CEO's Corner: Service Leaders in Web Support.

I like market reviews, where a number of vendors are compared to one another and the best is selected for a specific category.  I like them even better when I respect the people involved in the reviewing process.  This is the case with the Service Leaders leader board published by CRM Magazine in March 2013.(article) The categories are well structured, the scoring mechanism well defined and some of the reviewers include: Esteban Kolsky, Principal and Founder of ThinkJar; Michael Moaz, VP and Distinguished Analyst with Gartner and John Ragsdale, VP of Technology Research with TSIA. All people I know personally and respect.  I paid particular attention to the Web Support piece.  Right from the get go Judith Aquino, Associate Editor with CRM Magazine reported three prominent aspects of Web Support:

• The need to deliver support across multiple channels and devices.

• The importance of deploying a platform that doesn’t require customers to repeat themselves.

•   The expectation that voice enabled virtual agents will become a major aspect of Web Support.

The last point resonates with me since noHold has been creating Virtual Agents for the last decade for some of the biggest companies in the world.  I must admit that up until a few years ago I was skeptical of the quality of Voice Recognition Technology, but the vendors in this space have made dramatic breakthroughs.  In fact, I think that the technologies are coming together to create real world applications 

1. The pervasive distribution of mobile devices. 
2.   The availability of Virtual Agents that not only include a Natural Language Processor (NLP), but also an Inference Engine (IE) that can mimic human interaction. 
3. The availability of Speech Recognition Technology that is both speaker independent and can handle continuous speech.

It is at the intersection of these three technologies that we will see the birth of new voice enabled virtual agents.  All I hope for is that they will be able to understand my thick Italian accent, because now, every time I ask Siri to schedule an appointment, she asks me if I want to know where the closest Starbucks is. 

Diego Ventura, CEO, noHold, Inc.

Throwback Thursday: Customer Case Study with Cisco

     In the spirit of Throwback Thursday, we wanted to share with you a case study from last year presented at Technology Services World in May of 2012. Check out these slides which were co-produced with Tarik Mahmoud, Senior Manager of Customer Support at Cisco, to learn how support became the leader in innovation.

                                               

View more presentations from noHold, Inc.

  
     Additionally, we wanted to give you access to an exclusive interview held with Mahmoud were he talks about his knowledge of world-class customer support. As a multi-award winning executive, Mahmoud gave us insight to invaluable advice pertaining to web support that any company can benefit from. Click on the link below to download the full PDF to see what he had to say. 
 www.nohold2.com/index.php/download_file/view/56/82/

Happy Thursday!

Ever wonder how Virtual Assistants (think Watson, Siri, noHold) are built?

Want to know how a Virtual Agent is built? noHold is the acknowledged leader in Virtual Agent solutions with a mission to deliver real answers to real questions - real fast. Simple to use, easy to implement and as close to human as you can get, noHold turns automated customer service into customer interaction. Click the link below to find out just how we do it. 

Virtual Agent Infographic

CEO's Corner: How It All Started

Here at noHold, Inc. the CEO, Diego Ventura, will be writing a monthly blog post about his experiences, knowledge, and expertise in the technology industry. Here is his first post: 

It was circa 1998 and I was managing my previous company, Stefra Corporation which was named after my two kids, Stephany and Francesco. Stefra developed and marketed a video mail and video conferencing solution called Video Control. We had a great contract with Logitech that bundled our software with their golf-ball looking cameras. Business was good, but we were responsible for the first line support on our embedded software and Logitech was selling these cameras like hotcakes. This introduced the question, “How can I automate support?” Since I have always been passionate about Artificial Intelligence (AI), I decided to build an expert system. At first, mine ran in a DOS Window with no Internet capabilities but had a Natural Language Processor (NLP) and Inference Engine (IE). I determined that the market would benefit from this type of solution, so I started looking for venture capital money. I was successful and in September 1999 I incorporated noHold, Inc. I hired an exceptional team who built a Web-based enterprise solution now used by Fortune 500 companies. We were not like any other company though. What made us so different was the coupling of the NLP and IE which enabled users to not only ask questions, but allowed the Artificial Intelligence  to conduct a dialog to best direct them to the most specific solution. 

Back then there were no Virtual Agents to speak of. Ask Jeeves was making progress with their new version of a search engine that had NLP capabilities and Google was in its infancy but gaining market share virally. In 2000, the acquisition of Big Science by eGain for $50M created a lot of momentum for the Virtual Assistant market, that back then did not exist nor really had a specific name. In fact, here is the evolution of terminology as I recall it:

• ·         Search Engines with NLP (emphasis on search, with NLP as an extra twist)

• ·         Chat bots (short for Chat Robots.  Able to conduct conversations limited only to a question and an answer)

• ·         Virtual Agents (still a very popular way to refer to Virtual Assistants, but confusing because the same term is used when referring to a person who works from home in a virtual call center)

• ·         Virtual Assistants (Gartner’s nomenclature which is now being adopted by the market)

One thing that surprised me throughout the history of this space is that a lot of emphasis has been placed on the look and feel of the Virtual Assistant rather than the Artificial Intelligence functionality behind it. For example, features like the capability of being diagnostic are being overlooked by an avatar based user interface. It is almost as if beauty prevailed over smarts. Maybe a sign of the times?

Diego Ventura, CEO, noHold, Inc.

Customer Feedback Fridays - How Your Organization Can Influence Employee Self-Service

On August 22nd, noHold held a webinar for the pre-launch of Dweeb: Your Self-Service IT Help Desk. We received some great feedback from the webinar, and are excited for the beta program to begin on September 3rd.

During the webinar, noHold's CEO (Diego Ventura) talked about the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). He also discussed how to become part of the free one month beta program. During the beta program, we are soliciting feedback from all participants and users which will help us continuously improve the experience of Dweeb. Dweeb's User Interface, knowledge, and roadmap are all flexible and will adapt over time.

For this Customer Feedback Friday blog, in parallel with the pre-launch of Dweeb, we are interested in your feedback. If your organization is looking for ways to increase employee self-service and you would like to provide feedback that will influence the future of Dweeb, please contact us. Keep in mind that Dweeb is designed to be implemented quickly (less than the time it takes to watch your favorite movie) within your self-serve portal with only a few lines of html.

The feedback from members in our beta program is critical to the future of Dweeb!

Have a great weekend, and stay tuned for more Dweeb updates.

Meet Dweeb: Your Self-Service IT Help Desk

In place of today's Customer Feedback Friday's blog, I would like to introduce you to noHold's newest Virtual Agent: Dweeb.

With the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement in full affect and the release of Windows 8 on the horizon, IT organizations are challenged more than ever to empower end users to self-serve. The era of personal flexibility and functionality is rapidly changing. The internal help desk is faced with the complexity of supporting multiple devices, Operating Systems, software, and more. How is your organization adapting?


Join noHold in a cutting-edge webinar introducing "Dweeb: Your Virtual IT Help Desk." Learn how 'Dweeb' can help:

• Reduce incidents and requests at the help desk 
• Significantly minimize IT costs
• Promote employees to self-serve by offering an interactive and conversational approach to common issues

Register Now for the official launch webinar, and be part of the free one month Beta Program beginning September 3rd.

Date: Wednesday, August 22
Time: 11 AM - 12 PM Pacific Time (PT)

We hope to see you on the webinar! Have a great weekend.

Customer Feedback Fridays - What Do You Ask Your Help Desk About the Most?

Today, I'd like to ask for your feedback. In a previous post, I mentioned Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) a.k.a the Consumerization of IT. The BYOD movement is one of the fastest growing trends affecting your business. Using your own personal device for work challenges the IT organization to provide not only security for those devices, Operating Systems, and software, but also to provide support.

What do you ask your help desk about the most? Is it your iPhone or iPad, VPN, security software? Maybe a combination of a few things? Please take a minute to answer. Thanks for your time, and we look forward to tallying up the results!
click here to answer.

Enjoy your weekend!