10 Tips on Increasing Customer Adoption of a Virtual Assistant

A while back, noHold published the infographic below titled, "Guidelines to Driving Self-Service Adoption." Artificial Intelligence, more specifically Virtual Assistants, have continued to gain popularity since this infographic was released, but these tips and tricks still apply today. 

We have come up with a few more ideas to increase adoption in addition to the ones mentioned in the infographic above. 

1. Add your Virtual Assistant to your community forum page. This is a great way for companies to quickly go live with a Virtual Assistant, and capture data from users that can improve the Virtual Assistant. It is also just another great channel to reach customers that are looking for answers.  
2. Pre-empt the live chat with your Virtual Assistant. Some of our clients have positioned their Virtual Assistants to be leveraged before a live agent is pulled in. To read more about pre-empting live chat with a Virtual Assistant, visit noHold.com.
3. Creating a more conversational experience between end users and Artificial Intelligence. Virtual Assistants should be able to handle multi-turn interactions, just like the nature flow of a conversation between humans. 

With almost two decades of experience in the Virtual Assistant industry, these are just some of the tips and tricks we have found worked for our clients to help increase customer adoption. If you would like more information on noHold's Virtual Assistant technology, feel free to contact us via our website, www.nohold.com.

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: Google Now Features Better Than Siri? Better than Cortana?

When we talk about Personal Virtual Assistant, Siri usually is the first name that comes to mind. Although, Siri might be one of the better-known virtual assistants, it certainly is not the only one. 

In the past we have talked a lot about some of the cool features most people didn't know about Siri. For this week's Virtual Agent tips and tricks blog, I wanted to share with you some lesser known features, about Google Now. Here are "9 Things You May Not Have Known About Google Now." (2014, Daniel Bean, Yahoo! Tech)

1. You can ask specific question to bring up information cards.

2. You can say, "Hey, Google" to launch the app.

3. Google can learn your relationships to contacts.

4. There are plenty of fun tricks and Easter eggs.

5. You can make Google Now smarter through a survey.

6. Android Wear watches can run Google Now, too. 

7. It features a handy tip calculator.

8. Google Now is available on your PC.

9. It can identify music and TV programs just by listening. 

As you can tell, some of these features definitely overlap with Siri features such as learning contact relationships, but others are unique to Google Now like being available on wearable devices and using information cards to answer specific questions.  

There is always heated debates about which Personal Virtual Assistant is the best: Siri, Google Now, Cortana, Watson, etc. Just check out the commercial Microsoft put out emphasizing the rivalry between Siri and Cortana. 

What is your opinion on the virtual rivalries? Which virtual assistant do you use, or would you use? Why?

www.nohold.com

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: Making Adjustments to Your Virtual Agent and Self-Service Over Time

One of the biggest questions companies need to ask themselves is, "Do our support options still work best for our customers?" It is important to take some time to re-evaluate implementations, technologies and strategies to make sure what was working then, is still working now. 

In parallel with the customer journey on the website, noHold customers are always looking for ways to further enhance the Virtual Agent and self-service experience. For example, one noHold customer has opted to update the Virtual Agent's User Interface (UI) while asking end users to select his/her specific product before beginning a conversation. This updated experience with the Virtual Agent will streamline the interaction and guide the end user to best solutions related to his or her specific product. 

Keeping up with customer demand, and modernizing support is a major contributor to revolutionizing the customer experience. Virtual Agents can be updated quickly, can automatically capture the voice of the customer, and can be positioned across channels. 

How often do you evaluate and modernize the customer experience? In your opinion, what are the best ways to retrofit self-service without compromising customer satisfaction? 

www.nohold.com