“Back-to-School” For Delivering The Best Customer Experience

The long lazy days of summer are drawing to a close. Where has 2019 gone? September marks the start of Autumn and Christmas, believe it or not, is a mere 4 months away. While summer might be fading, it’s fair to say that ‘Back to School’ shopping will heat up retailer sales figures.

‘Back-to-school’ gets third place for the biggest peak in UK spending after Black Friday and Christmas, offering retailers an early opportunity to profit from the increased demand of school supplies. MIQ’s ‘Back-to-school’ report revealed the total UK spending on back-to-school shopping in 2018 to be £1.63 billion, which was an increase of 11% on 2017 with consumer spend reaching an average of £533 per household.

It also revealed shopping habits. It showed UK parents spreading their school shopping mostly over August in preparation of the majority of UK schools starting in the first week of September. Back-to-school shopping is not one-stop shopping either. The NPD Group found that shopping for school related products took an average of 16 trips. Although the bulk of purchases happen in-store, digital remains a vital part of the equation for retailers as consumers shop around for the best value deals.

Noisier than a school playground

The report captured more than 32 million opportunities for back-to-school retail in July alone with parents searching for deals, both prior to visiting a retailer and while they physically visited the store. With 2019 predicted to have record sales numbers, and new technologies changing customer expectations, retailers with an online presence need a strong digital strategy to differentiate them from the noise and to ensure they don’t lose a sale to a competitor at the point of purchase.
While retailers buckle up for the run-up to peak trading, customer experience transformation should not be put on hold.

Teacher’s pet

Customers are not bound by normal working hours when looking to make an online purchase or to find support. With Forbes stating that 92% of customers cease to do business with a brand because of bad customer experience, it’s crucial to take time to reflect and plan a multi-channel strategy to assist in creating omni-channel customer engagement to ensure, seamless experience across multiple channels.
And although there is a plethora of technologies available to help retailers to meet consumers’ digital expectations and enhance their customer experience, it is important to understand how this software can impact customer engagement, and also the bottom line. This back-to-school list of AI-powered tech and its benefits is a good start for retailers and brands looking to make and maintain a good CX impression to ensure repeat custom.

Explore the list of ultimate tech to improve CX and agent efficiency.

Is your CX going to ‘Ashes’?

Cricket is a game which has given us some of the most iconic images in sporting history, but it’s also very relatable to how businesses compete trying to woo crowds of customers to support **their** team.

After Australia’s cricket test victory against England at The Oval in 1882, an obituary in ‘The Sporting Times’, a British newspaper, stated that English cricket had died, and “the body will be cremated, and the ashes taken to Australia”. Who knew that the English media’s portrayal of these mythical ashes and the quest to regain the Ashes, would become one of the biggest test cricket events in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres?

A Gentleman’s game

Albeit a ‘gentleman’s game’, so much more goes into winning at cricket. Victory is hard work. Top teams know that it’s not just about talent. Cutting-edge sport science, injury management, military-grade physical training and technology that calculates match workloads and detailed anthropometric reporting to monitor a player’s physical capacity all contribute to the winning strategy.

The same can be said for brands that foster a disciplined approach when creating a customer-centric strategy. Focusing on the end game, they understand that consistently engaging customers over multiple, fit-for-purpose channels, creates a lasting competitive advantage.

LBW

To the unversed, the leg before wicket dismissal is to cricket what the offside law is to football, however this rule is not as complicated as some people may think. Governed by a specific set of principles, once mastered, it is quite simple to understand.

So how does the LBW law relate to CX?

The broad use of the term “Customer Experience” has led it to become so muddled that many brands are getting stuck. While customer experience is extremely important and the way a customer thinks and feels about a brand’s products or services, customer service transformation, is about delivering the very best levels of service experience whenever a customer wants to contact a company or self-serve answers.
Delivering great customer service is a key principle of creating exceptional CX, especially when the service that customers receive was ranked one of the top 3 drivers for brand loyalty in a recent study by Microsoft.

To deliver exceptional customer experience, exceptional customer service should be delivered every single time a customer needs assistance, in a channel of their choice, consistently and in a timely fashion. And this is where many brands still get bowled out and are stumped when their customers go elsewhere.
Out for a duck

The hard-hitting common customer service mistakes are still made through badly designed website support, think archaic static FAQs, long on-hold call centre queues, and inconsistent information across channels, which not only causes confusion for customers, but frustration to contact centre agents.

And while there is a plethora of technology available that can contribute to enhanced customer service like AI, Chatbots and Virtual Assistants, it is extremely important to not just invest in technology for the sake of it.

It has become increasingly apparent that many channels are being bolted on with little or no consideration for how they are integrated with the rest of the organisation. For the customer, the existence of siloed channels can be apparent in a variety of ways, such as inconsistency in actions from channel-to-channel; different tone of voice; duplication of messaging; or having to start the conversation anew every time it shifts to a fresh channel.

To put it simply: Customers view their experiences with a company, not with discrete channels. They want an omni-present world where they can transition seamlessly from channel to channel, picking up where they left off in their purchasing or enquiry process, with consistent support throughout their journey.

And this is where we can help brands to create simple, quick and effortless service experiences. Since 2001, Synthetix have developed the ultimate tech stack to assist businesses in improving CSAT and agent efficiency. Driven by integrated conversational AI, our suite of self-service and agent-assisted tools add a new layer of intelligence and agility to contact centres.

Our Self-Service Cloud web portal provides answers to your customers’ questions 24/7, using an AI-powered, super-accurate knowledge-base to reduce inbound emails and calls, optimising agent productivity and providing a cost-effective way to automate customer service, sales and support.

And Synthetix Contact Cloud, our complete agent desktop for multi-channel, agent-assisted customer service and support, empowers agents to deliver excellent customer experiences. Powerful built-in AI proactively suggests customer responses, resulting in reduced training times, increased customer satisfaction and measurable agent efficiency gains.

Ashes to victory

A tiny wooden urn, reputed to contain the ashes of a wooden bail, humorously described as “the ashes of English cricket” is supposed to be kept by the team having won the most recent Test series, however today, irrespective of which side holds the tournament, it remains in the MCC Museum at Lord’s.
Cricket is a game of uncertainties when it comes to the Ashes, however, CX and customer support doesn’t have to be.

To explore how AI-driven technology can introduce new value and break fresh ground, download/read these digital assets:

• The small step towards AI that can deliver quick-win business results

• Sentience AI- Blending Human with Artificial Intelligence

• The explicit link between Digital Customer Service and BUSINESS GROWTH

Customer Experience, the AI truth is out there (and it’s closer than you think)

It’s been 50 years since mankind stepped onto the moon and changed history forever. Although many of us will not have been around to experience the momentous Apollo 11 mission unfolding in 1969, even today, this event sparks many emotions, whether that of disbelief or a united sense of achievement. Nearly 600 million people watched and waited with bated breath, hoping for success and the safe return of the Apollo 11 crew.

Although Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the moon, this epic accomplishment would not be possible without some unsung heroes, a team of more than 400,000 men and women here on Earth, each working relentlessly towards achieving this goal, the perfect coalition of human intelligence and technology.
Just like the Moon landing, the rapid adoption of mobile technology and the growth of the internet has created a new world of possibilities seeing customer expectations rocketing to new heights, rapidly diverse to what expectations would have been over 50 years ago.

Space exploration might appeal to those who are fascinated by adventure, hope and the possibilities it holds, however the same can’t be said about AI with many businesses still questioning the implications of implementing AI-driven technologies.

However, like the space race, businesses must prepare for the ever changing CX landscape or face their customers gravitating towards the competition.

Digital support channels are the unsung heroes of CX. Modest AI-powered solutions are making it possible for companies to move predictable, routine queries to automated systems and leverage cutting-edge analytics to make contextual interactions easier, better and more efficient, freeing up human agents to work on high-level, complex interactions on a variety of channels and in several ways – all while taking advantage of the context and analysis AI provides.

Unlike the unknown universe, AI-driven customer support technologies empower businesses, deliver cost savings, increase efficiency and improve customer experience. In fact, AI-powered automation technologies, can help streamline customer service while delivering a more relevant experience, effectively eliminate silos and help deliver a customer-centric business strategy.

One small step towards AI, one giant leap for Customer Experience

Although human language is extremely complex, full of contextual rules and nuances that we take for granted, the advances in Natural Language Processing today means the complex processing of the NLP system’s back-end is effortlessly encased within a user-friendly interface without requiring users to have technical expertise.

NLU is a supreme AI engine particularly when it’s integrated into services such as conversational Virtual Agents (chatbots), dynamic FAQ self-service, Intelligent Web Form and agent assistance in the contact centre through channels such as Live Chat.

NLU is fast, accurate and can have user effort feel seamless, however for businesses, this AI science can be key to deflecting calls, reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction. Consequently, market movements are already showing strong signs of businesses within a variety of sectors moving towards this type of AI technology to remain applicable and competitive.

How NLU makes sense in the contact centre

NLU can offer a lot more to the modern-day contact centre. As a toe in water into the world of artificial intelligence, when integrated with unstructured data – such as handwritten documents or notes by contact centre agents, text messages, photos and videos – AI-driven NLU can add considerable gains in workplace efficiency.

A contact centre knowledge-base integrated with AI-driven NLU can automate the processes of searching, modifying, and rating knowledge-articles, which not only saves time not having to manually find information, but significantly increase contact centre productivity.

It enables new or temporary agents to serve customers almost instantly with reduced training times and access to instant, correct and consistent information over the phone, during a live chat or through email. NLU algorithms can often contextualise information to find mentions of subjects even when the relevant keywords are absent.

In 2015, Gartner predicted that by 2018, 30 percent of our interactions with technology would be through ‘conversations’ with smart machines. The truth is they were not far off. Advances in text analysis and natural language processing has grown the list of queries that can be answered, and tasks resolved without human interaction. And since 2016, the popularity of using NLU in the form of chatbots to drive sales, qualify leads or to provide customer support, have had analysts forecast that conversational commerce will automate up to 85% of customer interactions.

Back to Earth

Although we’ve travelled and landed on the moon, it’s clear that we are still fascinated by it. It has come to light that Elon Musk approves of a plan spearheaded by Newt Gingrich to offer a $2 billion reward to the first private company to land and settle on the moon. And Newt Gingrich’s plan specifically mentions not only Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, but Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin as well.

But you don’t have to be an astronaut to broaden your skylines, and to hope and wonder. Although there appears to be an AI-uncertainty among business leaders small steps need to be taken towards implementing AI to not get left behind.

NLU’s adaptability and usability make it an ideal first AI step for businesses of all kinds, generating quick win efficiencies in the short run, and more importantly preparing them for more complex AI solutions in the future.

Feeling the heat? Don’t let your CX wilt in the sunshine too

It’s not surprising that the neutral topic of the weather, possibly the most quintessential method for us Brits to start up a conversation, had many of us hot under the collar last week. Hot and humid weather saw temperatures reaching above 37 degrees. Commuters that persevere overcrowded buses and trains daily could not have been prepared for what I can personally only describe as the worst commute I’ve ever had to endure. The soaring temperatures not only led rail operators having to restrict and cancel trains due to the risk of tracks buckling, but the knock-on effect of the disrupted services caused confusion, panic and overcrowding on buses and trains that were still in operation. Flights were grounded or delayed at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports across the capital while Eurostar rail passengers sweltered through three-and-a-half-hour delays. Sigh!

Delays and cancellations are unfortunately, part and parcel of the travel industry and while measures to prevent the likelihood of disruption are planned for, sometimes it is simply unavoidable. However, whilst man and technology cannot control the forces of nature, travel operators can control whether customers have a good (or poor) experience at a time when they’re under the highest levels of public scrutiny.
How? By keeping customers and staff up to date with real-time information – delivered on the channels most relevant to them.

However, it’s not only the travel industry that might have to deal with the challenges of severe weather. The London Ambulance Service reported having received an influx of calls with St John’s Ambulance and Public Health England issuing advice, urging people to be aware of headaches, dizziness and cramp, which can be signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. The RSPCA said it had also seen a spike in calls from members of the public concerned about dogs left in hot cars, conservatories, sheds and caravans. And with staff struggling to commute to work, some businesses are struggling to operate efficiently.

Listening to and reading the news, some companies are better than others when having to inform and respond to enquiries with some headlines reporting heavy criticism for those the lacking in keeping people informed. The convenience of our always ‘on’ online world simply doesn’t’ tolerate businesses that are stuck in archaic siloed processes – not ‘digital first’ – or those that we perceive to be slow in embracing advancing technologies.

As consumers grow more and more comfortable with messaging, businesses must be ‘present’ on their customers’ preferred support channels and respond swiftly, no matter the means customers use to get in touch.

AI applications offer some dramatic benefits that stretch way beyond customer experience. 24/7 support is within reach of those businesses eager to achieve operational efficiency, by utilising channels such as Virtual Agents/Intelligent Chatbots, live chat or dynamic FAQ self-service, especially during unexpected circumstances. These tools not only allow businesses to maintain high levels of service during peak and off-peak times but is a good step towards fulfilling customer needs and expectations.

Investing in AI might sound like a daunting task, but it is imperative in our evermore competitive world where businesses need to win the CX war to remain relevant and profitable.

To explore how AI-driven technology can introduce new value and break fresh ground, you might want to read these digital assets which explain how to consider AI’s impact beyond the novelty.

• The small step towards AI that can deliver quick-win business results

• Sentience AI- Blending Human with Artificial Intelligence

• The explicit link between Digital Customer Service and BUSINESS GROWTH

Hello summer, finally!

With schools out for the summer, many of us will be looking forward to a hopefully sunny and relaxing break, whilst the travel and leisure industry prepare for one of the busiest times of the year.

Cruise operators, travel companies, airlines, hotels, booking agents, theme parks: things have changed. The digital world can now offer virtual experiences of what customers can expect. Changes to the way people now travel pose customer service challenges for those in the travel and hospitality sector such as balancing passenger comfort with operational efficiency while delivering a unique experience reflecting the destination.

So how should this sector evolve their customer service offering to deliver true customer-centric experiences? A critical factor will be the use of online technology as it is worth considering how travellers are using technology today. In today’s blog we will focus mainly on air travel, as so many Brits set off on their summer holidays abroad.

Cloud-based self-service technology

Airports today are hubs of technological activity, with travellers using smart devices to stay connected to their flights and self-serve during the check-in process. In years to come we believe the momentum of cloud-based technology will grow and play a critical part in the airport of the future, especially for airlines wanting to offer optimal customer experience to justify price premiums and deliver customer service to boost brand reputation.

Self-service platforms will revolutionise air travel

As a result of mobile technologies, passenger processing has evolved significantly with mobile boarding passes and supplementary offerings through wireless broadband. In addition to helping airlines differentiate their services, online- and bag check-ins dramatically impact on delivering a positive customer experience with travellers not having to queue.

In partnership with airlines, airports have made tremendous improvements to increase communication around flight status and service disruption.

Travellers today expect to know about a flight change even before they arrive at the airport, delivered through text, automated messages, or email. They expect a seamless and efficient service so they can get to their destination faster.

When it comes to technology, most airlines are adapting by incorporating cloud-based web self-service technologies in order to improve operational efficiencies in today’s challenging marketplace. But there are still airlines out there, fearful of changing their online customer service delivery, happy with a dynamic FAQ section or phone number to contact. There appears to be a misconception that customers don’t mind being kept on hold, waiting to speak to a contact centre operator when they require assistance, rather than being able to find answers to their queries themselves via an organisation’s website. However, in a recent survey by Amdocs, a staggering 91% of survey respondents said they would use an online knowledge-base if it were available.

And it’s not just about providing a one online channel where customers can self-serve answers to their queries customer experience needs to be effortless and consistent across multiple channels. Integrated AI-driven channels such as Virtual Agents , Live Chat , Internal Knowledge-base and Intelligent Web Form are all tools that can assist in re-focussing efforts to improve the customer experience.

Why not visit our resource section for more insight on digital customer engagement?

AI: It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new way of customer support and engagement

With headlines stating that AI will be ‘the death of the contact centre’, it’s understandable that Contact Centre Managers might feel like the world is against them.

AI-driven technology is not new, in fact people been talking about it since the summer conference at Dartmouth College in 1956, where the attendees became leaders of AI research. With predictions of an AI-first world since 1956, why is that AI-powered technology is causing more and more confusion, hype and fear this decade with trending headlines stating that robots will take over our jobs, causing concern about the long-term impact of AI on the employees?

Well firstly, it’s this shorthand referral to AI that is causing a lot of confusion, hype and fear around this subject. Like computing, it’s hard to distinguish between classifications for AI, the broad term, used to describe the ‘smart’ human-like capability within software such as machine learning, natural language processing, robotics and computational intelligence, which all refer to a wide variety of algorithms and methodologies under AI.

So where does AI fit into the contact centre?

Businesses can no longer afford to rely on archaic siloed channels for customer support and experience. As consumers grow more and more comfortable with messaging, AI applications offer the contact centre some dramatic benefits that stretches way beyond customer support. AI can play a vital role in making better business decisions, many of them positively impacting the customer.

Many brands understand that their customers will expect support across multiple digital channels, regardless of business hours and that site search, static FAQs and info@ email options have become archaic. Businesses must be ‘present’ on their customers’ preferred support channels and respond swiftly, no matter the means customers use to get in touch.

Investing in AI might sound like a daunting task, but it is imperative in our evermore competitive world where businesses need to win the CX war to remain relevant and profitable. For AI to introduce new value and break fresh ground, strategists must take an innovative approach to CX and consider its impact beyond its novelty.

Small steps are key to preparing for the ever changing CX landscape. The light in this confusing artificially intelligent world of darkness are that there are ‘modest’ AI-powered solutions that can translate into cost savings, increased productivity and improved customer experience with minimal demands on IT resources.

Commonly known as Natural Language Understanding (NLU) – a machine algorithm to process and analyse large amounts of natural language data to ‘understand’ natural language – it’s easy to underrate the powerful impact this science can have on business processes and the contact centre.

Although human language is extremely complex, full of contextual rules and nuances that we take for granted, the advances in Natural Language Processing today means the complex processing of the NLP system’s back-end is effortlessly encased within a user-friendly interface without requiring users to have technical expertise.

NLU is a supreme AI engine particularly when it’s integrated into services such as conversational Virtual Agents (chatbots), dynamic FAQ self-service, Intelligent Web Form and agent assistance in the contact centre through channels such as Live Chat, can be key to deflecting calls, reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction. Consequently, market movements are already showing strong signs of businesses within a variety of sectors moving towards this type of AI technology to remain applicable and competitive.

How NLU makes sense in the contact centre

NLU can offer a lot more to the modern-day contact centre. As a toe in water into the world of artificial intelligence, when integrated with unstructured data – such as handwritten documents or notes by contact centre agents, text messages, photos and videos – AI-driven NLU can add considerable gains in workplace efficiency.

A contact centre knowledge-base  integrated with AI-driven NLU can automate the processes of searching, modifying, and rating knowledge-articles, which could be any of the above-mentioned examples not only saving time in having to manually find information, but a dramatic increase in contact centre productivity.

It enables new or temporary agents to serve customers almost instantly with reduced training times and access to instant, correct and consistent information over the phone, during a live chat or through email. NLU algorithms often can contextualise information to find mentions of subjects even when the relevant keywords are absent.

Gartner predicted that in 2019, 20 percent of user interactions with smartphones will take place via virtual personal assistants.

The truth is they were not far off. Advances in text analysis and natural language processing has grown the list of queries that can be answered, and tasks resolved without human interaction. And since 2016, the popularity of using NLU in the form of chatbots to drive sales, qualify leads or to provide customer support, have had analysts forecast that conversational commerce will automate up to 85% of customer interactions
by 2020.

Smartphones have changed the way in which people communicate and engage with each other. Messaging apps and social media are driving the exponential growth in the intelligent assistant landscape because it feels intimate and personal, encouraging customer transactions such as buying a product, present targeted promotions and product recommendations based on the customer’s enquiry, profile and history incorporating real-time analytics and business reporting. Bots are unmediated in a way that most digital interface still entirely fails at.

With an intelligent bot handling high volume, frequently asked questions, your contact centre agents can focus on resolving complex customer issues. Additionally, due to working in the most efficient way possible, bots can handle spikes in customer contact to digital platforms, while dramatically decreasing the volume of physical calls which makes it easier to stay on top of demand and to record interactions on a CRM system or for analytics and training. Given its scalability, a bot implementation is a cost-effective opportunity for business improvement. An affordable, intelligent point of contact that can efficiently respond to an unlimited number of queries with relevant information, any day, any time.

Self-serving answers when customers need assistance across desktop, mobile and social channels is not a new concept anymore. This is not news to enterprises either and most will have incorporated – or are looking to integrate – a powerful intelligent FAQ system into their customer service/experience strategy. And although there appears to be an AI-uncertainty among business leaders, small steps need to be taken towards implementing AI to not get left behind.

NLU’s adaptability and usability make it an ideal first AI step for businesses of all kinds, generating quick win efficiencies in the short run, and more importantly preparing them for more complex AI solutions in the future. Are you ready to take the next step towards AI that can deliver quick-win business results?