Majority of Users Preferred Interacting with a Virtual Agent as a First Line of Support

Recently, noHold has been conducting A/B testing to test the end user experience for some of our clients. A group of noHold team members randomly asked coffee shop goers of all ages and backgrounds to participate in a short experiment regarding support site functionality. Each participant was asked to find the solution to a possible problem they might face if working with a certain brand. For example, we asked participants to imagine that they wanted to find out if lead is present in products from a leading manufacturer of home appliances.The interested parties were asked to find the answer using A) the brands current support site and then B) the brands support site implemented with a Virtual Agent. 

So far, we have done this testing with a few clients and have learned a lot from users' feedback. Most people preferred interacting with the Virtual Agent to find the solution because of its easy-to-navigate, clean user interface. While most people enjoyed using the Virtual Agent, some people still stuck with what was familiar to them. For example, one participant went straight for the 'contact us' form without trying to find the answer on his own because that was what he was accustomed to.    
I'll leave you with this statistic that explains the soon to be shift within the customer service space, which also applies to customer support. "Worldwide demographics will affect customer service. Generation Y will account for 33% of the global population by 2020. They want to communicate via social networks and be empowered by self-service" (Source: Orange Business Services; Delivering the New Customer Experience). 

How does your company plan to meet or exceed the demand for modern customer service strategies in these upcoming generations?

www.nohold.com

Virtual Agent Tips and Tricks: Making Adjustments to Your Virtual Agent and Self-Service Over Time

One of the biggest questions companies need to ask themselves is, "Do our support options still work best for our customers?" It is important to take some time to re-evaluate implementations, technologies and strategies to make sure what was working then, is still working now. 

In parallel with the customer journey on the website, noHold customers are always looking for ways to further enhance the Virtual Agent and self-service experience. For example, one noHold customer has opted to update the Virtual Agent's User Interface (UI) while asking end users to select his/her specific product before beginning a conversation. This updated experience with the Virtual Agent will streamline the interaction and guide the end user to best solutions related to his or her specific product. 

Keeping up with customer demand, and modernizing support is a major contributor to revolutionizing the customer experience. Virtual Agents can be updated quickly, can automatically capture the voice of the customer, and can be positioned across channels. 

How often do you evaluate and modernize the customer experience? In your opinion, what are the best ways to retrofit self-service without compromising customer satisfaction? 

www.nohold.com

CEO's Corner: Service Leaders in Web Support.

I like market reviews, where a number of vendors are compared to one another and the best is selected for a specific category.  I like them even better when I respect the people involved in the reviewing process.  This is the case with the Service Leaders leader board published by CRM Magazine in March 2013.(article) The categories are well structured, the scoring mechanism well defined and some of the reviewers include: Esteban Kolsky, Principal and Founder of ThinkJar; Michael Moaz, VP and Distinguished Analyst with Gartner and John Ragsdale, VP of Technology Research with TSIA. All people I know personally and respect.  I paid particular attention to the Web Support piece.  Right from the get go Judith Aquino, Associate Editor with CRM Magazine reported three prominent aspects of Web Support:

• The need to deliver support across multiple channels and devices.

• The importance of deploying a platform that doesn’t require customers to repeat themselves.

•   The expectation that voice enabled virtual agents will become a major aspect of Web Support.

The last point resonates with me since noHold has been creating Virtual Agents for the last decade for some of the biggest companies in the world.  I must admit that up until a few years ago I was skeptical of the quality of Voice Recognition Technology, but the vendors in this space have made dramatic breakthroughs.  In fact, I think that the technologies are coming together to create real world applications 

1. The pervasive distribution of mobile devices. 
2.   The availability of Virtual Agents that not only include a Natural Language Processor (NLP), but also an Inference Engine (IE) that can mimic human interaction. 
3. The availability of Speech Recognition Technology that is both speaker independent and can handle continuous speech.

It is at the intersection of these three technologies that we will see the birth of new voice enabled virtual agents.  All I hope for is that they will be able to understand my thick Italian accent, because now, every time I ask Siri to schedule an appointment, she asks me if I want to know where the closest Starbucks is. 

Diego Ventura, CEO, noHold, Inc.

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!

Ever wonder how Virtual Assistants (think Watson, Siri, noHold) are built?

Want to know how a Virtual Agent is built? noHold is the acknowledged leader in Virtual Agent 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 service into customer interaction. Click the link below to find out just how we do it. 

Virtual Agent Infographic

Customer Feedback Fridays - Be Proactive.

When you walk into a brick and mortar business, and the company is known for providing excellent service, what does that mean to you? For me, a store providing great service does a few of the following:

1) The clerk smiles at me and says hello when I enter
2) After saying hello, the clerk does not "pounce" on me, he/she allows me to browse, and confronts me to provide help after giving me some time to look.
3) When it's time to approach me, and I tell the clerk I'm just looking, he/she will simply say "OK, if you need any help my name is Martha and I will be happy to assist you."

Three simple steps. Being too intrusive makes me feel rushed and overwhelmed. By offering help only if I need it, I am happy. I trust that the store cares about my business and wants me to be comfortable.

On the web, don't we all want the same thing? Invite me into your site with a welcome message. Make it easy for me to navigate, so I can find what I'm looking for. Offer to help, but don't push me away. Most companies will say that they strive to re-create the brick and mortar experience for online shoppers.

Proactive chat is a good way to provide guidance through all steps of the sales cycle. Beginning with educate, advise, and up-sell to fulfill, support and maintaining a happy customer.

One noHold customer has recently transformed the traditional Virtual Agent experience into a proactive 'guided' conversation. The proactive agent comes in two forms:
1) A proactive pop-up will appear after 3 seconds on the page.
2) On another page, a proactive pop-up will appear the 3rd time you visit the page (click a link, then click back to see it in action).  In this version, you can type in a question to start the virtual chat interaction.

The beauty of this experience is that the Virtual Agent will present itself, but the end user can decide to say yes or no, or simply close the window. The pop-up is a small window that does not intrude on the visitors navigation or block the view of the page.

What's that you say? Pop-ups have a bad wrap? It's true, but keep in mind that if it's done the right way most users prefer proactive chat. In fact, a leading analyst firm says,  "Implementing proactive chat can be a complex process that requires aligning multiple business areas. However, a successful proactive chat implementation doesn't end with a check mark next to the word "done"; savvy eBusiness professionals understand that proactive chat success requires ongoing refinement of the business rules that will trigger chat invitations, staffing, and customer experience." Forrester, 2010, Diane Clarkson.

And with any business, online or brick and mortar, your customers and prospects are going to have questions. Choosing the tried and true method of the most successful retail stores in the nation, and recreating that experience online is what we all aim for. If you want to learn more about proactive chat and how leading brands do it today, my name is Sarah, and I will be right here if you need my assistance.

Cheers to the weekend!