noHold is Hosting an Artificial Intelligence Symposium this Summer in Italy

June 27, 2019, MILPITAS, CA – noHold is excited to be traveling across the world to host its first AI Symposium. This exclusive three-day event will take place from July 17th to the 19th in Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy.

Since 1999, noHold Inc. has successfully provided Artificial Intelligence solutions to businesses. As pioneers in this space, noHold experts will be sharing best practices in AI-based Virtual Assistants for the enterprise. During this event, attendees will explore how innovations in AI can benefit the enterprise, network with experienced Virtual Assistant professionals, as well as Fortune 100 companies that are using Virtual Assistants today. Some of the presentation topics will include strategies on building and deploying a world class Virtual Assistant, ensuring that security and compliance standards are implemented, strategic UI/UX design, and so much more. For more details on the symposium’s agenda, please click here.

Attendees can expect to:

• Receive personalized training and best practices by noHold experts
• Maximize your knowledge of the SICURA platform including not-yet-released technologies from noHold
• Experience an in-depth analysis of available AI technology through SICURA at no extra cost
• Learn how to maximize your virtual assistant’s ROI
• Build relationships with their colleagues in an idyllic setting

noHold’s CEO and founder, Diego Ventura, adds, “We are excited to share the experience we have accumulated over the past 20 years in this space with our customers and partners. It will be nice to do it in a global context and in the backdrop of Venice, one of the most unique capitals of the world.”

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.

Use Case: How Webroot Leverages noHold Artificial Intelligence

October 27, 2016, MILPITAS, CA – Recently, noHold had the opportunity to interview Webroot’s Knowledgebase Manager, Anna. Webroot, a leader in Internet Security, has been a long standing customer of noHold, and Anna has been managing the Virtual Assistant (VA) for almost three years now. Through that work she has gained lots of hands on experience with the VA, and learned best practices to getting the most out of it.

This interview asks Anna a hand full of questions regarding how Webroot utilizes their VA, ranging from how often the VA is updated to which reports and data are most beneficial. Here are a couple of the key takeaways from the interview.

• “The VA is a huge asset for the support team and we try to utilize it to the best advantage. When any customer goes to our support pages on our website, the first thing  they see is a list of links to the most commonly used solutions in the knowledgebase, as well as a search box to access the VA directly.”
• “[It] has been a huge help for our growing market in Japan.”
•  “It helps me identify whether we have a true knowledge gap that calls for new content, or if I need to work with the support team directly to help users find what they need more efficiently.”
• “Take some time to learn the back end of the VA before you start building out live content. It’s a fairly straightforward management structure, but there are little things here and there you can only pick up by fiddling with the system, and those are what really help make the VA what you need it to be.”

To read the full interview with Anna, click here.
www.nohold.com

Virtual Assistant Placement Adjustments

Placement and positioning play a critical role in how end users interact with a Virtual Assistant. If an end user finds the Virtual Assistant on a product page the assumption is that the Virtual Assistant can answer questions about that product. To enhance the customer experience it is important to take this thought process into consideration. Most clients, when starting out, have a specific placement in mind. Typically, this results in the Virtual Assistant being positioned on one page of the company website. But in a recent review of Virtual Assistant interactions, usage of Virtual Assistants doubled when added to two specific types of pages: Product pages and Support pages. 

Although this worked for these companies, it is important to consider the content your Virtual Assistant contains to increase usage. Does it make sense for the Virtual Assistant to be there? Some may find that having a Virtual Assistant link consistently in the header will better provide service to their customers, while others will limit access to support or product pages. 

www.nohold.com

Virtual Assistant Best Practices: Insight into Enhancing End User Experiences

As an acknowledged leader in the Knowledge Management and Virtual Assistant space, with over 15 years of experience under our belt, noHold is continually developing and adapting a list of best practices, so companies can get the most out of their Virtual Assistant. Below is an infographic created to help companies find out how to enhance end user experiences with the use of our Virtual Assistant technology. 

**I apologize for the small font, please click on the image for an amplified version.

To print a copy of this infographic, please click here.
Cheers!
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

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.