A Customer Success Story: Virtual Assistant Thrives in Educational Institution

Preface: Back in 2018, noHold announced one of our customer in the education market started utilizing a Virtual Assistant to help with their expanding training platform. Here is a follow up on how the Virtual Assistant is performing.

A company that serves 7,500 educational institutions has created a platform. The platform is meant to teach skills in Networking, Programming, Cybersecurity and IoT. The platform provides faculty with a course layout and instructions to manage class logistics, while giving students a way to participate in the course. In the United States, over 7,500 institutions, 3,200 instructors and 135,000 students utilize the platform to date.

The popularity of the learning platform has grown tremendously in the last 5 years. Translating into an increase in support tickets to the Contact Center. To manage the increase in traffic the Networking Company has increased spending.

In an effort to better manage support tickets, reduce contact center spending and support a growing academy they looked to a Virtual Assistant to help students and instructors help themselves. The Virtual Assistant was designed with a persona, as well as, positioned as a first line of contact on the platform and website to encourage usage. The Virtual Assistant took 2 weeks to launch with the help of two engineers, a web master and one content specialist.

The Results

The Virtual Assistant went live in the first quarter of 2018 with an immediate 27% reduction in support tickets. As the year continues, each quarter has resulted in about a 46% reduction in Contact Center tickets. The reduction in tickets has resulted in a 70% ROI. The Virtual Assistant and persona associated with it have received an overwhelmingly positive review from students and faculty.

For more information on a Virtual Assistant's role in higher education, please feel free to contact noHold.

How to Increase Revenue With Support Services

In a customer-centric world, creating an excellent customer experience is key to making your brand stand out from the rest. Statistics show that improving the customer experience is actually cost effective; “A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10%” (15 Statistics That Should Change the Business World- But Haven’t). One noHold customer discovered how an existing Virtual Assistant could help generate revenue by promoting new products/services in the right context. Here’s the story…

• The brand in reference is in the consumer electronics industry.
• The company implemented a Virtual Assistant that primarily answers post-sales questions about products.
• On average, the Virtual Assistant handles 75,000 interactions per month, while significantly decreasing support costs.
• The company began promoting a new service on the web site, a Premium Support Service.
• They used typical marketing strategies: banners, colorful buttons, etc. Very little leads came from this type of advertising, though. 
• noHold proposed to let the Virtual Assistant offer the Premium Service in the right context. For example, when an end user describes a problem, the Virtual Assistant provides an answer, but if appropriate, it also suggests to sign up for the Premium Service. No flashy buttons or gimmicks, just let the Virtual Assistant play the role of an expert advisor. 
• It worked! Of the 75,000 interactions per month, 10,000 resulted in leads, and 1,200 converted into sales. After doing the calculations (each sale being about $110), this company was generating an average of $132,000 per month via the new revenue stream.

From this, we learned a couple invaluable lessons. First being, the Virtual Assistant is a great resource to generate leads that might have been lost otherwise. The same service that was not getting attention while flashing in the middle of the Website, is now reaching record sales due to the Virtual Assistant’s ability to understand the context of the conversation and present an offer only when it makes sense. 

Secondly, the Virtual Assistant is able to provide a better customer experience than most other solutions. Take this as an example; a customer is lamenting that the battery life on his or her laptop is degrading. The Virtual Assistant can provide both simple suggestions to increase battery life, and present a one-click link to buy a new battery. In the end, the customer receives excellent customer service and the company effectively cross-sells in the appropriate context. 

“In today’s society, humans are programmed to reject typical forms of advertisements, but everyone still appreciates a helping hand when they are trying to solve a problem.” –Diego Ventura, CEO of noHold. 

 

How to Increase Support and Service Revenue with a Virtual Agent

Has your company ever offered a new service, but it wasn't getting much attention? Service revenue generation is a common challenge that many companies face. One of noHold's clients leveraged a Virtual Agent to help get their customers the service they need, while increasing revenue for the company. Here is a short story and some 'lessons learned.'

• The company is in the consumer electronics space.
• They implemented a Virtual Agent (VA) that can answer primarily post-sales questions about their products. 
• The VA handles over 70K interactions per month, decreasing support cost significantly.
• The company decided to promote a Premium Support Service on its website.
• They used the typical approach: banners, colorful buttons, etc.
• Very little leads came from this type of advertisement.
• noHold proposed to let the VA offer the upgraded Service in the right context. No flashy buttons or gimmicks, just let the VA play the role of an expert advisor.
• When an end user describes a problem, the VA provides an answer, but if appropriate, it also suggests to sign up for the Premium Service.
• It worked! The VA is generating an average monthly stream of more than $130,00. 

Lessons learned:

The Virtual Agent was able to create leads that otherwise would have been lost, because it can propose a new service or product within the right context.

The same button that nobody was clicking on while flashing in the middle of the website, is now scoring record sales. This happens because the VA is capable of understanding the context of the conversation and presents an offer only when it makes sense.

Humans are programmed to reject typical forms of advertisement, but everybody still appreciates a helping hand when they are trying to solve a problem. 

Does your company leverage self-service to generate revenue? How do you offer the right services at the right time? 

www.nohold.com

A Leading Provider of Home Phone, High Speed Internet, Wireless and Digital TV Services Leverages Partner Virtual Agents to Enhance the Customer Experience

Yesterday, we posted a blog on how to measure the ROI of a Virtual Agent. Today, we took a look at some of the value cards for the month of April and found that an expert in the telecommunications industry utilizing Virtual Agent technology received 170% ROI. They saw that weighted effectiveness was high, and calculated that the Virtual Agent would break-even (or pay for itself) at only 15% weighted effectiveness. As mentioned in previous blogs, weighted effectiveness represents the number of people who indicated that the solution the Virtual Agent presented them was very helpful. Currently, the Virtual Agent is reporting nearly 3 times that amount. ROI calculated through Virtual Agent effectiveness equates to savings that range from thousands of dollars, to hundreds of thousands of dollars on support costs each month.

There are a few noteworthy approaches this client takes to make sure they are getting the most out of their Virtual Agent. For one, this client utilized noHold Connect, allowing their Virtual Agent to connect with a partner company's Virtual Agent, making it easier for consumers to find their own answers to their problems. For example, if consumers are looking for an answer to a problem with their mobile phone and not necessarily their service, the Telco Virtual Agent can seamlessly in place activate the "connected" mobile device Virtual Agent via one user interface (UI). 

Also, the Virtual Agent begins the conversation to direct the user towards the correct product line, for faster resolution. The increase in completed sessions (completed conversations with the Virtual Agent) can be attributed to continuously monitoring the end user experience, and the ability to implement, test and adjust easily. 

Is your customer experience strategy designed to: implement, test and adjust easily? How do you monitor end user adoption of new self-service initiatives? 

www.nohold.com 

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: How to Measure the ROI of a Virtual Agent

As a leader in the Virtual Agent space, our customers look to us for best practices. In the presentation below, there are a list of best practices for measuring the ROI of a Virtual Agent. Here is an example of one from within the presentation..

1. The Delta Approach- this approach has you measure the number of contacts, including calls, emails, live chat, and more, before AND after the implementation of the Virtual Agent to get the ROI.

• Pros: It is easy to measure
• Cons: It can only be done once, and it does not take into account the growth of the business

Those are just a few of the ways to measure the ROI of a Virtual Agent, but they are not the only methods. It is important to ask yourself what you are trying to measure and what information will best compliment your company’s needs. noHold is extremely flexible when it comes to computing ROI to be most beneficial to your brand. 

“Typical ROI is achieved with resolution rates of 10% or less.” How does your company measure ROI? 

www.nohold.com

A Global Stock Transfer Company Reaches Huge ROI With Virtual Agents

A few weeks ago noHold posted a blog about The Most Commonly Used and Most Effective Virtual Agent Solutions. We talked about the monthly value card of a leader in the PC industry and the metrics they report on. To clarify, Virtual Agents automatically capture actionable customer intelligence based on each interaction, and powerful administrative tools allow your company to create customer reports on the usage of the Virtual Agent based on organizational needs. The monthly value cards are an additional resource provided by our Professional Services team here at noHold, containing helpful recommendations, best practices, and a snapshot of monthly metrics.

At the top is a screenshot of the monthly value card for the experts in high integrity data management and stakeholder engagement. The metrics above are for one Virtual Agent for a specific business unit within the company. In their value card, noHold shares the ‘number of interactions’ or the number of completed conversations had with the Virtual Agent (per month). Also, one of the most important metrics to pay attention to is ‘weighted effectiveness.’ This represents the percentage of people who have said the solution they found via the Virtual Agent was very helpful. This number is important because it allows your company to get some feedback straight from their customers. In addition, the ROI snapshot includes 'break even' - this particular client achieves 'break even' with only 1% effectiveness; that means that the Virtual Agent already paid for itself with 1% helpfulness votes. Therefore, the percentage of ROI is in the thousands. 

Besides having a huge ROI, additional benefits from the Virtual Agent include:

1. Reduced service cancellation
2. Improved customer satisfaction
3. Real-time feedback loop to product marketing
4. First contact resolution
5. Reduced call time

Kudos to this company for positioning their Virtual Agent successfully and utilizing all its advantages. Cheers!

www.nohold.com

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: Best Practices for Virtual Assistant Implementation

With over 14 years experience in the Knowledge Management and Virtual Assistant space, noHold provides best practices to its customers. Spanning across industries such as Telecommunications, Hi-Tech, Finance, and more, noHold customers have achieved Return On Investment (ROI) while creating award winning eService experiences for their customers.

This excerpt from a recent best practices guide was designed for our client's implementation and ongoing success. Take a look below for a snapshot, and if you would like access to the full document, there are instructions below for contacting us.

This document will address the following:
• Content
• Positioning
• Promotion
• End User Experience
• Integration
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Tasks and Timeline
• Post-Pilot Roles and Resources

Positioning

Once you have determined your content, you will need to decide where you would like your VA to live and in what form. This means deciding where on your website you would like the VA to be placed, and if you anticipate this being a tool used on mobile devices. This step will help to drive promotion and the success of the VA.

Tip: Look at where your audience currently accesses support and contact information. In order to generate the most effect level of deflections from live agents, you will need to position the VA in places where people looking to answer questions will most likely engage with the tool.

This might mean integrating with your support page, positioning the VA to preempt the opening of a support ticket, etc.

Questions to ask when deciding on positioning:

• Should the VA be mobile friendly?
• Should the VA be positioned on the website support pages? Contact us page? Product pages?
• Should the Virtual Agent be part of email and marketing communications to your audience?
• Do you want the VA to have its own internal landing page?

Promotion

After determining the various aspects of scope, Cisco was faced with the challenge of driving self-service adoption. That is, now that the tools were in place, how would Cisco make sure that they maximized their investment and reach as many users as possible? “Promotion,” Mahmoud says. “And by promotion, I don’t mean like offering a coupon for customers, but make the customer aware that these platforms exist. Most companies make the assumption that once you have it online, customers will find it…you have to be proactive to make your customer-base aware of what their options to get support are.” – Tarik Mahmoud, Cisco

This step is directly related to the positioning of the VA. In order to attract customers to the VA, it must first be positioned so it can preempt other channels. Second, the VA must retain those customers by providing effective content. Before either of these things can be achieved, customers need to know that a VA is now available for them to use.

Tip: Here are some effective ways to promote your VA:

• Good positioning on your site is the key. The link to the VA should be easy to find and located consistently throughout the site, not just under support, but possibly also in the Products page or Contact Us page.
• Retain customers by providing a unique user interface. Integrate multimedia, Wizards, videos and your logo to foster brand recognition and loyalty.
• Link to the VA from your community forums, blogs, and other support channels. Give your customers unrestricted access to this great tool.
• Advertise the VA on your product packaging. The link to the VA should be clearly displayed on packaging, manuals and marketing collateral.
• Advertise the availability of the VA as a competitive differentiator. “We offer 24/7 support no matter where you are in the world!”
• Promote the VA in every communication with your customers: Newsletters, email blasts, and on the support agent’s email signature.
• Advertise it on your IVR. Let people who are on hold know that the VA is available.

These are just a couple tips for implementing a Virtual Agent. To receive access to the full document and get best practice techniques on content, end user experience, integration, key performance indicators (KPIs), tasks and timeline, and post-pilot roles and resources please follow the link to the 'Contact Us' page and request a copy.

Business Case: Leading PC Manufacturers Enhance Interactive Self-Service and Reach an Average 850% ROI Per Month

In 1983, Steve Jobs and a few others filled a time capsule and buried it at the Aspen International Design Conference. Over 3 decades later, the show Diggers helped organizers finally uncover the buried treasure. The unveiling of the time capsule will be aired on the National Geographic’s channel, February 25.

One of the items in the time capsule is the Lisa mouse. This mouse is considered to be a significant part of tech history. “Jobs used it at the conference where he predicted many innovations we use today. He envisioned the future of computers and the Internet, the creation of the App Store, wireless networking and other Apple technologies.” (Steve Jobs Time Capsule Finally Uncovered After 30 Years) Thanks to the innovation of the Lisa mouse, it has set the bar high for top PC manufacturers to provide cutting edge technology to their consumers. The inception of the box mouse “Lisa”, helped lead to innovations like the wireless mouse, touchpads, touch screen/tablet, holographic keyboard, and much more. 

Virtual Agents are also making an impact on tech history. Companies in today’s market are utilizing automated self-service tools for more than just support . Since the conception of the Internet of Everything, noHold Connect Virtual Agent’s advanced technology allowing them to communicate with multiple Virtual Agents (noHold Connect), providing a “butler” to keep users connected to all their devices from a single User Interface (UI).   

Here is an example of one of the top 3 PC manufacturers who is also recognized as a company that develops, sells, repairs computers and related products and services. The company began using a Virtual Agent to provide a better customer experience. This company wanted to gain insight into the top issues their customers were inquiring about and be able to solve these issues. Instead of using a standard approach to self-service and offering a long list of articles with answers to an infinite number of questions, they implemented an “empty” VA (EZintel) to keen in on what customers were having the most trouble with. After understanding the questions through reporting analysis, they began providing interactive and diagnostic solutions (InstantSupport) across multiple product lines (printers, mobile devices, gaming, etc.). In addition, integrating the Virtual Agent with their existing support ecosystem has reduced the need for human intervention. By preempting live chat with the VA, customers have the opportunity to get a quick answer through the VA before engaging a live agent. As a result, the company recently reported a chat avoidance metric of 11%. Using this front line technology has saved companies hundreds of thousands of dollars. Companies in the PC industry report an average ROI of 850%.

Times have definitely changed since the Lisa mouse, but the constant need to innovate is timeless. There will always be a new way to do things, but adapting is key to staying competitive and successful. What do you think the next big technology break through will be? What would you want in your time capsule?   

www.nohold.com

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: This Valentines Day, Give the Gift of Virtual Agent Love

Have you ever wondered how to gain the most from your Virtual Agent? Virtual Agents are capable of doing so much more than just providing answers to consumer questions. One tip to getting the most out of your Virtual Agent is by sharing it with you partners. It is equally important for partners to feel special, as well as customers. Extending the Virtual Agent to them will build a stronger relationship with them all while seeing an increasing ROI. Here is a slideshare we have presented before about how a company in the medical field made a customer support Virtual Agent accessible to all their partners and reaped great benefits, such as

• Generating about $5M in revenue per year
• Building a powerful relationship and making partners feel apart of the inner circle.

 

The Future of Self-Service in the Financial Industry

Self-service is all around us. From the self checkout kiosks in the grocery store, to the self check-in terminals at the airport; even restaurants are turning to tablets for order fulfillment. The truth is, consumers prefer self service. According to NCR, which makes self-service technology, 85% of consumers prefer brands that offer several forms of self-service: online, at kiosks and via mobiles, etc. (www.economist.com, 2009). When it comes to the web, leading analyst firm Gartner predicted that in 2012, “By 2014, 50% of online customer self-service search activities will be via a Virtual Assistant (VA) for at least 1,500 large enterprises.” (Source: Gartner Predicts 2012: CRM Customer Service and Support Staggers in the Posthuman Age, Jacobs, J.)

One Fortune 500 organization reports that more than 70% or customers stated that the support site is their first stop, before other support channels such as phone support. More customers engage with online support offerings and spend more time navigating through support pages with a greater success rate in finding what they are looking for.

Statistics gathered by Gartner, in August 2013 are shown in the graph below. The data represents bank channel usage by country and preferred channel. To get direct insight into consumer behaviors and attitudes around financial services, Gartner conducted consumer research in 9 countries. Visits to banking channels via PC represent the most popular channel for accessing accounts. “Despite this higher level of branch use in emerging markets, the pattern across all countries surveyed is consistent, with a substantial drop-off in branch frequency compared with digital channels for routine banking activities (such as checking a bank balance, initiating a bank transfer or obtaining the answer to a query). Adjusting to this shift effectively is critical for retail banking organizations and the IT teams that support them.” (Source: Gartner: Bank Customers Still Love Branches, but Just Don't Use Them as Much. David Schehr, August 2013.)

Accessing accounts online via PC represents the most popular interaction channel. Responding to queries online (via self-service) should be a high priority for financial institutions.

Source: Gartner (August 2013)

Virtual Personal Assistants Shine a Spotlight on Virtual Agents


According to a blog shared by Kate Leggett, Forrester Research, "Customers today are trained to go online to get answers to their questions by navigating a company’s FAQ list, or by typing in keywords to surface the right piece of content. In fact, 66% of customers use this channel. But at 51%, the satisfaction ratings for this channel are the lowest of all the communication channels that Forrester tracks. It's because keeping content in line with customer demand and making it easily accessible to customers is very hard to do. Enter the world of virtual agents. These solutions use natural language processing and artificial intelligence to greet a customer and to serve up the right answer to their question, which is asked using a customer's natural speech pattern, not just keywords. These answers could be a straightforward response, knowledge base content, data (like ‘Did my check clear?’), or the result of a transaction (like ‘Book me on the next flight home out of San Francisco’). With the right tuning and integration to back-end systems, virtual agents are able to personalize and contextualize customer interactions.” Gartner predicts that "Virtual personal assistant usage in business will grow more quickly in 2017 and 2018 than iPad usage did in 2010 and 2011." (Gartner Predicts 2014) Google™’s recent announcement of Hummingbird further augments these predictions – As stated by Google’s VP of Search, the goal was to create a more humanlike experience. Accompanied by Siri, Sherpa, Google Now, and other Personal Virtual Assistants, the future of interaction is self-service with enhanced humanlike capabilities.

We Live in a Mobile-Enabled World

In addition to these humanlike, self-service developments, the consumer demand for mobile devices has transformed the World Wide Web into the mobile web. In a recent Gartner survey (Source: Gartner: Survey Analysis: E-Commerce Customers Look to Cloud, Mobile and Transformational Change, July 2013, Fletcher, C., Alvarez G., et al.), “more than 48% of respondents plan to integrate mobile applications with their e-commerce storefronts, and more than 36% plan integrations for personalization.” Search is the top feature integrated into e-commerce platforms – more than 85% of respondents have integrated or have plans to integrate search capabilities; the top two focuses for future integration are mobile (48%) and personalization (36%).

Virtual Agents are designed to be light-weight applications that live in the cloud. They are easily optimized for mobile interaction, and can be accessed from a mobile phone application, mobile website, or even activated through scanning a QR code. They are also multi-channel, which means the technology can be leveraged across multiple channels such as: social media, in the call center, in stores or branches, as well as the web (internally for employees/externally for end customers) and mobile environments.

One of the challenges for organizations is creating a customer service experience that does not function in the same manner across all channels. In “Six Best Practices for CRM Web Customer Service Deployments” Gartner validates these points by stating “The biggest problem with most self-service solutions is when the transactional self-service solution (e.g., online ticket booking, online banking, etc.) does not have an equivalent supporting channel. If the customer needs assistance, then he or she often has to use the phone channel. This approach increases the number of calls into the call center, as opposed to reducing the number of calls, thus negating the potential savings from a reduction in incoming telephone calls.” (Source: Gartner: Six Best Practices for CRM Web Customer Service Deployments, 2012, Johan Jacobs).

A best practice for mobile strategy is to provide a customer service channel that complements the light-weight, easy to use, mobile format of the most popular devices. Similarly, create an optimized experience across various channels; for example: web, call center, social media, etc. Virtual Agents are not only ideal for these environments, but they are a part of a preferred multichannel customer experience.

Evidence in the Financial Industry

Computershare, a transfer agent that operates customer service centers for shareholder servicing for public companies and closed-end mutual fund companies, implemented a Virtual Agent in its Investor Centre in October of 2010. Brian Heffernan, Product Manager at Computershare said, “Whether it’s through Penny, the virtual agent, or her living kin conducting live chats, the overall effort is to eliminate or reduce electronic mail. We don’t want e-mails because, as any transfer agent will tell you, responding to an e-mail are the most costly method with which you could interface with a customer.” Heffernan continues by noting, “That’s because email does not generate its own responses. That requires not just a human, but a human skilled enough at responding properly—in a manner that not only fulfills the customer’s need, but also will stand up under scrutiny in a compliance review. Beyond that, responding by e-mail tends to invite … yet another e-mail from the customer. The multiple contacts ratchet up costs, dramatically. “Once it gets to the e-mail stage, it gets very expensive.”

Companies in various industries realize the importance of self-service, and not simple self-service; smarter self-service. Similar brands have also noted that a simple search would not be effective in the financial industry. There is definitely a need for enhanced and more humanlike conversation that one receives when interacting with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that uses a Natural Language Processor (NLP) and Inference Engine (IE). Mr. Heffernan acknowledges, “This can get tricky. A person whose company offers a Dividend Reinvestment Plan might simply refer to it as a Drip, when typing out one of its widely used acronyms. The system has to know that the person is referring to a DRiP. And the system has to know that companies use different acronyms for the same thing. Like DRP. Or even DSPP (Direct Stock Purchase Plan).The ins-and-outs of complex subjects, like cost-basis accounting, have to be grouped and weighted, to help create more precise responses, automatically. Over time, the tool [Virtual Agent] gains experience and gets better.” (Source: 2011 Money Management Executive, By Tom Steinert- relkeld)

The Future

In the past, the standard for web self service was based on a simple search – for example: Google site search, basic Knowledge Management (KM) search, etc. The standard for websites has been based on pushing information to the public in a format that resembles an electronic brochure. The popularity of mobile devices, along with the shift of preferred customer service channels indicates that the future is Natural Language Processing and 2 way interaction channels. Based on much research and forward looking statements from leading analyst firms and experts, self-service projects achieve the highest Return On Investment (ROI) when leveraged across all channels and optimized for the right channel experience. Virtual Agents are a key component in a successful Web Customer Service strategy, as validated by industry experts.

References:

"The Recession Spurs Self Service: Help yourself" Economist, 2009. Retrieved October 2013

Gartner Research. (2012). Gartner Predicts 2012: CRM Customer Service and Support Staggers in the Posthuman Age. [Press Release] Retrieved from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1929014

Gartner Research "Bank Customers Still Love Branches, but Just Don't Use Them as Much" David Schehr, August 2013."

Gartner Research. (2013). Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2014 and Beyond. [Press Release] Retrieved from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2603215

Gartner Research "Gartner: Survey Analysis: E-Commerce Customers Look to Cloud, Mobile and Transformational Change" Fletcher C., Alvarez G., et al. July 2013.

Gartner Research "Gartner: Six Best Practices for CRM Web Customer Service Deployments" Jacobs, J. 2013.

"A Penny Learned: How a Virtual Agent Gets Job Done." Money Management Executive, Tom Steinert-relkeld, 2011.

© Copyright noHold Inc. 2013 All other product and service names are the property of their respective owners.

Throwback Thursday: The Future of Search is...a Virtual Agent?

With the recent announcements of Google's Hummingbird as well as Facebook's Graph Search, it seems fitting to discuss the new role of Search. According to an article,  Amit Singhal, Google's VP of Search said, "Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You'd sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words, the world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the Web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket."

Wikipedia states, "To celebrate their 15th birthday, Google launched a new 'Hummingbird' algorithm, claiming that Google search can be a more human way to interact with users and provide a more direct answer."

Since the role of a Virtual Agent is to create a more 'human way of interacting with users,' let's discuss Virtual Agents that have the added benefit of searching across clouds. For this weeks Throwback Thursday I want to re-introduce Search ++, code named 'Smart Search.' This series of algorithms was introduced to the world only a year ago in 2012, making it still fairly new. Search ++ is an enhancement to search engines and works collaboratively with Virtual Agents to provide more accurate rank results. 

One interesting component of Search ++ is the Federated Search ++ feature. This component allows results from multiple data sources to be pulled into the Virtual Agent and delivered to the end users. The latest version of Federated Search ++ not only pulls results from various data sources, but it can rank all results as a whole instead of separately ranking from each data source. 

Another advantage to Search ++ is its ability to preempt end users to find solutions before submitting a support case to any given business. Sometimes consumers have a hard time finding the solution to their problem and submitting an email or case to the vendor seems like the easiest way to get answers. This is not true though. Submitting cases can be time consuming, you might have to wait hours before getting in contact with a support agent. With Search ++ preemption forms, before you submit your question, Search ++ technology will analyze what you have written in the case form and supply you with relevant articles that could lead you to immediate solutions. This decreases the amount of emails or cases submitted to your company's contact center and in turn, increases ROI and customer satisfaction. 

As search engines aim to be more 'human-like', and our Smartphones come prepackaged with Virtual Assistants (equipped with personalities and names), what do you think about the future of search? Will we use Virtual Assistants for virtually everything? Do the lines between search and Virtual Assistants continue to blur?

Happy #TBT

Throwback Thursday: E-commerce Vendors Incorporating WCS Components into Their Strategy

Happy Throwback Thursday!

Lately, we have been hearing so many remarkable stories about e-commerce, online shopping, innovative QR code ideas, and more. Companies are really pushing the limits on what technology can do in the hands of the consumer. I thought it would be interesting to write a throwback on the first e-commerce software. 

Intershop Communications, founded in 1992, was the leader in e-commerce solutions. Once the World Wide Web became more common, they created the first German, web-based store in 1995. A year later, Intershop Communications was able to market “Intershop Online” to the U.S. This became the first e-commerce software in America. 

Today, e-commerce is such a huge space for businesses to generate more revenue. With the Internet at the palm of the consumers’ hand every day, it is critical for companies to have a smart e-commerce strategy. Leading analysts are now saying it is not enough to just have e-commerce software implemented on your website. It is imperative to construct a strategy that will create a full 360 experience for the customer; and that can be achieved by combining web customer service (WCS) components into your company’s existing e-commerce suites. One way analysts are predicting the vamp up on e-commerce is by e-commerce suite vendors partnering with Virtual Agent (VA) vendors to produce a greater overall experience for the consumer.

Here is an example of a leading security software company that utilizes a Virtual Agent not only for technical support, but also for sales. Since the implementation of the Virtual Agent, they have seen increases in sales by offering options to upgrade, purchase additional licenses, and buy premier support. Based on Virtual Agent metrics, 10% of the Virtual Agent interactions result in eStore referrals each month, averaging 1% “buy now” clicks, and 10% “more info” clicks per month.

Eventually, e-commerce, CRM, and web support will all work together to fulfill that 360 experience for the customer. And as noted above, the ROI for having a blended e-commerce and WCS strategy will be advantageous for your company.

Cheers