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NICE inContact

NICE release special home working solution in response to COVID-19

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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By NICE inContact

We live in a world where the only constant is change.  As we experience together the COVID 19 global pandemic and its impacts on our daily lives, the necessity of being able to adapt is very clear. In addition to the massive strains on the healthcare systems around the globe, the business world we live in is also severely impacted.  With the disruption of supply chains resulting in shortages of goods, to the current and impending layoffs of employees around the globe, the world we live in is changing at a faster pace that anyone could expect. This makes the Financial Crisis of 2009 look minor in comparison, as people are concerned about both their financial and physical well-being.

These changes hold true for contact centers given the critical role they play in business. As the front line to customers, they too need to adjust to our new reality.  Customer demands on agents are higher than ever but the safety of the contact center agents is also critical given the nature of the crisis.  How does one balance customer demands with the new reality of “social distancing”?  The roles of governments also come into play where some have restricted or eliminated freedom of movement which causes agents to be unable to get to the office. This results in businesses not being able to provide the services and support that customers expect.  Lost revenues and customers, and potentially the total closure of the business itself are inevitable for those without a plan to quickly adjust to this new reality.

Some businesses failed to have strong business continuity plans, but there are others that were preparing for any eventuality.  This includes preparing their contact center agents to work from home leveraging a cloud based technology.  Understanding how to manage the human resource elements from hiring to performance management is also a critical part of the plan.  Here are just a few best practices you should focus on when moving your contact center agents to work from home.

NICE inContact are offering CXone@home to help companies transition in 48 hours their contact center agents to a home-based work environment, at no cost for 45 days.

Choose the Right Cloud Solution
A full suite of AI and Analytics driven applications from compliance, workforce and performance management to automation.

Equip Workers with the Tools They Need to Succeed
Remote contact center workers and supervisors need the same access to applications and tools as they do when in the office.

Ensure You Transition the Right Existing People to be Remote Agents
Employees need to be self-motivated, resourceful, mindful of the importance of confidentiality (with customer data) as well as technically oriented.

Make Experts Readily Available
Employees need ready access to the companies knowledge bank of information in real time.  This should include things like attended robotic process automation.

Utilize Tools and Reporting to Track Agent Activity, Goals, and Metrics
Allow managers to effectively monitor teams remotely through things like call monitoring and recording as we as deliver effective performance management.

Optimize Skill Development with Distance and AI Driven Personalized Learning
Using distance learning or eLearning technologies to certify agents on new campaigns or products.

The crisis we are now facing should cause many of those in the contact center industry to rethink the way they do business.  Now is the time to move your contact center to the cloud to weather the storm we are currently in and be ready for those yet to come because we will always live in a world of constant change.

Learn more about CXone@home here. https://get.niceincontact.com/cxoneathome

AI key to customer service, but performance overrated

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Sixty-three per cent of contact centre leaders agree that chatbots and virtual assistants make it easier for consumers to get their issues resolved.

That’s according to findings of the second annual NICE inContact CX Transformation Benchmark, a global research study that gauges the changing attitudes of both industry professionals and consumers.

NICE inContact polled contact centre leaders in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. The report compares global findings to the 2018 consumer wave of the study, and includes year-over-year findings for the US.

NICE inContact says results reveal that businesses are confident in artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) role in delivering exceptional customer service experiences, but they overrate their own CX performance.

Compared to consumers, businesses overreach when estimating their own net promoter scores (NPS), overrate their own CX success, and underperform when it comes to delivering seamless omnichannel experiences.    

Key findings:

·       Businesses express confidence in AI. The CX Transformation Benchmark found that 63 percent of contact center leaders agree that chatbots and virtual assistants make it easier for consumers to get their issues resolved, and 68 percent of those surveyed agree that consumers want to use virtual assistants to interact with them. Findings show that significantly more US businesses now offer automated assistants / chatbots online, at 54 percent compared to 44 percent the prior year.

·       Business overreach in self-assigned Net Promoter Score (NPS). Compared to consumers, businesses give themselves higher net promoter scores for every method of communication tested. Businesses overestimate most channel-specific NPS by broad margins. For example:

o   Automated Assistant / Chatbot: While consumers award automated assistants an NPS of -8, businesses estimate they earn an NPS of 25, for a gap of 33 points.

o   Email: The consumer NPS for email is -9 while the business NPS is 19, for a gap of 28 points.

o   Text: Consumers give text a -2 NPS while businesses estimate 25, for a gap of 27 points.

·       Businesses overrate their CX success. Businesses are 15 percent more likely than consumers to agree that they make it easier for consumers to get their issues resolved in their preferred channels, and that they provide a consistent customer service experience across the purchase journey.

·       Businesses understand the value of omnichannel experiences, but underperform. While 93 percent of businesses agree that consumers expect companies to provide a seamless experience when moving between channels, only 24% of businesses globally give themselves an excellent rating on allowing consumers to switch seamlessly between methods of communication.

Paul Jarman, CEO at NICE inContact, said: “We are at an inflection point for AI in the contact center. AI innovations are at their best when paired with the human touch and deployed to address targeted customer and agent experience opportunities. AI in the contact center has the potential to add significant value to customer experience outcomes and operational performance.

“The CX Transformation Benchmark shows contact center leader confidence in AI, and we join them in delivering end-to-end AI capabilities that span the entire customer and agent experience, to empower organizations of all sizes to stay one step ahead of customer expectations.”

NICE inContact surveyed more than 900 contact center decision makers in the US, UK, and Australia. The report presents global findings from the business wave of the research and provides comparative results to the consumer study published in 2018.

For more information and to download the full research report, please click here.

CXone AI updates unveiled by NICE

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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NICE inContact has confirmed the Spring 2019 release of NICE inContact CXone, which adds multiple AI-powered updates across the contact centre.

CXone’s new AI capabilities span the entire customer and agent experience from: new AI self-service bot options, to new AI-infused forecasting and scheduling options to AI-powered interaction analytics that detect root cause issues of customer frustration.

CXone also now provides additional depth and breadth of CRM integrations for delivering a more personalised customer experience, including deeper Salesforce integration and new and enhanced pre-built integrations to other leading CRM applications.

“Our latest AI innovations help companies stay one step ahead of customer expectations in the increasingly competitive experience economy. Organisations of all sizes can now leverage new and innovative AI capabilities across the unified NICE inContact CXone cloud customer experience platform to deliver better, more engaging customer and agent experiences,” said Paul Jarman, CEO NICE inContact. 

“The NICE inContact CXone Spring 2019 Release demonstrates our dedication to continuous delivery of the latest innovations, like comprehensive AI capabilities and CRM integrations, that help our customers achieve their business goals.”

NICE inContact says CXone’s end-to-end AI capabilities enable organizations of all sizes to predict and act on AI-powered insights to delight customers, engage employees, and significantly improve agent productivity.

New CXone AI capabilities that span the end-to-end customer and agent experience include:

  • NICE inContact Advanced Chat for CXone: Makes introducing automation and AI into the contact centre environment faster and easier, while streamlining service delivery. New integrated chatbot enables organisations to configure and deploy bots to perform common tasks, while offering easy options to transparently elevate to an agent-assisted chat as needed. Customers can add AI services such as Natural Language Understanding Classification and Sentiment Analysis, Natural Language Processing Entity Identification, Language Recognition, Sentence Similarity and more. This new embedded chatbot is in addition to the more than 20 AI-powered voice and chatbot partner integrations that easily integrate with CXone and are available on the CXexchange marketplace.
  • NICE Nexidia Predictive Behavior Routing (PBR) for CXone: Connects customers with the best available agent for his or her personality, communication preferences and behavioural characteristics, powering more productive and positive conversations and call outcomes, and better customer and agent experiences. PBR leads to improved business results using advanced algorithms that adapt the best agent match depending on the top business goal identified by contact centre leaders, such as Average Handle Time, Customer Effort Time, Customer Satisfaction, Net Promoter Score®, First Contact Resolution, Sales Effectiveness, and Customer Retention.
  • AI-powered WFM Forecasting: Takes the guesswork out of workforce management forecasting with AI-powered selection of best algorithms for each forecasting scenario. Saves time with a “best pick” option that takes into account more than 45 patented algorithms, seasonality patterns and trends to smooth out anomalies in scheduling.
  • AI-driven Interaction Analytics and Insights: Drives smarter decisions, to improve customer satisfaction, with AI-driven interaction analytics that identify sources of customer frustration and unresolved issues. Patent-pending Frustration Detection goes beyond detecting negative sentiment and identifies what issues and agents contribute to customer frustration, helping businesses focus on and take corrective action in areas that negatively impact customer satisfaction. Unresolved Issue Detection identifies contact types and agents that contribute to multiple interactions.

The CXone Spring 2019 release includes additional depth and breadth of pre-built CRM integrations to help deliver personalised and contextual customer experiences. Deeper Salesforce integration offers Salesforce customers additional options and other new and enhanced CRM integrations coming soon will deliver a breadth of options for large and small organisations globally.

  • CXone Routing for Salesforce Digital Channels and New Packages for Salesforce: adds a global carrier-grade voice channel to Salesforce digital customer interaction channels, in addition to an intelligent routing engine. Adding CXone intelligent routing for digital channels can improve the customer experience through skills-based routing that combines agent proficiency with customer attributes from Salesforce to find the best customer service agent for each interaction – allowing faster resolution of customer requests, fewer transfers between agents, and options to provide higher levels of service to premium customers. Agents continue to handle digital channels from within their familiar Salesforce interface, and now with CXone agents will benefit by servicing customer requests they have the skills and proficiency to quickly and successfully resolve.
  • In addition, new CXone Packages for Salesforce extend the Salesforce Lightning Service Console with integrated workforce management, quality management, interaction analytics, and customer feedback applications.
  • New and Enhanced Pre-built CRM Integrations: will deliver a breadth of pre-built options for integrating popular CRM applications with CXone to deliver a personalised customer experience and improve agent productivity. Each CRM integration will provide a unified desktop option between CXone real-time interaction handling and customer profile and case management from the CRM, as well as bi-directional data synchronisation. New and enhanced integrations include: Oracle Service Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow, Zendesk, SugarCRM, NetSuite, SAP, and BullHorn.

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.