Synthetix celebrates 18 years of developing cutting-edge AI-driven Customer Engagement tools

The year 2001 was a pivotal year for many tech giants – think Apple introducing OSX and Microsoft releasing Windows XP, but it also saw a new tech start-up, Synthetix, pioneer Virtual Agent technology with SmartAgent, one of the first commercially available enterprise Conversational AI chatbot services. As we celebrate our 18th birthday today, we are reminiscing about our past and our success …

2001 was a tough year for the founders of Synthetix, who with no salary and only a prototype of SmartAgent on old laptops, landed a lucky break, winning the BBC as their very first client. Unlike today, Virtual Agent/chatbot technology was not mainstream in 2001. In fact, it was a very niche idea to use Natural Language Understanding to assist businesses in engaging and supporting their customers online, 24/7.

Still, the idea seems to be catching on, doesn’t it?

Over 18 turbulent, fun, unpredictable years we’ve had the privilege to work with some of the world’s most innovative brands , such as the London 2012 Olympics, Toyota and McDonalds (to name just a few) and helped to reshape the way brands engage with customers digitally. Though our client list is a lot longer than in 2001, we still try to build a personal relationship with each of our clients and those personal connections are one of the many ways we strive to be different.

On behalf of everyone here at Synthetix, we’d like to thank all of our customers and partners for being part of our story. No, really.** ***Thank* you.

Of course, our mission has evolved over the years; Synthetix now sits at the nexus between automated customer self-service and agent-assisted customer service, handling millions of chat and callback interactions as well as the AI-powered self-service technology for which we are well known, but we’re still passionate about delivering brilliant customer experiences, time-after-time.

We also discovered some interesting facts about our birthdate. We would like to wish Mark Zuckerberg, Cate Blanchett and George Lucas a 01001000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01111001 00100000 01000010 01101001 01110010 01110100 01101000 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000!

And who remembers these nostalgic throwbacks?

•  The pops and whistles as your modem connected to the internet through your landline;
• Trying to get WAP pages to render reliably over flaky GPRS connections;
• Navigating to each meeting using a bunch of faded monochrome map printouts on your lap;

Well, time for some cake and fizz. Here’s to the next exciting 18 years of cutting-edge Conversational AI, Live Chat, Intelligent Web Form , FAQ Search , and Agent Knowledgebase  customer engagement tools.

What were YOU doing in 2001?

Customer experience in the digital age. What do customers expect?

Guest post by Sam Widdowson

It’s no revelation that more and more customers are choosing to shop online. Computers, tablets, and smart-phones have empowered the customer, giving them the flexibility to shop anywhere, any time.

Though the channels they’re using to shop with are changing, their expectations are not. Customers want an efficient, consistent, and enjoyable customer service experience every time they need it. Whether they choose to self-serve with an Intelligent Self-Service tool or a Virtual Agent , or speak to an agent over a Live Chat system, providing them with up-to-date, accurate, consistent information across all channels is now more important than ever as *92% of consumers say they would stop purchasing from a company after three or fewer poor customer service experiences.

Just because customers are now interacting with your brand from behind a screen, the same basic principles still apply as if they were wandering through a shop – if they need an answer to a basic question on a product or service, they don’t want to be waiting around for the next available ‘specialist’, even though that may be what they have to do as there are only finite resources on a shop floor. The Digital Age changes that. Harness the knowledge that flows through your company at the core, and allow your customers to absorb it through the channel of their choosing. Customers expect to be able to self-service  70%+ of their needs through customer portals or mobile applications. Not only does this make your customers happier by giving them the opportunity to get the information they were after efficiently, it will also influence your Customer Service department as the enquiries coming in will be more complex, and agents will be able to allocate the time necessary to give that customer the attention they deserve, keeping those CSAT scores sky-high.

But be careful not to lose that human touch… There’s nothing more frustrating than getting stuck in a loop with a poorly designed ‘chatbot’ that fails to answer even the simplest of questions. Make sure that whoever has commissioned your self-service solution, whether that is an Intelligent Self-Service tool, or a Virtual Agent, factored in escalation routes to speak to a real human, at identified frustration points, through an efficient, convenient channel such as Live Chat or Callback, otherwise those routine enquiries you seem to be deflecting will end up being the customers themselves.

Lastly, personalisation can help deliver exceptional customer experience. Knowledge of the product, company, latest offers, etc, is great for your employees to have; however, if they’ve got no knowledge of the customer’s previous interactions, or frustrations, that have led to that contact, it’s going to be an uphill battle from the outset. Making every interaction personal is what customers want and expect in today’s ultra-competitive market.

Forbes

The ultimate tech stack to improve CSAT and agent efficiency

Guest post by James Robinson

Improvement of CSAT… the holy grail of all CX directors, contact centre managers and CEOs alike. We know that improving the way we deal with customers is key to increasing CSAT (and subsequent profitability), but what types of technology have been proven to deliver these all-important results?

Web Self-Service

First and foremost, make sure you are offering the channels as your customers want. With 50% of customers thinking it’s important to solve product or service issues themselves and 70% expecting a company’s website to include a self-service application , self-service is no longer a ‘nice to have’. A query resolved by the customer themselves, using an intelligent web self-service tool is a query your contact centre agents didn’t have to deal with, significantly increasing their efficiency levels and, by proxy, customer satisfaction.

Conversational AI

Virtual Agents are more than just a flashy UI delivering the same answers as a web self-service tool; they are tools that humanise AI. An intelligently implemented virtual assistant that utilises advanced AI to ‘converse’ with your customers can build trust, something that is vital to attain. Once that trust has been established it is clear that not only will your customer return to that very cost effective channel to communicate with you in the future, but will most likely become a promoter of your company.

Live Chat

The ultimate catchall. As well as the ‘go to’ channel for many customers, an intelligent live-chat solution can be offered to customers who didn’t find what they were looking for first time around, streamlining their journey and improving the chance of achieving one of the most efficiency-driving KPIs around: first contact resolution.

Contact Centre Agent Support

Your contact centre agents are the first (and often, only) interaction with a human that your customers experience so it is vital they have all the information and support they need in order to serve that customer quickly and, more importantly, first time. An AI driven knowledgebase with process simplifying decision trees should do the trick. Encouraging your agents to create content and leave a legacy improves employee engagement and has a positive knock-on effect on CSAT.

Cohesion

OK, not a piece of tech per se but definitely an element of functionality worth mentioning, one that can make the difference between good and stellar results from these technologies. When AI is applied to the journey of a customer in a cohesive way, the experience of that customer improves exponentially. When a solution knows how a customer has interacted with a knowledge resource across all channels, it can react and deliver in a more accurate, human way.

The thought of the cost of implementing all these technologies can be daunting, however, before I finish, I would like to leave with some good news! There is something innate that is already streaming throughout your enterprise, something that is self-generating and infinite, something that is at the very core of all the solutions mentioned in this post. That something is: KNOWLEDGE. Once an enterprise harnesses that innate power it really does transcend the tech to deliver the most significant efficiencies and make a serious impact to a brand’s CSAT.