IBM POV - Contextual Assistance
- 1. Point of View IBM Interactive Experience Omni-channel Experience Strategy How do we empower our agents to deliver a better customer experience? Today, companies are searching for innovative ways to quickly deliver the best results with limited resources. Guided flows can be established to maximize productivity without risking quality. These pre-determined workflows allow agent representatives to handle each contact type similarly. It is helpful to visualize the number and order of steps in a workflow. Process maps support information from previous steps and document resources required by each step in a business process. Automation of workflow via guided flows allows for each phase to be executed sequentially. Contextual Assistance has the potential to rein- vent contact center interactions. However, without the right workflows in place, time during a call is wasted as an agent searches for information. This reduces the time invested in customer experience. In an ideal omni-channel experience, a holistic customer history should be available to provide a seamless experience for all customers as they traverse across channels. As agents shepherd customers through this process, there are many instances that may require the agent to depart from the guided pathway. Customers today are empowered individuals and are asking for better and faster results and no two interactions will be the same. Guided flows can support agents and make sequential decisions for them, but may detract from the customer experience. Contact center operators want to reuse existing tasks and task flows but they’re often unable to address all of the unique issues that may arise in every possible scenario. Pre-determined guided flows cannot react to the many permutations that could occur during a call and do not account for individual needs of the customer nor the individual style of each agent. Guided flows lock the agent into a pre-determined set of Contextual Assistance Empowering omni-channel contact center agents with enhanced analytics “Due to a lack of effective tools, up to 20% of agent time can be spent looking for information.” Aberdeen Group. (May 2011). The Contact Center in a Profit-Centric Service Organization. Boston, Massachusetts.
- 2. Omni-channel Experience Strategy 2 Point of View IBM Interactive Experience actions rather than empowering them to take the best action for each customer. In order to alleviate these challenges inherent in implementing guided flows, IBM Interactive Experience has married the concept of guided flows with machine learning, advanced analytics- powered Next Best Action and Cognitive Computing as well as cutting edge User Experience Design principles to create a new model for dynamic and modular workflow guidance called Contextual Assistance. By definition, Contextual Assistance is sensitive to context and accounts for the needs of the individual customer as well as the goals of the company with which he or she is interacting. Based upon customer intent (insights also provided by Next Best Action analytics) and agent actions, Next Best Action draws information from across your business, as well as external sources, analyzes it to determine the steps that will maximize customer satisfaction and retention, and delivers these insights to the Contextual Assistance engine where it is translated into the next action the agent must take in order to rectify the customer’s issue or make timely, contextually-appropriate, personalized offers. This information is seamlessly delivered to the agent as a suggested next step in the guided assistance module located in a visible location on the agent desktop. Combining the Contextual Assistance back end with a machine learning and natural language recognition capable Cognitive Computing solution further empowers the agent to assist the customer by providing real time feedback, troubleshooting advice, or answering tough questions. Contextual Assistance allows a company to provide personalized help to a consumer based on his or her unique situation. In order to deliver a seamless experience, Contextual Assistance helps to build continuity across sales channels, powers co-browsing, leverages social listening, and can enable continuous improvement. In a world where customers are bombarded with choices, Contextual Assistance creates a more targeted buying experience. By understanding the consumer’s context, customer service managers can access linked pertinent information and tag product offers to specific steps in the buying process. When consumers call into a contact center, their information will already be available to the service agent and that information will become more refined as the customer journey continues. This means that when a consumer moves from channel-to –channel the transaction is not restarted; the agent simply picks up where the consumer left off. Contextual technologies enable the consumer experience to become dynamic, transcending functional silos and integrating customer insight. Analytics can process incoming consumer data to identify preferences, past relationships and drive out contextual information, delivered to agents in an easy-to-understand manner that empowers them to lengthen and strengthen the customer journey. A good agent’s “iX has married guided flows with advanced analytics as well as IBM Watson and cutting edge user-centered design to create a new model: Contextual Assistance.” “ IBM Interactive Experience has married guided flows with advanced analytics and cutting edge User- Centered Design to create a new model: Contextual Assistance.”
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