Andy Paul invites CEO of noHold to discuss Virtual Assistants from a Sales Perspective

Recently, Diego Ventura, CEO of noHold, was asked to guest star on the top-rated podcast, Accelerate!, hosted by Andy Paul. Andy is known as the go-to resource for the best sales advice online. Diego's 20+ years of experience in the AI space, gave him a unique perspective on sales. 

You can listen to the podcast at www.andypaul.com.

Some key takeaways include: 

• Diego says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is getting introductions to the right people (decision-makers). It is hard to do with email.
• Diego explains how a virtual agent or assistant differs from a knowledge base. A virtual assistant helps the user get to the most specific solution as quickly as possible within the framework of a dialog rather than a search.
• NoHold is partnering with companies like Google and Amazon to accomplish voice recognition and speech synthesis with natural language processing (NLP).
• Diego points out potential applications for online sales. Besides speech technology, it requires NLP-to-SQL (Structured Query Language) technology. This may be ready on some sites for 2017 Christmas shopping!
• Diego mentions two current noHold projects: a customer-facing application (the Sales Advisor), and an agent-facing application. Diego covers the details of the Sales Advisor and gives examples.
• Diego discusses levels of AI in virtual assistants. He gives examples of chatbots built from user documents, including executive orders from four U.S. presidents.
• Diego address the future of AI in sales and its impact. It is an excellent tool to augment sales capabilities. Diego gives an example for the enterprise, the Marketing Advisor, for augmented selling in groups of 500 SDRs.

noHold builds a Connector Enabling SICURA QuickStart™ to Integrate with Salesforce

July 31, 2017, MILPITAS, CA –noHold has designed Albert to be accessible through multiple channels, without the need to make a new bot for each of them. This is one of the unique features of creating a Virtual Assistant with SICURA™ QuickStart. In the past, noHold has announced various connectors that enable Albert to live on different platforms such as Spark, Facebook, Alexa, and more. noHold has officially added Salesforce to that list.

noHold’s Salesforce connector enables Sales Mangers to easily empower their sales teams with knowledge about products, procedures, company policies, or any content needed for a specific team. Since the content is managed through a Word document, it can be easily created and updated. Using Albert on Salesforce allows individuals to find answers to questions on their own terms, 24/7. For example, if a sales person needed to know when a lead should be converted into a contact, they could click on the Albert tab that knows about specific company procedures. Another example could be how to handle certain tasks, or looking up specific product features. The possibilities are endless.

Users can easily add Albert as a tab in the toolbar, and interact with Albert directly from within Salesforce. The process to add Albert does not require programming skills or extensive knowledge of Salesforce. Simply login to Salesforce and click the ‘+’ in the toolbar to open the ‘all tabs’ page. Select customize my tabs. In the left menu, click on create to expand, and then click tabs. Under web tabs, click new, then fill in the blanks as prompted. After saving, Albert will appear immediately in the toolbar. To watch a visual step by step tutorial for more details, click here.

Diego Ventura, Founder and CEO of noHold, adds, “The effectiveness of a sales team is directly correlated to its ability to generate revenue from new and existing customers. Providing the team with easy and direct access to Albert’s knowledge right from within Salesforce is strategic to obtaining this goal.”

noHold’s A.I. Platform Expands Virtual Assistants to Every Organization within a Company

Including HR, IT, Legal, Marketing, Sales and Support

April 28, 2016, MILPITAS, CA – noHold, the acknowledged leader in web based self service solutions, expands its Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) platform to include Virtual Assistants that benefit all organizations within a company.

noHold’s flagship product, Support Advisor, typically answers support and customer care type questions. With the help of its customers, and recognizing the growth within the A.I. space, noHold has developed Virtual Assistants with the entire business in mind. Now, Virtual Assistants have graduated beyond solely being a part of support organizations. Recently, the expansion of the A.I. platform has grown to include Virtual Assistants such as:

• HR Advisor- allows employees to help themselves
• IT Advisor- for the enterprise help desk
• Legal Advisor- to enforce compliance
• Marketing Advisor- to prequalify sales opportunities
• Sales Advisor- to increase conversion rates
• Support Advisor- to reduce support costs

The diversity of applications really demonstrates the flexibility of noHold’s platform and the ease of multi-use implementations. "If you look at every technological advance," said [Phil] Libin [Managing Director at General Catalyst and founder of Evernote], "the big jumps forward were when something becomes easier, has less friction, becomes more natural than whatever it replaced - so email from normal mail, chat from email, smartphone apps from desktop apps, I think bots are the next evolution of making something more natural." (Marketplace)

Virtual Assistants are imperative for enterprises managing moving parts. noHold is looking forward to providing more and more clients with a full circle approach to a Virtual Assistant.

According to Diego Ventura, CEO of noHold, “When creating a Virtual Assistant for a specific organization within the enterprise, you must take into consideration the different features needed by those particular business units that will optimize the Virtual Assistant. For example, we discovered that when a Call Center Agent is on the phone with a customer, they need to have a sense of the questions they will be asking and why. In these situations, the Virtual Assistant cannot always ask questions serially, so we implemented the ‘Look Ahead’ feature, designed to show the Agent why the Virtual Assistant would be asking those questions. Having this ability to provide department-specific Virtual Assistants proves the flexibility of our technology.”

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 interaction. noHold customers include Cisco, Dell, Intel and a host of industry leaders. More information can be found at www.nohold.com or subscribe to noHold’s vlog to hear more from CEO, Diego Ventura.

Press Contact

Veronica Cech

Marketing Associate

vcech@nohold.com

408.946.9200 ext. 356

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: Sharing Coupons, Promotions, and Hot Offers for Virtual Agent Users

We’ve mentioned before how Virtual Agents can educate, provide advice and offer opportunities to purchase complimentary products and services (cross-sell). Empowering your audience with self-service via a conversational Virtual Agent has proven to increase sales in stores, online, and in the Call Center.

Other benefits include:

   

Throughout the years, we have learned best practices to get the most out of your Virtual Agent. One of those best practices is to share coupons, promotions, or ‘hot offers’ through your Virtual Agent. The Virtual Agent uses logical reasoning and determines the appropriate promotion or coupon to encourage users to buy the product. Using limited-time coupons entices people to make the purchase right then and there as opposed to waiting for a better deal. This way, the company wins by locking in the sale, and the customer is happy from their great experience.

Here is an example of the Virtual Agent encouraging the user to buy the product with a coupon:

   

If you were on the fence about a product, would offering a limited time coupon sway you to buy it? What other self-service methods encourage online shoppers to make a purchase, instead of abandoning cart?

www.nohold.com

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

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

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: Now Trending… #VirtualAgents

Social Media is one of the most popular ways to communicate with your audience. From top Fortune 500 companies to the local corner shop, staying connected to your customer is a top priority. More and more companies are turning to social media to do so.  It’s fast, it’s easy, and (in most cases) it’s free!

With more than half the population connected to social media (Social Networking Statistics), quick tweets and updates can promote self-service. Companies across multiple industries have discovered that sending quick messages to a connected audience is a great way to spread awareness and remind clients that self-service is available 24x7. In the example below, one company tweeted about one of their Virtual Agents, and provided users with a link directly to “Emma.” This in turn increased the use of the VA. 

Marketing your Virtual Agent to your consumers is a great tip to maximizing usage. Check out the blog written yesterday for more advice about embedding your Virtual Agent directly to your social media sites.

www.nohold.com 

Throwback Thursday: SalesAdvisor

Happy Throwback Thursday!
For this weeks throwback Thursday I wanted to share with you the first SalesAdvisor Virtual Agent launched by noHold, Ask Roxanne from a leading company in digital media software and services. They utilized their Virtual Agent not only for customer support, but also for sales. 

Lately, e-commerce has been booming, Google has even joined the e-commerce bandwagon with Google Shopping Express. This is a website where you can purchase virtually anything you need from featured stores such as Target, NobHill, Whole Foods, ect... and it all ships to your home on the same day. A business like that would benefit greatly from implementing SalesAdvisor because it can help customers with any questions they have, and also personalize their experience by suggesting items that go well with what they have already selected.   

It is fairly well known that self-service is effective for support, but it is also effective for sales! Creating a great customer experience online can be tricky. It is hard to demonstrate great customer service and personalization through the Internet. But the use of a Virtual Agent for support AND sales will complete the full customer journey circle; while creating loyal customers and increasing conversion rates.

SalesAdvisor has been around since 2005, but has been evolving ever since, too. Check out this slideshare presentation to find out what the future of shopping will look like.
Learn how a simple QR code on product packaging can trigger a Virtual sales rep that follows your customer throughout the journey from attract, convert, fulfill to support.