Virtual Agents, hype or business genius?

Is this 1995 all over again?

Early adopters of the World Wide Web were primarily university-based scientific departments or physics laboratories. The world only starting paying attention in 1992 when new generations of web browsers joined the Nexus WYSIWYG HTML editor.

Who knew that Clifford Stoll – a famous US astronomer and author – would regret his dismissal of the hype around the internet and its future. Constantly evolving, today, almost 4 Billion people access the web daily. It has become such an integral part of our everyday life, that some would say we can’t live without it.

Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Agents? Bah!

Just like in 1995, this year has seen AI, and in particular Chatbots and Virtual Agents take the crown for creating hype and excitement.

Views on the maturity of this type of technology as shown in Gartner’s Hype Cycle might have many businesses wondering if they should wait to invest or not at all, especially since predictions of Virtual Agent technology’s game-changing potential have been circulating since 1995.

The truth is that text analysis and natural language processing are getting better all the time. The list of queries that can be answered, and tasks resolved without human interaction, is growing.

Automation is not coming, it’s already here.

Back to the future

Self-serving answers when they need assistance is not a new concept anymore, in fact customers expect seamless customer experiences across desktop, mobile and social channels. This is not news to businesses either and most will have incorporated – or are looking to integrate – a powerful intelligent FAQ system into their customer service/experience strategy.

So, what’s the deal with Virtual Agents?

Virtual Agents are not only upping the personalisation stakes. Virtual Agents, when deployed correctly, with a set of specific goals, can generate leads, increase sales, and grow a business in a big way, and this is only the beginning!

The question is, are you a Clifford Stoll or would you like to find out more about all this “hype”?

The campaign for better service

The politics of creating exceptional customer service

Politicians, representatives of the people, aim to serve their country to prosper economically and ideologically.

Team Synthetix had the honour of meeting Sir Allen Haselhurst, our MP on Monday, 13 February. Not really knowing what to expect, he had a calm and approachable manner. He discussed with Synthetix, the challenges faced by many of the UK’s businesses, especially after the volatile events of 2016 which is set to impact greatly on the future of many businesses.

Interested in exploring the online customer service software solutions that Synthetix develops, how it enhances online customer support, and save our customers time and money we used the Utility industry as an example to explain what we do.

He was impressed that nearly half of all the large UK water companies use online customer service technology from Synthetix and that 6 ranked in the top 10 for customer service in 2016-2017.

Collectively this means our utility clients have 28.62 million customers who might need assistance or answers (and that’s just utilities). We are proud to say that many of these customers’ issues will be resolved using Synthetix web self-service, live chat or intelligent web forms, and even when customers do have to speak to an agent, the Synthetix Agent Knowledge-base will assist agents to answer customer queries with confidence, regardless of the channel they use to contact their utility provider.

If Synthetix were in politics – the highest, rung of dignitaries in a country – we are convinced that our portfolio of brands would vote for our seat in Westminster. We are not just fanatical about our customers, but advocates of the creation of exceptional customer service. Imagine a nation full of happy customers – just putting it out there.

We are so proud of what we have achieved in the last 17 years. In fact, apart from the suite of online customer service tools we have developed up until now, we have been trend setters. We were pioneers of Virtual Agents as a concept, which seems strange with the industry finally catching up to the idea.

We have a personal relationship with each of our customers across a wide range of industries, creating cutting-edge online customer service solutions, leaving the politics up to others.