational experiences for customer communications, with chat apps such as WhatsApp Business Platform and social media channels such as Instagram driving the trend.

Infobip analysis shows that traditional channels like SMS still play an important role for time-sensitive messages, two-factor authentication, and one-time passwords. But when it comes to engagement and support, customers are shifting to more conversational experiences over chat apps.

The data shows a 73% and 51% increase in WhatsApp Business Platform and Email interactions in 2022 compared to 2021, highlighting the ongoing critical nature of these channels. Demonstrating the desire of customers to connect with brands on channels they already use, the data also reveals a thirty-fold increase in Instagram interactions last year. Meanwhile Google Business Messages and Apple Messages for Business interactions increased by 186% and 232%.

For customer engagement, WhatsApp Business Platform, Voice, and mobile app messaging saw the highest growth in 2022. Since the introduction of marketing messages over WhatsApp Business Platform, customer engagement and promotional usage increased interactions on the channel by 2.5 times. Meanwhile, Voice and mobile app messaging increased by 191% and 92%, demonstrating how customers now prefer instant, rich, and human-like experiences with a business or brand.

The data also shows how customers increasingly prefer to seek answers to their queries through chatbots on channels they use every day and that have rich capabilities. For instance, WhatsApp Business Platform interactions on Infobip’s chatbot increased by 69% in 2022 while Telegram and SMS interactions increased seven-fold and five-fold respectively.

When it comes to customer support, Infobip’s analysis shows customers now seek support on the conversational channels they use with their family and friends. Reflecting the desire for instant and rich messaging experiences, WhatsApp Business Platform interactions for customer support increased by 91%. Voice remains popular with a 51% increase.

“Our data reveals that conversational everything is rapidly becoming the norm for customer communications,” said Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer, Infobip. “Whether for marketing, support, or sales, customers want a conversation with a brand on the channels they already use. For customers, the benefits are clear. They get richer, more convenient, and more personalized experiences. Businesses and brands meanwhile benefit from better customer loyalty and ultimately stronger sales.”

The move towards conversational everything is mirrored across many industries:

  • Reflecting the shift from traditional banking to conversational banking, rich messaging is picking up pace with huge increases recorded on Google Business Messages, Instagram, and Telegram
  • The retail and eCommerce sector recorded significant increases in MMS, Instagram and mobile app messaging interactions in 2022
  • The data shows skyrocketing growth among rich communications channels including Instagram, Telegram, and Messenger within the transport and logistics sector last year
  • In 2022, marketing and advertising companies have increasingly turned to rich communication on MMS, Messenger, and Google Business Messages
  • MMS and Google Business Messages are leading rich channels within the telecoms industry for customer communications

Why Mobile Chat Services are Key to Boosting Customer Experience

 960 640 Guest Post
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By Pinder Takhar, Director, Marketing, mGage

This year businesses have had to adjust the way they operate and communicate with their customers. Not only has it been vital in keeping customers informed it has also been just as important to ensure customers can easily reach the brand. With the increase in customer engagement, this has meant many businesses have had to utilise existing and embrace new technologies to cope with the demand.

According to Edelman, 65 percent of consumers will base their future purchasing decisions on the ways in which a brand communicates with them. This highlights customer needs and requirements are more important than ever before.

It’s apparent that today’s consumers are looking for simple and convenient ways to engage with brands as 69%[i] of consumers prefer communicating with brands over mobile messaging rather than traditional calls. Furthermore, a study by mGage revealed that 61 percent of consumers aged 25-34 years and 56 percent aged between 18-24 favour a messaging service over picking up the phone to contact a business.

Many brands are facing challenges with call centre resourcing, customer loyalty, retention and struggling to quickly implement the latest technologies. Therefore, for many businesses, mobile messaging has become a crucial part of their customer service function to deliver an advanced customer experience.

Mobile Chat Services Enable Operational Efficiency

Customer service centres are an essential but costly function for businesses.

By implementing a mobile chat service, this enables businesses to easily answer routine customer service enquiries swiftly and deflect traffic from its call center to improve the customer service. With agent driven applications businesses can become more efficient as you can have multiple mobile chat sessions. Most importantly it helps save costs and in fact, it is reported by IBM that integration of chatbots can lead to a 30% decrease in operational costs.

Invest in Mobile Chat to Enhance Customer Loyalty

Customers today expect fast and timely responses to their enquiries and a delayed response can often be the basis for a negative review or cancelled service. A report from Forrester Research found that 63% of customers will leave a company after just one poor experience and almost two-thirds will no longer wait more than two minutes for assistance.

By incorporating an automated chat service a brand can provide the immediate and time sensitive responses consumers expect, therefore improving the customer experience and average call handling time. This is reflected in research by Chatbot Magazine that shows 69% of consumers prefer chatbots because of their ability to provide quick replies to simple questions.

Businesses can also reallocate agent resources for more complex and delicate services that may not be suited for automation.

Lead with Smarter Messaging to Increase Customer Satisfaction

Smartphone users have access to a range of channels including SMS, RCS, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp and more. In the digital era, businesses no longer operate on a set time as websites and social apps are always available 24/7, meaning that customer engagement is a constant. This is where mobile messaging technologies become essential to support this level of customer/brand engagement.

The implementation of new technologies such as RCS (Rich Communication Services), will allow brands to build interactive and engaging chatbot flows for different stages of the customer journey. Whether that is to amend a delivery, track an order or request customer feedback, by combining the rich media and interactive chat features it offers a unique capability for consumers to engage with organisations like never before. It’s also a strong incentive for brands to deliver exceptional customer service and loyalty reward programmes.

Final thoughts

As consumer attitudes shift and technology advances further, companies that incorporate mobile chat services will be able to offer a far more personalised experience that fits in better with the ever-changing demands of consumers.

We know that mobile chat services have been around for a while, however, given the technological advances in making this a more “human” experience by using A.I technology, it will continue to be a vital part of any business looking to better their customer engagement.

To find out more information on mGage’s Mobile Messaging solution please contact us.

[i] consumers-prefer-communicating-brands-over-text

Why 2020 will mark the death of the chatbot (as you know it)

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Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO at Content Guru, explains how the convergence of written and verbal chatbot functionality will bring about an entirely new Conversational User Interface (CUI)…

It’s no secret that 2020 has been an unusual year for customer communication. With international lockdowns limiting person-to-person interactions, many companies have turned to digital channels to continue relationships with their customers. Automation, and the trusty chatbot, have proved invaluable to many companies attempting to field the vast amount of customer queries caused by pandemic-induced uncertainty.

However, increased social isolation has put a premium on human interactions. Businesses that can deliver a joined-up customer journey, where the speed and convenience of automated customer service meets on-demand agent attention, will find themselves profiting from increased customer loyalty in the coming recession

Chatbots are dead. Long live chatbots

Most of us have had the misfortune of interacting with a badly configured chatbot. Whether to return faulty clothes or complain about an incorrect phone bill, we are often left feeling even more frustrated than we were beforehand.

Many businesses viewed these chatbots as a cheap panacea to all customer service problems but, in reality, this idea never came to fruition. In the last year or so, businesses should have realised that the idea of the chatbot as a magical one-size-fits-all solution, is dead.

So, the notion of the all-providing IM chatbot that was once hailed as the answer to all our customer service automation needs, is dead. However, the technology is not gone for good. In fact, the chatbot we will soon come to know is just being born.

The very fabric of the chatbot is evolving alongside the advancements in cloud, AI, and voice technologies to become a valuable part of every wider omni-channel portfolio. The convergence of written and spoken chatbot functionalities should, and likely will, be the driving force behind the rebirth of a new CUI, built on the foundations the humble chatbot began.

The resurgence of voice 

According to recent research, only 9 percent of customers felt that they would be best served by a chatbot for serious enquiries, whereas the figures for a voice call were in excess of 80 percent. But with 80 percent of contact centers wanting to adopt chatbot technology by 2020, what is does this industry know that we don’t?

Well, they are seeing the bright and not-so-distant future of this technology, and it doesn’t look like a thing like your average chatbot. The resurgence of voice-led interactions, driven by home assistants such as Alexa, and the fact that customers still overwhelmingly prefer to speak to another human for important queries, is ushering in a new Golden Age of Voice. This has led to a growing maturity in the consumer base that sees the chatbot becoming a valuable channel led by the latest, cutting-edge voice technology.

A branch of AI called Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the most recent developments that is pushing the chatbot to become more than it once was. With 2020 set to be the year that Natural Language Processing (NLP) goes mainstream in contact centres, the new CUI chatbot will benefit from the rich insights produced by this tool.

A necessary evolution

The chatbot has often been defined as just an online text-based engagement portal, but with NLP cementing itself in the last year or so as a tool that opens up unprecedented insight into voice data, especially in customer journey analytics, the chatbot should be the next to follow suit.

Yesterday’s humble V1.0 chatbot will evolve alongside these technological advancements in voice. By building on the chatbot in this way, it stops becoming a one-stop-shop of automated responses, and instead becomes the shop-front to an intelligent customer engagement hub.

In practice this simply means that those customers with more complex enquiries can be transferred to a human agent, and those with simple queries can save time by utilising the CUI alone. All using an automated CUI powered by NLP and sentiment tracking.

Sentiment is king

With NLP, by the time the agent answers a customer they know exactly what their issue is, since the call has already been categorised. Queries can be resolved faster and more accurately, since the agent is more prepared and won’t have to spend time searching for answers in real-time during the call.

There is now a big rush to roll out NLP everywhere, in all sectors. It is set to be a gamechanger in the contact centre industry, since it is manifestly more efficient than a traditional Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and supports agent activity.

Advancements in sentiment analysis will be the next big step for NLP and will continue to pave the way for monumental changes to the chatbot in 2020. This is where a sophisticated mix of keywords, tone of voice, and volume create a much deeper picture of the caller and their needs for the agent. With this information, businesses can ensure that each caller is routed to the agent or department best equipped to deal with their enquiry.

For example, if sentiment analysis during a chatbot interaction detects a customer who is distressed, the call can be routed to an agent who is experienced or trained in handling these types of conversation. This streamlines processes and ensures customers are always served by the most suitable person.

The chatbot in 2020 and beyond

So, while the chatbot as we know it is not destined to take over the world of contact centers, the future of the chatbot is far from doomed. Instead, 2020 is an exciting time for the latest evolution of this cog in the wider machine of all successful customer engagement hubs.

These changes will ultimately lay the foundations for a future where, as a consumer, it will be extremely difficult — if not impossible — to tell the difference between human and chatbot. Advances in sentiment tracking, NLP and machine learning will all drive the chatbot to become the ultimate customer service assistant.

Revolutionise your contact centre with next generation chatbot functionality: https://bit.ly/2GcY06v

Do you specialise in Web Self Service or Chat? We want to hear from you!

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Each month on Call Centres Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the customer care market – and in October we’re focusing on Web Self Service/Chat solutions.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help customer care industry buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Web Self Service/Chat solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Oct – Web Self Service/Chat
Nov – Display Boards
Dec – CRM

For more information on any of the above, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Dynamics 365 AI

Microsoft launches Dynamics 365 AI Solutions for customer care

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Microsoft has used its Ignite conference to unveil several products aimed at making Artificial Intelligence (AI) more accessible to organisations, developers and individuals.

The company has been using its chatbot solution for its own customer care in the US since earlier this year, with the virtual agent handling 650,000 sessions per week.

Now Microsoft is making the service available to 3rd parties via its Dynamics 365 AI platform, with HP and Macy’s confirmed as adopters via its Early Access Program.

The company says the Dynamics 365 AI solutions are designed to tackle high-value, complex enterprise scenarios and are tailored to existing processes, systems and data.

The first solution includes an intelligent virtual agent for customer care, an intelligent assistant for customer service staff and conversation management tools, all powered by Microsoft AI.

Microsoft claims the Australian Government Department of Human Services, HP, Macy’s and its own teams are already using the technology to improve overall customer satisfaction and handle more requests, in a shorter amount of time.

Steve Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President of Developer Platform & Evangelism and Chief Evangelist at Microsoft, said:The promise of AI has always been to make lives better and to enhance the things we are doing today in a much more efficient and more powerful way. [Dynamics 365 AI] is focused on applying AI to transform the customer service function. We have seen that today’s customer care can be costly, painful and inefficient.

“Customers generally do not enjoy needing to engage with support, agents can have low job satisfaction working with frustrated customers, and support leaders are always under CFO scrutiny leaving few dollars for innovation. We envision an AI powered future where customers get immediate, accurate and 24/7 support. Customer interactions become a source of insight for innovation and drive upsell and loyalty. A future where support agents focus on richer, more valuable interactions. That’s the future we demonstrated at Ignite.”