Throwback Thursday: Best Practices for Troubleshooting

Happy Throwback Thursday!

A recent deployment of a Virtual Agent integrating with a troubleshooter got me thinking about the progression of troubleshooting and how it has enhanced over the years.

Circa 2010, noHold created a modem troubleshooting Virtual Agent that  incorporated the knowledge from top modem providers...a sort of all in one Virtual Agent. It would be a place for consumers to go to find problems with any of their devices. This product was directed toward telecommunication companies by providing them with a way to support their consumers know matter what company their modem is from. For example, if someone is having a problem with their modem, they can type to the Virtual Agent, "I am having problems with my modem," and the Virtual Agent would respond with a list of modem brands for you to pick the correct model. This Modem Troubleshooter was made possible by Confederated Knowledge. Here is a screenshot of the modem troubleshooter powered by noHold.

In today's market, a global leader providing digital products, services and solutions, including industry-leading laptops, tablets, HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc™ and media streaming products and much more integrated Virtual Agent technology with their troubleshooting solution.  

The Challenge: The company built a flash troubleshooting solution, but noticed many users abandoned the tool, and they did not know why.

The Answer:  A Virtual Agent!  They added an “Other” option to the flash troubleshooter where end users can type in the issue in their own terms.  This launches the virtual agent, which can report on the user queries AND provide solutions.

Here's a sample of how the troubleshooter offers the Virtual Agent as an option.

Whether a Virtual Agent is being used as a troubleshooter or a compliment to leverage troubleshooting, it is a great asset to any company's customer support program. 

Cheers!

Throwback Thursday: Connected Virtual Agents

     For this week’s throwback Thursday, I wanted to bring your attention back to a blog written by Angela McIntyre, a research director from Gartner. Back in 2011, she wrote a blog titled "Human or Chatbot."  Angela discussed the advantages of Virtual Assistants, in particular the Virtual Assistants with the capability to pass the conversation on to a partner Virtual Agent. "Some providers of virtual assistant technology seamlessly link the virtual agent for the company that makes the device, with the virtual agent of the company that makes the connector box, with the virtual agent of the company that provides the software application, etc." noHold is the only corporation that utilizes this type of technology which we call Confederated Knowledge (CK). Since two out of three calls in the call center are related to third party products and services, it is advantageous to customer satisfaction (not to mention cost wise) to be able to direct your consumer immediately to the right solution.

     As always, I love to leave you with a quote, so here is a quote from Diego Ventura, the founder and CEO of noHold, Inc. "noHold is pleased to enhance the partnership between our customers through CK. However, the real winners here are the end users who can solve their problems quickly on their own terms without having to visit multiple sites." Click here for the full press release.

    Enjoy the rest of your week. Cheers!

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!

Motorola Modem Virtual Assistant: Is it Part of Your Support Bundle?

As a consumer, I love bundles. If I package Internet, TV, and Voice, I can often get a great deal. Even when purchasing a laptop, bundled software is a great perk. I love bundles.

To most consumers, when a problem arises with these bundled products and services, it's difficult to know where to start troubleshooting the issue. For a call center agent on the phones answering questions, there is only so much help they can provide about third party products. According to the 2012 Support Services Benchmark (John Ragsdale, VP of Technology Research – TSIA), nearly a quarter of all service incidents, 23%, require expertise and/or training on another vendor’s products to resolve. And these incidents take a third longer, 32.9%, to resolve than incidents concerning the company’s own products. According to a leading PC manufacturer, 2/3 of the calls in the call center are related to third party products. 

Join noHold and Motorola (June 13, 2012 at 11:30 AM PT) as we discuss a common industry issue, and reveal a new way to provide support across company boundaries. And by the way, you can begin using the Motorola Modem Virtual Assistant right away (no development time). All attendees will receive a free one month trial.

Click the image below to register for the webinar. If you can't make it, please contact us and we will be happy to share the details. Have a great day.

Customer Feedback Fridays - In the Form of An Expert Panel

Today, we want to give you a little something to look forward to. Instead of providing a customer feedback quote, we would like you to hear feedback from an expert panel.

On Wednesday, March 14, at 11:30 AM PT, noHold will be hosting a webinar. The webinar will feature experts from the PC, Software, and Mobility industries. During a 30 minute segment, noHold's CEO (Diego Ventura) will get feedback from the panel on a common and complex problem that companies have tried to solve for years - Support Across Company Boundaries.

Don't take our word for it - Hear what industry experts have to say!

For more information about the panelists, and to register, click here.

P.S. All attendees can register to receive a free CK Starter Kit.

Enjoy your weekend!

What's Your Secret Sauce?

Today I had the opportunity to speak with a Gartner analyst who covers customer-centric Web strategies. One of the questions he asked was, "What is your secret sauce?" In other words, what would make an executive choose our technology over someone else? How do we differentiate ourselves from other vendors in the support service space?

I think these are great questions and companies should be jumping at every opportunity to divulge what goes into their secret sauce. I'm Italian and I find it helps to relate things to food. If you think of a companies' innovation and technology like your grandmother's best pasta sauce... It's no matter who knows the ingredients, no one can make it like grandma.

This is the motivation for the current post. noHold's customers and prospective customers deserve to know what's in the "secret sauce." This is not an attempt to rattle off a list of things noHold products can do. The following six ingredients make noHold's technology the best Virtual Agent solution on the market.

• Confederated Knowledge™ - Customers can leverage knowledge from existing Virtual Agents and avoid content maintenance for third-party products.
• Easy Implementation - One Knowledge Base Specialist and one Project Manager is all it takes to begin providing customers with an interactive and diagnostic experience.
• Content Management - Administrators can upload and edit content easily with ArticlesManager™. Programming skills not necessary.
• Reporting - Customizable and off-the-shelf metrics reports are available to an administrator 24/7.
• Integration - CRM Packages like Salesforce, Live Chat, and other APIs can connect to various channels including Social Media.
• Intuitive - Diagnostic capabilities can help guide an end-user through a process and address problems that require a customer service feel.

I believe that with these ingredients noHold is able to achieve "secret sauce" status. The only difference here is that we're sharing our secret sauce with the world. No matter who knows the ingredients, they cannot make grandma's secret sauce.

Confederated Knowledge: Current Applications

Confederated Knowledge™ is a technology that noHold has recently launched. The basic premise is to give consumers the ability to leverage knowledge from other existing Virtual Agents. We believe this will change the way people get support for their products.

Nowadays so many of our products are interconnected. Think about connecting to the internet... Depending on your set-up there are multiple components that work to give you a solid connection. Obviously, you must have an internet service provider and a computer (two). Wired or wireless, there is at least a cable modem and possibly a router (two).

In this example there are four pieces of technology that work together to allow access to the internet. When you can't connect, which one is to blame? Where do you troubleshoot the problem? The ISP network could be down, your computer may have a virus, or you may need to reset your modem and router.

What Confederated Knowledge allows consumers to do is ask questions to any one of the partners' Virtual Agents about any of the products used to connect to the internet. Currently, Linksys by Cisco, Comcast, and Symantec are using this technology to connect their Virtual Agents.

Welcome!

This is the noHold Blog, a new forum for talk about Virtual Agents, Web-Self Service, and Customer Experience. My name is Francesco. I'm the marketing/communications guy at noHold and am here to start a conversation. We are doing some very interesting things, all of which I'd like to hear your opinion about.

Aim of this Blog
My goal is to provide you with more information about our company and technology while learning about industry statistics and trends. Sometimes I will create my own posts, and sometimes I may respond to an article I have read. This Blog will be most valuable with participation from others in this space. I am interested to hear what you have to say.

A bit about us
noHold creates Virtual Agents capable of conversing with end-users in an interactive and diagnostic fashion, not too different from an interaction with a live person. What separates us from the competition are our unique features including: The ability to change the subject of a conversation, the ability to understand morphed and misspelled words, the ability to infer what an end-user is asking, and Confederated Knowledge. Confederated Knowledge is our newest feature that allows end-users to leverage knowledge from other existing Virtual Agents. We see this as a paradigm shift for customer support!

More posts to come. Keep an eye out for weekly posts or become a follower for updates when there is a new discussion topic. Also, follow us on Twitter for the most current goings-on at noHold.