Customer Journey Mapping Toolkit: noHold's Experience

To wrap up our final post to the Customer Journey Mapping series, I wanted to share with you the experience a few of us here at noHold had doing the Customer Journey exercise using the "Jake" story. 

A few of us gathered in the board room to complete the customer journey map. It was helpful to have a group of people to bounce ideas back and forth, and get different perspectives.

Together, we went through the 11 steps to creating a successful Journey Mapping experience. Here are some photos sharing our experience: 

Step 4: Writing down the emotions the customer (Jake) might feel during each phase of his journey.

 Step 5: Vote for the moment that you feel is the most impactful, both negative and positive.

 Step 8: Write out the wins or needs of the customer during that specific, impact moment

Step 9/10: Determining the desired experience and ideas of how to achieve that desired experience.

After going through the steps, we concluded with step 11, proposing a new experience in a statement."This experience will address customers feeling frustrated waiting for live chat. We can accomplish this through improving agent resources, implementing a customer facing Virtual Agent, and scheduling a call back time. These changes will reduce wait times by 20% and increase customer satisfaction."

It was a great process to go through as a team to better understand what Customer Journey Mapping really is and how it enables us to better understand our customers. Let us know how your experience went in the comments below. What conclusions did you come up with? Did you face any challenges? 

For more information regarding customer journey mapping/customer care, please contact us. 

New noHold A.I. Connector Integrates with Lithium Communities

Allowing Users to Leverage Multiple Knowledge Sources from a Single Point of Search

Photo Credit: jdesbonnet.blogspot.com

July 16, 2015, MILPITAS, CA – noHold created a new connector that integrates with Lithium Communities to simplify the customer support experience. With a similar goal to optimize efficiency for end users to find support solutions, the connector uses noHold’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Lithium’s search to find answers in the discussion boards hosted within a Lithium Community, and returns the results within the noHold Virtual Assistant window. Through the open API connector, companies can leverage a Virtual Assistant that also works in parallel with multiple knowledge sources such as Lithium, Google, Bing, Salesforce, and more; all from one place, Single Point of Search.

One of the largest PC manufacturers in the world is already utilizing this technology to make their support options more dynamic. For example, if a user is inquiring about a battery issue for their laptop, the user can type ‘battery’ into the search bar. The expert system will bring up noHold’s Virtual Assistant, as well as pull in a library of knowledge and relevant discussion threads from the company’s Lithium-powered community. The technology is designed to help customers find solutions on their own terms, for any type of user. They can use the Virtual Assistant for a more diagnostic and interactive experience, or use the search function to get to a relevant list of articles in the forum.

The advantages to deploying a Virtual Assistant with such a connector include:

• Single Point of Search – having one place for customers to search multiple repositories of information simultaneously.
• Ease of implementation – within a matter of days the Virtual Assistant can go live.
• Low customer effort – users do not have to jump from different channels (phone, web, email, etc.) to find solutions.

“Communities are a powerful way to generate trusted content that solves customer problems. But like any content, community content is most powerful when you deliver it to the right person at the right time,” said Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer at Lithium Technologies. “This integration between noHold and Lithium empowers companies to harness the power of community in new ways.”

“Virtual Assistants have gone through an impressive evolution in the past few years. First, leveraging content from their own knowledge base only and now reaching out and connecting to content found in Communities,” said Diego Ventura, CEO and founder of noHold. “Our connector to one of the most sophisticated platforms in the field, Lithium, makes our Virtual Assistant even more in tune with what the audience is interested in because the content is created by the audience itself.  We look forward to this next stage of evolution.”

Contact noHold to learn more about Single Point of Search, and the benefits of an integrated customer experience.

About noHold, Inc.

noHold is a privately held company established in 1999 and is headquartered in Milpitas, CA, USA (Silicon Valley). noHold is the acknowledged leader in Web based Self-service 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 support into cognitive customer interactions. noHold customers include Toshiba, Cisco and a host of industry leaders. More information can be found at www.nohold.com.

Press Contact

Veronica Cech

Marketing Associate

vcech@nohold.com

408.946.9200 ext. 356

All other product and service names are the property of their respective owners.

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: Implementing a 'Care' Virtual Agent

Excellent customer care is a key factor in satisfying your audience and encouraging them to remain loyal. When they have a question about shipping information, it is important to be able to find a solution as quickly as possible, on their own terms. With the increasing demand for self-service, having an effective strategy for customer care questions, is equally as important as having one for support questions.

Here is an example of a noHold customer recognizing this need for customer care support. Later this week, a leader in the PC and consumer electronics industry is launching a customer care Virtual Agent. This VA is designed to answer questions regarding shipment/purchase information, account access, and more. Having both a support and customer care Virtual Agent allows users 24x7 access to get answers to all types of questions. Companies can position the Virtual Agents together (as one) within the typical support web page, or encourage consumer use by promoting an individual URL as the first line of defense for customer care issues, specifically.  

Customers want to know that the company they purchase from is there to help every step of the way: before, during, and after the purchase. From a customer experience stand point, nurturing the relationship is imperative to keeping current customers and gaining new ones. A Virtual Agent can help through all aspects of the customer journey, coming full circle to create loyal customers by…

• Engaging prospective customers through personalized marketing
• Guiding them along the sales process by educating and up-selling
• Providing excellent customer care
• Supporting them as they maintain a valued customer

How does your company handle customer care questions? Do you see Virtual Agents as being a link between the various stages of the customer journey?

www.nohold.com