Synthetix stood its ground when featured amongst the AI elite in the latest Opus Intelligent Assistants top vendors report

Synthetix, pioneers in conversational AI Natural Language Understanding technology are proud to have been included into Opus Research’s “Decision Makers’ Guide to Enterprise Intelligent Assistants” again this year.

Opus Research is a leading analyst organisation. In their latest report, Opus Research presents a comprehensive assessment of the current Intelligent Assistant (IA)solution provider landscape with special focus on those offering “enterprise-grade” solutions.

With Opus reporting enterprise spend on Intelligent Assistants set to exceed the projected $2 billion in 2018, and heading up to $5.5 billion in 2021, compound annual growth rate for the next five years comes to a whopping 67%. The reason for the level of growth is the result of what Opus refers to as “the perfect storm where technological advancement in Speech Processing, NLU, machine learning and knowledge management coincides with (or gives rise to) heightened levels of comfort and confidence in human-to-machine communications.”

Synthetix has been included in the report once again, which presents an inclusive valuation of top vendors within the Intelligent Assistant solution landscape with a focus on enterprise grade solutions. Synthetix are immensely proud to have been included in this report, especially as a pioneer of Intelligent Assistant technology. With clients across all industries, empowering brands to be there for their customers, Synthetix has over 200 Natural Language Understanding deployments worldwide, which have helped many organisations to reduce costs and see fast ROI, increase their first contact resolution and conversion rates, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and gain valuable customer insight.

Dan Miller, Lead Analyst at Opus Research said, “The rapid adoption and use of new, conversational end-points and services may not have caught every business by surprise, but it has them scrambling to meet the growing demand from their end customers for intelligent, conversational brand experiences. This report helps those organizations understand what criteria they should consider when evaluating prospective solutions and provides an overview of vendor capabilities and track record, which can inform the process of getting an IA up and running successfully.”

Peter McKean, Director at Synthetix says, “Our ability to scale and the maturity of our AI technology has demonstrated the dramatic impact it has to improve the effectiveness of the contact centre dramatically and make human interactions more impactful. We are proud that our business model and cutting-edge innovations have gained such global recognition.”

Get your game on with these 3 powerful customer service tools

I really looked forward to watching Wimbledon last week. Don’t we all love a good game? However, as a loyal fan, the nail-biting joy of watching tennis was spoilt for me, as I had to turn down the sound to be able to focus on the game rather than the disturbing noises made by some players.

This reminded me how some businesses on-board new digital service channels. They might deploy a new channel simply to keep up or intimidate the competition, but forget that their customers will be the ones using it. Businesses must be ‘present’ on their customers’ preferred support channels. But mere presence isn’t enough: customers expect their experience to be equally swift no matter the means they use to get in touch with a business.

Let’s leave the noise for the crowds.

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.” – Jeff Bezos CEO of Amazon

The game of tennis bears many similarities to a business. Both are painful to watch when their performance isn’t up to scratch. And not being on top of your game can lose you valuable customers or fans.

Self-service

Although the aim of the game appears quite simple – keeping the ball within the bounds of the court, but out of an opponent’s reach – the point scoring concept can make it hard for a new viewer to keep track of what is going on. And in business, on-boarding new digital channels for customer support might seem simple enough, but there is so much more to online support than just providing customers with a means to contact you.

Think about the last time you bought tickets for an event (maybe Wimbledon). Did you drive to the venue, maybe pitch a tent to wait in line for tickets, or did you register online to buy tickets and have them printed or emailed to you after a few simple clicks? If you’re like most people, the self-service online option certainly makes more sense. The same can be said about customer support. Overwhelming statistics across industries state that 81% of all customers prefer to self-serve answers to their support queries, before having to speak to an agent ~ Forrester

Forrester also reports the cost of a self-service query on average costs less than 10 pence, while the average cost of human aided support (phone, e-mail, or webchat) is more than £5.37per query for a B2C company and just under £10 for a B2B company.

Given the huge potential benefits with using self-service tools to enhance customer satisfaction and reduce costs, businesses have much to gain by implementing web self-service technologies. With major advances in NLP architype, self-service technologies have been enormously effective at removing low-complexity issues from the agent support queue.

Agent Knowledge-base

But herein lies the challenge though: As customers self-serve simple issues themselves, frontline support agents get increasingly more complex queries and issues customers can’t solve on their own. So, what’s the problem?

Some companies that have focused on new self-service technologies, underinvested in agent support. With the absence of an agent knowledge-base supporting contact centre agents, inconsistencies in answers lead to both customer and agents getting upset and frustrated.

When agent numbers increase from 25 to 125 during the Christmas season, one of London’s leading upmarket department stores are still able to maintain high levels of customer service. Using a Synthetix knowledge platform, temporary customer service agents can be trained rapidly, with the assurance that they are delivering correct and consistent information to customers over telephone and webchat channels.

Retailers of this type see a huge percentage of their online business crammed into six weeks each year, which makes its critical for their customer satisfaction rates to remain consistent throughout this surge during festive months.

Businesses that have invested in a contact centre agent knowledge platform have reported:

* Agent training times to be reduced by 30%
* Average call handling times to be reduced by 30% – 50%
* Call abandonment rates to be reduced by circa 20%
* Certain types of questions via telephone and email to be reduced by circa 80%

However, it’s important that your omni-channel game plan integrates digital support channels with each other.

Virtual Agent / bot

Remember when “there’s an app for that” was a popular catchphrase? Now, as customers’ smartphones fill up with apps they’ve only used a handful of times, and businesses try to reach consumers while they’re online, the zeitgeist has shifted to “there’s a bot for that.”

The most exciting thing about a bot or Virtual Agent as a medium, is allowing humans to step in when needed. Bots in themselves aren’t revolutionary – we’ve had phone trees and robotic dialogues for a while – but when paired with human intelligence for tasks a Virtual Agent can be a powerful tool.

Virtual Agents are not only upping the personalisation stakes. The hybrid approach of blending AI with human support enables contact centre agents to focus on complex customer queries and transactions requiring an emotive connection. A Virtual Agent, when deployed correctly, with a set of specific goals, can generate leads, increase sales, and grow a business in a big way, switching on an entire additional support channel, and this is only the beginning!

But don’t build a bot just to follow a trend; build a bot if it helps you solve a problem better, or get to market faster.

Conclusion:

Implementing a successful omni-channel strategy is tricky.

In tech years – Synthetix are pioneers. We have been creating ‘New World’ customer experiences, revolutionising online customer service with our seamless integration of customer contact channels such as Virtual Agents, FAQ search, live chat and e-mail management.

We’ve put together a selection of concise resources to share our wealth of knowledge and best practice tips from our customers to cut through some of the hype surrounding new and existing online customer service tools.

Embrace the shift, don’t get left behind.

Synthetix are proud to be a finalist in the last round of the Digital Self-Service Awards

Synthetix are pleased to announce our progression to the final of the Digital Self-Service innovation category of the UK National Innovation Awards 2017. May is truly a month of celebration here at Synthetix as not only are we through to the final round of the Innovation Awards, 12 May sees us celebrating our 16th birthday.

This might not sound very old, until you think about the light-speed advances of technology over the last 16 years. Not only are we known as one of the pioneers of Virtual Agent Technology – creating Virtual Agents for companies like the BBC, Vauxhall, and Ford, comparable to Siri, Cortana and Google Now, before they became the norm – Synthetix has revolutionised online customer service with our seamless integration of customer contact channels such as FAQ search, Live Chat, Dynamic Web Forms and E-mail Management.

To be chosen as a finalist in the Innovation Awards 2017, Synthetix had to demonstrate the power of our integrated Synthetix online customer service technologies. Our entry highlighted enhanced customer experiences, a reduction in overall customer contact and costs for our customers from Retail, Travel and Insurance.

Jon Snow, Chairman of Directors’ Club United Kingdom praised standard of entries, “Directors’ Club are delighted the Synthetix entry was voted through to the final of the Digital Self-Service Innovation category on May 23rd. The competition from other entrants was high, as was the quality of the submissions. I am sure their live final presentation will further demonstrate the innovation at the heart of their offering. Congratulations and best of luck.”
Adam Ashcroft, Marketing Director of Synthetix said “The effectiveness, efficiency and customer satisfaction results from our customers speak volumes. As customer behavior constantly adapt to advances in technology, Synthetix will continue to create cutting-edge multi-channel online customer service solutions ensure consistent and accurate information is available via every customer touch-point.

We are excited about this award entry and thank the UK National Innovation Awards 2017, for the opportunity to showcase why we are market leaders of multi-channel online customer service.”

The Digital Self-Service Innovation category final will take place live online at 11am (BST) on Tuesday, May 23rd 2017, judged by the business leaders who employ the technologies.

Digital customer service channels to blame for poor CX?

Customer support is not exempt from customer experience.

Customer experience in one industry sets the bar and shapes expectations for all experiences. This has never been more true and applies to many aspects of our lives.

I wonder how many people have walked into a hair salon, clenching a photo of what they would like their hair to look like, just to walk out crying, disappointed that their expectations were not met in the mirror? And how many blame the hair dresser’s skill, not the fact that maybe the style or colour just doesn’t fit the shape of their face or skin tone? This begs the question: Should a stylist simply follow instructions from the customer or should they advise (as they are the experts) customers to try something more suitable?

Customer support is not exempt from customer experience or expectations. And businesses have responded offering a plethora of communication channels to customers for support. Why is then that managers are struggling to tie tech investments to improved operational outcomes or the growth of their business through efficiencies and improved customer experience?

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.

With a huge 82% of customers having stopped doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience, the message is clear: Organisations that cannot provide a seamless experience across multiple channels are in danger of losing customers to those businesses that can.

These free guides offer practical advice from improving agent productivity, NPS or CSAT scores to busting the operational silos to deliver consistent customer experiences across multiple channels.

Snow day should not equal icy customer support

Maintaining high levels of support

The severe weather and storms this year has created havoc throughout the UK. Heavy snow not only had some commuters spending hours in their vehicles, or having to be rescued, train, flight and bus cancellations has resulted in an unprecedented surge in commuter enquiries. And with further weather warnings being issued by the Met Office, the increased demand on customer service departments is set to continue.

And it’s not only travel updates required by commuters. With staff unable to commute to work, some businesses are struggling to operate efficiently. The convenience of our always ‘on’ online world has changed the way in which we interact with businesses as we expect to be able to communicate with them over multiple channels when we want to.

With the rapid rise in the use of mobile devices, 24/7 support is within reach to those businesses eager to achieve operational efficiency, by utilising digital channels such as Virtual Agents, web chat or web self-service, especially during unexpected circumstances.

Digital channels allow businesses to maintain high levels of service during peak and off-peak times. Web self-service options and Virtual Agents don’t get snowed in. And kudos to those using web chat via agents working from home – an often-overlooked advantage of chat over voice.

Businesses cannot risk being stuck in the past, however many are still finding it difficult to adjust to advancing technologies.

We’ve put together concise free guides and practical advice on implementing web self-service, Virtual Agents or web chat which you can download here:

* Multi-channel Online Customer Service for Dummies.
* Virtual Agents for Dummies.
* Web chat – 5 killer reasons why you are doing it wrong.
* Virtual Agents – to bot or not?.

Floods of customer complaints

Can you ride out the CX storm

Us Brits sure love talking about the weather, but the recent weather has headlined the news non-stop. Burst water pipes, flooding, snow and sink holes appearing because of the weather has left thousands of people in distress, unable to commute, some without water and sewage facilities, cut off from the rest of the world.

Jerry White, Head of Water Production at Thames Water said that last Saturday has been the busiest day of the winter so far for the company, when their customer centre received 2,500 calls, with 3,000 calls over the weekend as a whole – 30 times more than the daily average. A spokesperson for the company added that it had received more tweets in two days than it normally would in two weeks.

However, it’s not just utility companies receiving an influx of contact. Emergency services, charities, defence, and retail organisations are all under pressure as the chaotic weather continues to disrupt lives. And listening and reading the news, some companies are better than others when having to inform and respond to customer queries with some companies heavily criticised for their lack in keeping people informed.

With most of us today expecting the majority of customer service interaction to happen in an online environment, one would think it makes sense for companies to invest in web self-service, virtual agent, or live chat facilities to answer customer queries, leaving contact centre agents to deal with more complex issues. However, in this world where we use our smartphones and tablets to update us on the news, to query the time it will take to commute to work, to keep in touch and to ‘survive’ in this digital age, many companies still struggle to live up to customer expectations when it comes to support.

Expanding support into multiple online channels not only allows companies to offer real-time, consistent, and up to date information in a cost-effective manner but reduces the stress levels in contact centres.

Why not download these short, handy, and free guides that offer insight for businesses wanting to invest in effective digital support channels?

 

Synthetix self-service and knowledge software offer to U.S. utilities

A radical departure from traditional customer support and pricing models.

No longer new players in the U.S, Synthetix is set on expanding their already phenomenal global growth to address some of the very specific issues faced by utilities in the U.S.

Already the No.1 supplier of self-service and knowledge software to Western Europe’s utility sector, Synthetix systems are helping to support and serve more than 28.4 million customers, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and massive reductions in complaints. Synthetix offers Electric, Gas and Water retail/distribution-specific packages for the U.S. utility sector in three different tier levels. These different levels include options like a ready-populated knowledge-base of the most asked questions by utility customers, simple pricing and straight forward implementation of days, not months.

Adam Ashcroft, Director at Synthetix said “We are confident that we can offer scale, resources, knowledge, and a pricing methodology beyond what’s possible for any individual utility or new entrants into this sector to replicate.”

With Accenture reporting that utilities can save between $1-3 million through self-service technologies, Synthetix hope to assist in transforming online customer service delivery for both IOUs & PUCs that are under the extensive pressure to continuously reduce costs and improve operational performance to remain profitable and to achieve sustainable growth.

Synthetix provide a Value Opportunity Assessment free of charge to US utilities to assess impact and quantify return on investment as the initial starting point.

European Business Awards

The benchmark of success for the European business community

Synthetix has been named as ‘One to Watch’ in Europe in a list of business excellence published by the European Business Awards sponsored by RSM.

Synthetix was chosen as it demonstrates exceptional achievement in one of the 12 European Business Awards’ categories and reflects the programme’s core values of innovation, success, and ethics.

The ‘Ones to Watch’ for 34 countries across Europe can be found at www.businessawardseurope.com.

Peter McKean, CEO of Synthetix said “Synthetix is a business which strives to innovate in an incredibly fast-moving field. We spend our time thinking about how technology – and in-particular AI and machine learning – can drive business transformation for our clients across customer engagement channels like browsers, mobile and social media. Our aim to be a European business which competes with the best output from Silicon Valley.

That’s why we’re so excited about this accomplishment. We would like to thank the European Business Awards for the opportunity to showcase why we are market leaders in online customer service and conversational commerce.”

Adrian Tripp, CEO of the European Business Awards, Europe’s largest cross-sector business competition, said: “We wanted to recognise more widely the many incredible business success stories from across Europe.”

He continued: “The talent, dedication and innovation at the heart of these companies creates jobs and opportunity, and is what drives their country’s prosperity. The ‘Ones to Watch’ lists will set a benchmark of success for the European business community.”

Jean Stephens, CEO of RSM, the sixth largest global network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, and long-term sponsors of the Awards, said: “To be listed as a ‘Ones to Watch’ is a real accolade. At RSM, we work with companies across Europe and beyond, advising them on all areas of their business and we are passionate about encouraging success and prosperity. We wish these dynamic companies every success in the future.”

Synthetix will now have the chance to compete in one of the 12 categories of the European Business Awards to become a National Winner in their country. If successful, they will then take part in the grand final in May 2018, where the final 12 European winners will be announced. They will also have the chance to enter a public vote, which attracts attention and support from across the globe.

The Awards Categories for 2017-2018:

The RSM Entrepreneur of the Year Award

• The ELITE Award for Growth Strategy of the Year
• The Award for Innovation
• The Award for International Expansion
• The Social Responsibility and Environmental Awareness Award
• The New Business of The Year Award
• The Workplace and People Development Award
• The Customer and Market Engagement Award
• The Digital Technology Award
• The Business of the Year Award with Turnover € 0 – 25M
• The Business of the Year Award with Turnover €26M – 150M
• The Business of the Year Award with Turnover €150 +

More information about the competition can be found at www.businessawardseurope.com

About the European Business Awards:

The European Business Awards’ primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe.

The European Business Awards programme serves the European business community in three ways:

• It celebrates and endorses individuals’ and organisations’ success
• It provides and promotes examples of excellence for the business community to aspire to
• It engages with the European business community to create debate on key issues

The European Business Awards is now in its 11th year. Last year it engaged with over 33,000 businesses from 34 countries. Sponsors and partners include RSM, ELITE and PR Newswire

www.businessawardseurope.com

Twitter: @rsmEBA

Facebook: www.facebook.com/businessawardseurope

LinkedIn: the company page “The European Business Awards”

About RSM:

RSM is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, encompassing over 120 countries, 800 offices and more than 41,400 people internationally. The network’s total fee income is US$4.9 billion.

As an integrated team, we share skills, insight and resources, as well as a client-centric approach that’s based on a deep understanding of our clients’ businesses. This is how we empower them to move forward with confidence and realise their full potential

RSM is the lead sponsor and corporate champion of the European Business Awards promoting commercial excellence and recognition of entrepreneurial brilliance.

RSM is a member of the Forum of Firms, with the shared objective to promote consistent and high quality standards of financial and auditing practices worldwide.

RSM is the brand used by a network of independent accounting and advisory firms each of which practices in its own right. RSM International Limited does not itself provide any accounting and advisory services. Member firms are driven by a common vision of providing high quality professional services, both in their domestic markets and in serving the international professional service needs of their client base. www.rsm.global