Contact Centre Summit | Forum Events Contact Centre Summit | Forum Events Contact Centre Summit | Forum Events Contact Centre Summit | Forum Events Contact Centre Summit | Forum Events

Posts Tagged :

chatbots

Only 8% of B2B & B2C customers used a chatbot during most recent customer service interaction

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0
Only 8% of customers used a chatbot during their most recent customer service experience, and of those just 25% said they would use that chatbot again in the future.

New research from Gartner suggests that despite customer service and support leaders’ growing focus on chatbots, customer use of them remains low, suggesting they don’t consistently help customers accomplish their goals.

Its survey of 497 B2B and B2C customers from December 2022 through February 2023 found the ability of a chatbot to move the customer’s issue forward was the top driver of adoption, explaining 18% of the variance in customers’ likelihood to use their chatbot again.

“While many customer service and support leaders look to chatbots as the future of the function, customers clearly need some convincing,” said Michael Rendelman, Senior Specialist, Research, in the Gartner Customer Service and Support practice. “To improve chatbot adoption, the key is to focus on improving the chatbot’s ability to move customers’ issues forward.”

Resolution rates vary greatly by issue type: Just 17% of billing disputes are resolved by customers who used a chatbot at some stage in their journey (see Figure 1), while resolution rates for customers making a return or cancellation were as high as 58%.

Figure 1. Resolution Rates by Service Issue Type for Chatbot Users

Source: Gartner (June 2023)

While service organizations have a deep understanding of the capabilities and limitations of their chatbots, and what issues are a good match for chatbots to resolve, customers do not. The survey found customers are just 2% more likely to use a chatbot for a return/cancellation than use it for a billing dispute, despite a significant difference in resolution rates between the two.

“Chatbots aren’t effective for all issue types,” said Rendelman. “As generative AI makes them more advanced, customer confusion about what chatbots can and can’t do is likely to get worse. It’s up to service and support leaders to guide customers to chatbots when it’s appropriate for their issue and to other channels when another channel is more appropriate.”

Daktela enhances its automated chat functionality with Coworkers.ai acquisition

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

Daktela has acquired Coworkers.ai, with the technology set to be integrated into its software by the end of this year, enhancing the company’s existing chatbot capability and enabling businesses in the UK to deploy complex automated chat solutions in their customer communications.

Coworkers.ai are intelligent virtual assistants that use contextual AI. This means they understand the intent of the person they’re communicating with; they recognise moods and understand any cultural, historical and situational features. This type of AI uses machine learning combined with algorithms that listen and learn, taking a human approach to process content.

Intelligent voicebots, chatbots and mailbots can speed up resolution times and deliver more meaningful, accurate, and relevant recommendations and answers. They ultimately allow customers to get answers faster, self-serve 24/7 and free your staff from time-consuming, repetitive tasks.

The Coworkers’ pronunciation, intonation, and reactions are also natural, so many users don’t even know they’re communicating with a bot.

For Daktela, this is the first of many planned acquisitions. In addition to organic growth and global expansion, this should place the company among the top 10 global providers of CCaaS services in the next five years.

David Hájek, Co-Founder and Head of Global Expansion at Daktela, said: “Our acquisition strategy has two parts. We are looking for companies with a similar focus and profile, as Daktela, in those foreign markets where we are not present today or where we are starting. The second type is technological acquisitions, which will help us fundamentally improve our product portfolio and scale our core technology; Coworkers.ai is an example of this. Artificial intelligence is no longer a buzzword today; within a few years, it will become a necessary reality in companies.”

His words are echoed by Gartner’s analysis, which stated that by 2026, 10% of customer and business communication should be automated due to artificial intelligence, saving companies an estimated 80 billion US dollars.

Daktela’s acquisition of Coworkers.ai comes three years after its inception. A significant benefit of their solution is that it uses its own natural language processing (NLP) technology based on artificial intelligence.

Coworkers.ai co-founder Luboš Urbančok added: “Thanks to this, our voicebots and chatbots are significantly ‘smarter’ than others and can solve even more complex requests. At the same time, we are a low-code platform, which means that practically anyone can handle the implementation in the company even without programming knowledge,” C

The Coworkers.ai enhanced chatbot and voicebot technology will be available in the UK from December 2022

If you’d like to find out how this technology can help your business communications, please get in touch with Daktela UK. Tel: 0800 470 2159 Email: info@daktela.co.uk

Brands moving to digital interactions ‘leaving older consumer behind’

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

Older consumers are being left behind when businesses digitise their customer facing operations, requiring organisations to take a more thoughtful approach to their digital engagement to ensure inclusivity.

Findings in research by Twilio reveal that while UK consumers over 65 hold significant digital shopping power, with 76% relying on online shopping, only 12% feel understood by brands they interact with digitally.

While many in this age group are digitally-savvy, the communications options offered by businesses can often fall short of providing a reliable route to resolution, eroding trust.

Meanwhile, more accessible methods of communication, like phone or email, are also often phased out in a drive for digital transformation, without consideration for the diversity of needs from different customer groups and the complexity of some customer support situations.

Use of modern technologies like chatbots should be judicious, and businesses must digitise with consideration of every customer’s needs.

The majority of consumers in the over 65 group indicated that they find it hard to get in touch with companies, because many organisations do not design their customer engagement with the nuances of different demographics in mind. Significantly, 85% of consumers over 65 said they would rather speak to someone over the phone compared to other methods.

That said, 16% from this demographic are happy to use technology channels such as chatbots and apps to interact with brands. Businesses should therefore analyse the feedback and data customers share to ensure they offer every customer the options that best suit them.

“Trust between business and customer is crucial, particularly in challenging economic times, and building that trust with tailored, personalised communication is key,” said Sam Richardson, Principal Visioneering Consultant at Twilio. “Customer engagement needs to be inclusive in order to be effective, and good old fashioned phone calls don’t need to fall by the wayside in an effort to modernise – in fact, all age groups find them useful for chatting through more complex problems. While in-app chat and SMS are useful for delivery updates and might perfectly suit more digital-native audiences, businesses should also think about what people with accessibility needs require from them.”

Failing to cater to the over 65 demographic also represents a missed business opportunity because they make up such a prominent portion of the online retail market. The 18-24 bracket is notably more likely never to shop online compared to over 65s: only 6% of consumers over 65 said that they never do their shopping online, compared to 30% of 18-24 year olds. Similarly, over half (51%) of over 65s read or keep hold of digital marketing communications.

But a lack of consideration is creating a trust barrier with older consumers, including when it comes to marketing. Half (50%) of shoppers over 65 didn’t know where brands got their contact details from, while one in five indicated that they believe brands only care about their money. This contrasts with younger consumers, who feel more understood as an audience, but are actually not as engaged with internet purchases.

“Older demographics are clearly more interested in regular brand engagement online compared to younger consumers,” continued Richardson. “As this older age bracket continues to grow in an ageing population, brands need to be better prepared to cater to older consumers digitally. This means reflecting customer preferences in available communication methods, as well as using first-party data – data collected consensually from customers – to deliver accurate, personalised experiences that make customers feel heard and understood. Technologies like customer data platforms can translate this data into insights, and this provides businesses valuable direction as to what customers actually want.”

Though companies dedicate a lot of time to getting to know their customers, data shows that many older consumers feel overlooked by the ways businesses engage with them, which is diminishing loyalty. Only one third (32%) of respondents over 65 feel like valued customers, 15% feel that brands care about them, and only 10% feel that they represent the main target audience when it comes to marketing communications.

Twilio commissioned the research in June 2022, with Walnut UNLIMITED conducting the survey. Walnut Omnibus is a quantitative syndicated survey conducted online twice a week with a nationally representative sample of 2,000 GB adults (aged 18+). The survey was completed in two waves, with a total of 4,028 consumers participating, 806 of which were over 65.

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: eGain customer engagement solutions

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

By eGain

eGain customer engagement solutions deliver digital transformation for leading brands – powered by virtual assistance, AI, knowledge, and analytics.

Our comprehensive suite of applications help clients deliver memorable, digital-first customer experiences in an omnichannel world.

To find out more about eGain, visit http://www.egain.com.

Why should you think about Chatbots?

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

By mGage

Chatbots are nothing new, having first been introduced in the 1960’s in the form of a computer programme called ELIZA. This programme laid the framework for what chatbots would become, a computerised conversational tool.

Today chatbots have become much more common in everyday usage and for many businesses it’s become an essential part of their customer service department to deliver an enhanced customer experience for its customers.  In fact, a report by juniper research shows that chatbots will be involved in 85% of all types of business-customers interaction.

What is a chatbot

A chatbot or also known as conversational agents are applications that replicate written or spoken human speech for the purposes of creating an interaction with a real person.

Chatbots can be though text or voice and can be deployed on your websites, applications and messaging like SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat and more.

Why should businesses think about Chatbots?

  1. Invest to Enhance Customer Experience

Today’s customer requires quick and timely responses to their inquiries 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 2 minutes for assistance.  By integrating a chatbot this can provide the immediate and time sensitive responses consumers expect from brands. 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.

Customer and user experience experts have realised that an omnichannel experience is essential in meeting the needs of today’s consumers. Smartphone users have access to a variety of channels including SMS, RCS, Facebook, WhatsApp and more. As brand websites and social media apps are always in operation this means that customer engagement is a constant. In a digital era, businesses no longer operate on a set time. This is where chatbots become essential to support this engagement. Once implemented they always allow each channel to effectively provide customer support.

  1. Automation Enables Operational Efficiency

According to a report by IBM, chatbots could handle 80% of routine customer questions. Customer service is an essential but costly function for businesses which is why having an automated tool like a text chatbot is vital, as it can provide customer service 24/7. The other reality is customer service reps can’t always be available.

By implementing an automated chatbot, this can enable businesses to easily answer customer service enquiries or issues swiftly and to reduce incoming call volumes and human interaction. In fact, it’s reported by IBM that integration of chatbots can lead to a 30% decrease in operational costs.

  1. The rise of conversational messaging

Conversational messaging is transforming the messaging landscape as it speaks to the desire for customers to receive more personalised, relevant and engaging messaging. By integrating chatbots businesses are able to have automated assistants that can support customers with their unique requests and interests.  We see this within the increasing popularity of NLP (natural language processor).  NLP chatbots utilise AI technology to be more natural and pick up on the context of a customer request to be in effect more “human”.

Furthermore, many businesses today are looking to new solutions like RCS (Rich Communication Services),  the much anticipated upgrade to SMS.  RCS enables conversational messaging with the chat capabilities so that they can respond to a customer’s request all within the same messaging thread on the native RCS app. Features like the carousels and ‘suggested responses’ act as automated actions that make the user experience more streamlined and enhances the B2C messaging experience to reflect the way customers expect to message today.

Final thoughts

Chatbots have been here for a long time and will continue to be an essential part of any business. Historically customers may not have liked automated and artificial customer service but the convenience and rapid service they provide has enhanced the customer experience and more importantly allows businesses to keep up with the requirements of operating within an ever-evolving digital era. Chatbots over messaging apps like SMS and RCS should not be ignored as a recent study conducted by mGage revealed that 97% of consumers use some form of messaging. It’s a widely used channel by consumers therefore the reach is remarkable.

To learn more about how you can utilise chatbots within your messaging get in-touch with mGage today!

GUEST BLOG: What role will Chatbots play in 2020? 

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

Interesting times are ahead as contact centres cut through the jargon, dispel the myths and embrace new AI technology to serve customers and agents.

Colin Hay at Puzzel takes a closer look at the top three uses for Chatbots… 

This time last year, Gartner predicted that Virtual Customer Assistants (VCAs) or Chatbots will dominate the contact centre industry by 2020. Already, more than half of organisations have invested in the technology for customer service.[i] 

However, despite all the hype and discussion about Chatbots and all things Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is still an element of confusion about their value and a reluctance to adopt this new technology more quickly.

These are interesting times with exciting possibilities on the horizon for Chatbots as organisations explore the options and the opportunities ahead. From accelerating response times for customers to plugging the gaps in agent skills and availability, Chatbots are here to stay but how are they best used?

Three Top Uses for Bots 

Here are three ways to use bots to enhance customer conversations and boost agent performance for improved service.

  1. Direct transactional contact with customers – these are good old-fashioned Chatbots as we know them and their function focuses primarily on the customer. Designed as an efficient and cost-effective addition to any organisation’s self-service offering, they integrate directly into the core contact centre solution to improve first contact with customers and save valuable live agent time. For contact centres which already have existing investments in Chatbots, ready-made connectors allow companies to “Bring their own Bot” and seamlessly link to their contact centre infrastructure.
  2. An all-important triage resource – in many ways, Chatbots are a Chat version of IVR by acting as a smart connector as they transfer customer conversations over to human agents. Chatbots bridge the digital and human worlds by ensuring live agents have all the information they need, at the time of hand-over, to deliver a complete and end-to-end satisfying customer interaction.
  3. Dedicated Virtual Personal Assistants for Agents – the latest application of Chatbots maximises AI learning from the contact centre and other parts of the business to provide agents with the real-time knowledge they need, along with suggested solutions, to solve customer queries. Media archives within the contact centre solution are a perfect place to create a living library of machine learning and historical records of previous Chat interactions. Transcribed voice conversations, full of unstructured data, are transformed into structured data that is easily searchable by text, thanks to the power of AI.A new breed of “bot buddies” will enable advisors to boost their performance at work and deliver exceptional customer experience. Agents can engage with them through speech or text communication while the virtual technology works hard behind the scenes, using inbuilt intelligence to respond to agent enquiries and support staff in real-time.

What role will Chatbots play in 2020?

Some might say that “the jury is still out” in terms of the real role that Chatbots will play in 2020 but one thing is sure they will be a part of customer service. According to Gartner, more than 50% of enterprises will spend more per annum on bots and chatbot creation, than on traditional mobile app development by 2021[ii]. It’s just a question of what part those bots will play in contact centres?

To find out more, Puzzel invites you to join an executive breakfast briefing with the UK Contact Centre Forum on 27th February 2019.

To register or to discover what role Chatbots will play in your contact centre in 2020, click here.

Top mistakes businesses make with AI in the Contact Centre – And how to avoid them

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

By Enghouse Interactive

There is a great deal of discussion in the marketplace regarding robots and artificial intelligence (AI) and their future role in the contact centre. Much of this is hype.

A lot of people are talking hypothetically about what robots might do in a customer service context. Fewer are using a truly AI-driven approach to engage with customers today.

There is no one-size fits all answer here. Some organisations will continue to use human service as a key part of their value proposition and differentiation, but most are bringing in a growing element of AI and automation as they move to a more self-service-based approach.

As early as 2011, analyst, Gartner was predicting that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.

But, as they implement chatbots and other types of AI, there are a range of pitfalls businesses need to watch out for. Here, we outline some of the biggest and how businesses can best avoid them.

Click here to download our resources to help you on your journey with ChatBots and AI strategy into the contact centre.

UK insurance contact centres ‘battle 60% rise in call duration’

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

UK insurance companies expect to make significant investments in AI-enabled web chat, automated customer identification and interaction analytics technology within the next two years.

A survey of over 200 UK contact centres undertaken by ContactBabel shows that insurance operations expect their use of web chat to grow from 44% today to 94% by the beginning of 2020.

The use of interaction analytics is expected to rise to 43%, as is automated speech recognition, with much of the latter being used to reduce fraud and the time required to take phone customers through security.

In 2012, only 7% of inbound interactions with insurers were through email, but this has risen sharply to over 15% today.

Due in part to increased automation, the sector will see a drop in contact centre employment of around 5,500 jobs by 2020.

The report’s author, Steve Morrell, Principal Analyst, ContactBabel, said: “With average call lengths in UK insurance contact centres having risen by over 60% since 2010, the industry has embraced the opportunities that digital channels can bring, especially in terms of automating simpler interactions.

“AI-enabled web chat can handle a large proportion of straightforward customer requests, while automating the customer identity process will shorten call times and reduces fraud. The insurance sector has also seen very significant rises in the average time taken to answer calls, as well as the length of calls. The significant growth in digital activity, particularly email, shows that insurers are understanding how their customers wish to contact them, while managing the cost of service.”

The report is downloadable free of charge from www.contactbabel.com/reports.cfm.

Digital channel use gaining ground – and it’s not because of AI Chatbots

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

Use of digital channels by consumers to contact brands is gaining ground on more traditional methods, with email doubling and chat tripling among US consumers in 2018, according to a new study.

However, the research by NICE inContact also found that use of “automated assistants” or chatbots by consumers for recent service interactions is still limited at only 8 per cent globally.

The second annual NICE inContact Customer Experience (CX) Transformation Benchmark includes consumers from three countries – United States, United Kingdom and Australia – with year-over-year results for US (2018 vs 2017), and new benchmark data for UK and Australia.

Key findings include:

  • Agent-assisted Digital Channels Gain Ground, Chat Reigns for Satisfaction

The CX Transformation Benchmark year-over-year results among US consumers show growth of digital channels for service – use of email doubled and chat tripled. Consumers in all regions are most satisfied with online chat with a live agent, compared to ten other channels evaluated. At 56 percent, more than half of US consumers surveyed are highly satisfied with chat interactions; 47 and 44 percent of UK and Australia consumers, respectively, report being highly satisfied with their most recent chat experience.

  • Consumers Want True Omnichannel Customer Service

Consumers want true omnichannel customer service, and service that’s seamless, convenient and quick. If a conversation needs to move from chat to a phone call, nine out of 10 consumers say they expect a seamless transition when moving from one communication method to another. Chat and phone are each viewed as convenient and quick, requiring a minimal amount of effort.

  • Consumers Reward Companies Who Deliver Exceptional Customers Service

Today’s consumers are vocal about the brands they love, and aren’t afraid to share negative experiences through their network. The study found that, overwhelmingly, customers who have exceptional experiences are more willing to: recommend that company on social media (83 percent), buy more products and services from that company (89 percent), and go out of their way to purchase from that brand (82 percent). But, one-time exceptional service is not enough to cement loyalty as 81 percent of consumers reported that they are very likely to switch to another company if they’ve had a bad customer service experience.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Has Room for Improvement, Consumers Skeptical

While businesses continue to experiment with AI applications within customer experience channels, only eight percent of global consumers interviewed had used an AI enabled service channel like chatbots or a home electronic virtual assistant for their most recent customer service interaction. The study found that nine out of 10 consumers prefer to talk to a live agent rather than a chatbot or virtual assistant. And, consumer satisfaction with automated assistants is low, with only 27 percent of users giving a 9 or 10 rating out of 10. AI has yet to mature, and consumers agree. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said chatbots and virtual assistants need to get smarter before they are willing to use them regularly, and 66 percent disagree that chatbots and virtual assistants make it easier to get issues resolved.

“Businesses are no longer just being measured against their direct competitors – they are being measured against every positive customer experience a consumer has ever had,” said Paul Jarman, CEO of NICE inContact. “The global CX Transformation Benchmark Study findings highlight that to deliver exceptional customer experiences that drive growth, businesses must continue their digital transformations to power smart and seamless omnichannel interactions. Despite widespread interest in AI, the research shows that its application is still finding its way in delivering exceptional customer experiences. Investing in an open, native cloud contact center platform can help businesses meet evolving and demanding customer expectations highlighted in the study.”

NICE inContact surveyed more than 2,400 consumers across the globe on their most recent customer service experience across 11 different channels – both agent-assisted and self-service – on over 4,600 total interactions.

To download the full research report, click here.

GUEST BLOG: Most customers hate AI & chatbots for this reason…

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

By IFS | mplsystems

There’s no doubt that artificial intelligence is going to be more and more common in customer service and support interactions. Its versatility in expanding self-service options across channels, ability to capture robust customer insights, and efficiency in handling contacts make it a very attractive investment for contact centre leaders.  Customers realise this and are tolerant of the increased use of AI technologies, but they fear that organisations will abuse and misuse the automation.

Research by pwc1found that 78% of UK customers (and 75% across all other countries) “want to interact with a real person more as technology improves.” Additionally, 59% of all consumers feel companies have lost touch with the human element of the customer experience. Most customers hate AI because organisations are using it to replace the human touch, instead of augmenting it. This is not a sustainable solution for companies who want to stand apart from their competition. The customer experience is increasing in importance as a competitive differentiator and a bad AI implementation puts revenues, customer satisfaction, and even employee engagement at risk.

With how customers feel about AI, and all that is on the line, what can contact centre and customer service leaders do to find the balance between creating exceptional experiences and delivering efficient service through chatbots or virtual assistance?

One of the best ways to get started is by leaning into the natural advantages of each method for delivering service.  Artificial intelligence carries certain distinct advantages in efficiency that aren’t easily duplicated by humans. In the same respect, humans provide advantages in handling emotional, volatile, or complex interactions that technology cannot. If organisations want to deliver a service experience that their customers won’t hate, they need to play each platform to its advantages and seamlessly integrate them together.

This poses two fundamental challenges for contact centre leaders:

  1. They need to thoroughly understand their customer’s expectations and the moments of truth within the typical customer journey.
  2. They must leverage technology that enables immediate self-service, provides seamless transitions to agents, and delivers access to the full context of each interaction.

The first challenge can’t be overcome by the contact centre alone. It takes a cross-functional group of stakeholders, ranging from the contact centre to marketing, product development, and more, to fully understand and map customer expectations and moments of truth in their journeys. Along the way, customers should be interviewed – using methods like focus groups and surveys – to test and affirm any assumptions about their preferences and previous experiences.

From the perspective of technology, contact centre and IT leaders should not underestimate the importance of using an integrated platform that balances self and assisted service. For example, the highly repetitive and transactional tasks should be easily automated; contacts needing a degree of triage should employ chatbots or virtual assistance solutions as a first line of defense, and the platform should quickly and seamlessly escalate to an agent when necessary. If the customers need is resolved quickly and easily, they’ll be satisfied, and they won’t care how a company gets it done.

The reality is that customers don’t hate AI & chatbots, they hate organisations who don’t know how to provide great service.

1 PwC Future of Customer Experience Survey 2017/18

  • 1
  • 2