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 :

nuance

Balancing economics with environmental concerns in the world of customer service

 960 640 Guest Post
By:
0

Can businesses react to the current economic landscape and ‘do more with less’, while still minimising environmental impact, accelerating growth and delivering excellent customer service? We asked Tony Lorentzen (pictured), Nuance’s SVP of Intelligent Engagement…

How are modern technologies transforming the customer experience, especially within call centres?

Despite many consumers today preferring to communicate with brands online, we cannot disregard the importance of the ‘human touch’ when it comes to customer experience. As individuals, when we have a problem or even just a question, we all want to feel as if there is somebody listening to and helping us. During face-to-face interactions in the past, this was a given. However, when the interaction becomes digital it can be very easy to feel as if you are on your own. Often, those calling with an enquiry are either concerned or frustrated. The last thing they need is another barrier getting in the way of them accessing the right support quickly.

This is where modern technologies, such as biometric solutions, can help. For example, voice biometrics can use sophisticated algorithms to analyse many voice characteristics – from pronunciation and accent to size and shape of the nasal passage – to authenticate a user. Meanwhile, conversational biometrics can measure how a person uses language during messaging interactions such as live chat or email, analysing vocabulary, spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and other factors to build a model representing each person’s unique pattern of communication.

Both technologies can be used to validate whether someone is who they say they are immediately based on how they sound. This means that any interaction with a brand can be personalised from the offset, enabling individuals to feel as though they are a priority.

And how do these technologies help companies to protect their customers?

Whilst there will never be one single silver bullet for fighting fraud, using biometric technologies is a step in the right direction. This is because, by using them, customers don’t need to remember something specific and worry about that information being stolen. There is no longer even a need to be authenticated using specific passphrase such as ‘my voice is my password’. Instead, biometric technologies enable organisations to validate a person’s identity from the outset.

One company that has already witnessed some of the benefits of biometric technology – and is using it to protect its customers during this time of uncertainty – is HSBC.

In recent years banking interactions have seen a definite shift away from in-person visits. More people are now turning to digital channels and telephone banking. While this modern way of banking is more convenient for customers, it does introduce some additional risks as fraudsters may find it easier to attempt to impersonate customers by stealing or guessing personal information to pass security checks.

It’s much more difficult, however, to replicate someone’s voice, which is where HSBC UK’s voice biometrics come into play. The bank’s Voice ID system detects whether a person is legitimate by comparing their voice to the voiceprint stored for the known customer. HSBC also goes one step further by maintaining a library of fraudsters’ voiceprints to cross check incoming calls. Since the technology was introduced in the UK, over 43,000 fraudulent phone calls have been identified, with over £981 million of customers’ money protected. 

How do you think that businesses can react to the current economic landscape and ‘do more with less’ while still accelerating growth?

As customer-facing businesses start to feel the pinch, the focus will be on streamlining operations whilst still ensuring the highest levels of customer experience. Automation is likely to emerge as a primary strategy for getting this balance right. By automating customer interactions, organisations will be able to scale their services and guide customers toward lower-cost channels.

Take Swedbank as an example. At this retail bank, a virtual assistant now handles more than two million conversations a year and answers around 80% of customer questions. That’s a huge reduction in the number of routine inquiries agents have to handle, leaving them free to focus on higher value, profit making tasks.

For many call centres, automating manual workflows – such as post-call summarisation – is becoming a key part of doing business. This is because it helps to boost agent productivity and enable them to handle an increased number of customers in less time. Equally important is process automation, as organisations continue to use AI to automate backend processes, uncovering new efficiencies.

Moving forward, many contact centres will take it one step further – providing real-time AI coaching, including next best response recommendations and best practice guidance, so that new hires can perform from the outset. Meanwhile, AI-powered sentiment analysis will enable agents to offer more empathetic and efficient interactions, guiding the conversation through the fastest path to resolution.

Ultimately, widespread automation will help organisations identify and eliminate wasteful processes and duplicated effort, and optimise workflows to support greater efficiency – something which becomes even more important during challenging economic times.

Chat GPT has been grabbing media attention in recent months. How do you think this technology – and others like it will power the future of CX?

 The global public attention that greeted the launch of ChatGPT has highlighted that we’re at a pivotal moment in the development of AI. As contact volumes rise and contact centre costs face increasing scrutiny, customer engagement leaders are under pressure to do more with less, without compromising the customer experience. ChatGPT is a technology that, when implemented correctly, might be able to help with this.

This is why, Microsoft and Nuance have recently unveiled our brand new conversation boosters –  exciting GPT-powered capabilities for our contact centre AI solutions. By harnessing the power of Azure OpenAI, these have been designed to help customers to make the most of the latest advances in AI technology and create even more effective conversational experiences in Nuance Mix, our conversational AI tooling platform.

As part of this development, one of the capabilities we’ve introduced is Nuance Mix Builder – a Copilot feature in Nuance Mix – which will make it faster and easier than ever to create intelligent chatbots and voicebots that boost automation and customer satisfaction.

By utilising GPT-3 capabilities, this development will enable teams to build enterprise-grade bots and deliver conversational experiences to customers, without requiring any deep technical skills. All users will need to do is describe in their own words what they want the bot to do and Mix Builder will immediately create something relevant and meaningful. It means that this type of bot creation is no longer limited to those with a technical background. Anyone from citizen developers to speech scientists will share the same toolset, making collaboration simpler and enabling businesses to give their customer experience strategies a powerful boost.

Microsoft unveils Digital Contact Center Platform

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
By:
0

Microsoft says its new Digital Contact Center Platform will give users modern digital tools to engage customers across voice, video, and other digital engagement channels — powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Platform and Nuance.

The platform brings together a comprehensive yet flexible solution for contact centers, delivering best-in-class AI that powers self-service experiences, live customer engagements, collaborative agent experiences, business process automation, advanced telephony, and fraud prevention capabilities.

Microsoft says the recent addition of Nuance brings a new level of conversational AI, security, and automation to the contact center. This gives both customers and agents tools to resolve issues faster and with more personalized service, thus reducing resolution times while improving customer satisfaction. It also enables contact centers to offer targeted incentives to build brand loyalty and upsell opportunities to boost revenue.

It’s also partnering with peers in contact center infrastructure, including Accenture–Avanade, Avaya, Genesys, HCL, NICE, and TTEC, to ensure interoperability and compatibility with contact center systems and components companies use or plan to implement now and in the future.

Accenture–Avanade will deliver its Customer Engagement solutions starting with the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform to help customers reimagine their entire customer experience and deliver business results.

Additional launch partners include systems integrators EY, HCL, Hitachi, KPMG, PwC, TCS, and TTEC, and ISVs such as Avaya, Genesys, and NICE.

Safeguarding your customers from fraud before – and after – COVID-19

 960 640 Guest Post
By:
0

By Brett Beranek, VP & General Manager, Security and Biometrics at Nuance Communications

The spread of coronavirus has resulted in increased uncertainty for many. Even as we hopefully begin to see light at the end of the tunnel, feelings of ambiguity have triggered a variation of consumer behaviour. Some are plunging deeper into their work to stay productive and keep the feeling of development going. Others are ‘switching off’ from the news and current affairs by diving into box-sets. Many are calling their banks to check on payments, Direct Debits and seek reassurance.

Loitering behind the scenes of it all is an unfortunate reality often tied to uncertainty and associated behaviours – threat actors, also known as fraudsters. The sad truth is that fraudsters don’t stop their crimes because of a pandemic. In fact, they often seize the immense change that comes with an event like this to ramp up their activity. From social engineering to email phishing and the development of sophisticated – but bogus – websites, fraudsters are taking advantage of any guards down during this time.

During the initial phases of lockdown, we saw a huge increase in the volume of fraud attacks – ranging from 200% – 400%, depending on industry. Some of these relate directly to the pandemic and reports indicate there have been hundreds of coronavirus-related scams. With fraudsters now turning to track-and-trace apps in order to dupe individuals out of their data and hard-earned money, this is a number which is only likely to increase as we go on.

Last year, even before the impact of coronavirus hit, fraud reportedly cost the global economy $5 (USD) trillion. A global poll conducted by Nuance around the same time found nearly one in five (27%) UK consumers had fallen victim to fraud in the previous twelve months, losing an average of £1,000 each, due to inefficient passwords.

That fraud loss doesn’t just hit you and me, or the bank’s insurance premiums. It hits the firms unintentionally associated with the fraud. Customers are quick to move away from those associated to fraud when it happens, with three in five (60%) in the UK noting they would change service providers or brands if they fell victim to fraudsters through their services.

Safeguarding customers in the new normal

Over the last few months, businesses all over world have faced a myriad of challenges. Irrespective of size or sector, we’ve all needed to adapt in order to keep going. The early obstacles were around ensuring both connectivity and productivity, enabling employees to work effectively from home during this unprecedented period in history.

But securing this new home-based workforce and protecting every employee, as well as every customer, from fraud is still a major concern. Many are simply not prepared and do not have the latest safeguarding tools – such as biometric technologies – in place to shield themselves from financial loss and protect their customers from identity theft. In such an uncertain time, it’s never been more important for organisations to bolster their cybersecurity strategies and arm themselves with the technology to keep fraudsters at bay whilst maintaining usual levels of service.

The unsung heroes

The abrupt switch to home-working has put particular pressure on call centres – and their agents. Many have had little to no experience with enabling remote or home working environments and fraudsters are using this to their advantage – testing for vulnerabilities by directly attacking agents working from home or even pretending to be those agents to test for weaknesses in the wider business.

This would be a challenge enough in itself but those operatives are also having to manage a massive surge in customer call volumes at a global scale. The economic downturn has all but brought the travel and hospitality industries to their knees and customers are concerned about their finances. They have questions and – in a time when many physical banks and offices are only starting to reopen – they are turning to call centres for the answers. Banks in Ireland, for example, saw a 400% increase in contact centre calls, including an average of 7,000 calls a day from customers around mortgage-related concerns. 

In today’s circumstances, it can be difficult for customer care agents to navigate the sheer volume of calls, let alone separate the fraudsters from the real customers requesting to make these transactions. This is where biometrics can help.

The biometric barrier

With your contact centre agents tackling higher demand than ever before, biometrics could play a key role in protecting both them and your customers. Not only can it verify and authenticate a caller using just the sound of their voice and behavioural characteristics – saving your agents from having to ask knowledge-based questions – but it can also flag known fraudsters who are attempting to deceive.

This in turn gives your customers peace of mind in terms of the security of their account, and also streamlines the process and customer experience when they’re in contact with your brand.

Unfortunately, the most at risk of fraud are the elderly, especially during this pandemic. Indeed, according to Age UK, an older person in England and Wales becomes a victim of fraud every 40 seconds. This is an issue we need to address as an industry – and technology is there to support this fight. In fact, the most advanced technologies can now also enable organisations to identify those over 65 years of age when calling, and prioritise them accordingly using the sound of their voice – helping protect those at increased risk and further improve their experience.

Biometric solutions are emerging as a key resource in the armory needed to fight against fraud, especially during the coronavirus crisis. Their ability to identify customers, agents and fraudsters alike are helping to keep bad actors at bay and ensure that contact centre connections are safe and secure. By investing in such measures, businesses are taking a proactive stance to safeguard their employees and customers, putting security at the heart of their customer experience.