3 Critical issues facing contact centres today and how to overcome them

White Paper

puzzel.com

IntroductionDuring 2017 Puzzel published a series of white papers. Debating some of the hottest issues

in the contact centre industry, these documents were designed to create an interactive Puzzel

community by providing a platform for discussion and encouraging learning and knowledge-sharing

among our users.

In this “Puzzel Book” we focus on the three most popular white papers during the year which

illustrate critical issues facing contact centres today – employee engagement, reducing demand

volumes and automation.

Here we share our top three most read white papers:

How often is your contact centre the cause of inbound customer contacts?2

20 Ways to improve employee engagement in contact centres1

Everything you need to know about Intelligent assistants, bots and self-service for your contact centre3

About the White Papers

1. 20 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement in Contact Centres

The service sector in general, and contact centres in particular, face major employee

engagement challenges.

While at times rewarding, customer contact work can also be exhausting and

overwhelming - especially if people work at their desks in confined spaces for long

periods and are dealing with frustrated customers. Organisations employing service

workers frequently suffer from high rates of burnout, poor performance and high

staff turnover. So what can contact centres do to turn this situation around and

make themselves more desirable and ‘preferred’ places to work, with high staff

engagement?

In this white paper, we suggest 20 strategies and initiatives to improve employee

engagement.

2. How often is your contact centre the cause of inbound customer contacts?

That’s a question which can change everything. From how the contact centre sees its

role, to the kudos it receives from the rest of the organisation. However, it is quite a

journey from where most contact centres are currently operating, ie. as a dustpan and

brush cleaning up after the rest of the organisation.

Today’s customer expects a lot for their loyalty. Reactive customer service is therefore

yesterday’s game plan. Nowadays, working smarter rather than harder is the name of

the game. Your mission should be to expect only the minimum effort from customers

based on a service strategy that focuses on four essential elements.

This white paper lays out a framework to help you realise such an effective service

strategy.

3. Everything you need to know about Intelligent assistants, bots and self-service for your contact centre

Intelligent assistance is here to stay and the traditional contact centre operating

model will need to change. Assumptions around headcount, skills profile and

environment all need a complete re-examination as live assistance becomes a tier

two support option instead of the primary interface. This has huge ramifications for

customer service and contact centres.

This white paper outlines the brave new world of artificial intelligence (AI) and aims to

trigger a discussion about how your own contact centre fits into the overall context of

intelligent assistants, bots and self-service. It then offers some survival strategies on

how to keep up with the next generation of customer service.

In this white paper, we suggest 20 strategies and initiatives to improve employee

engagement.

So what is the significance of having highly engaged employees?

According to Gallup’s Feb 2017 report “State of the American

Workplace”¹, it’s a hugely important factor in everything from

reducing employee churn and absenteeism, to improving

productivity and customer experiences. Its US research revealed:

• 73 per cent of ‘actively disengaged’ and 56 per cent of ‘not engaged’ employees are looking for jobs or watching for opportunities, compared to 37 per cent of ‘engaged’ employees

• Highly engaged business units result in 21 per cent greater profitability

• Highly engaged business units realize a 41 per cent reduction in absenteeism and a 17 per cent increase in productivity

• Highly engaged business units achieve a 10 per cent increase in customer ratings and a 20 per cent increase in sales

20 Ways to improve employee engagement in contact centres1

The service sector in general, and contact centres in particular, face major Employee

Engagement challenges.

While at times rewarding, customer contact work can also be exhausting and overwhelming -

especially if people work at their desks in confined spaces for long periods and dealing with

frustrated customers.

No wonder that organisations employing service workers frequently suffer from high rates of

burnout, poor performance and high staff turnover; or that the sector appears near the bottom

of Gallup’s 2017 list of Engaged Employees By Sector.

Managers and executives 38

Professional workers 34

Construction or mining workers 34

Clerical or office workers 33

Sales workers 33

Farming, fishing or forestry workers 33

Installation or repair workers 32

Transportation workers 30

Service workers 31

Manufacturing workers 25

US Engaged Employees by Industry Sector:

per cent of Employees that are ‘Engaged’:

Source: The Gallup “State of the American Workplace” survey, Feb 2017

Turn this situation around by considering the following 20 strategies and initiatives:

1. Offer flexible working hours

Work is not the only thing in your employees’ lives.

Therefore, wherever possible, offer flexible shift patterns

that enable people to balance work with their other

daily priorities. Consider, for example, what work can

be handled by part time staff, how you can develop

‘family-friendly’ shifts, how flexi-time may work, and how

employees can shift-swap (i.e. swap their shift, or part of

their shift, with others)?

2. Move to a work-from-home model

While homeworking is certainly not for everyone, a

growing number of organisations are finding that it can

deliver positive benefits for both employer and employee.

According to the 2016 UK CCF HomeAgent Study², 58

per cent of UK contact centres now employ homeworkers

(or HomeAgents). 69 per cent said that it creates happier

and more productive employees, while 74 per cent said

that it enables them to schedule staff more flexibly to meet expected customer contact

volumes. On the flip side, homeworking is also delivering huge benefits to UK contact

centre advisors. 65 per cent of HomeAgents said that they have a better work-life-

balance; 73 per cent no travel-to-work costs, and 68 per cent said they’ve removed the

time wasted travelling to work.

However, it is the employee engagement benefits of HomeAgent working that are most

relevant to this White Paper - with 92 per cent of UK HomeAgents reporting that they

are happy (at least some of the time), and 72 per cent saying that they are proud to tell

people where they work. The report also suggests a clear link between these results

and financial benefits. 58 per cent of HomeAgent employers reported that absenteeism

amongst HomeAgents is lower than with in-house teams - with 46 per cent reporting that

they are more productive.

3. Empower your employees

Involve employees in plans and strategies that impact on their roles within the

workplace, as well as in shaping the solutions and advice offered to customers.

Build a culture where advisors and supervisors take ownership of customer issues,

work collaboratively to help colleagues develop and be more productive, and devise

strategies and initiatives to deliver better customer experiences.

Empowering advisors to handle customer contacts via multiple communications

channels, and to manage many different tasks, will also add variety to their working

days. Change from a culture of ‘pay cheque’ to a culture of ‘purpose’.

4. Collect employee ideas and feedback

Collect employee feedback through surveys and regular two way communications and

then act on those ideas and suggestions. This is vital in two respects. Firstly, because

it is a very useful strategy for developing best practice. Contact centre advisors

are, after all, interacting with customers day-in, day-out and have a wealth of useful

knowledge. Secondly, feedback is key to nurturing positive employee engagement and

making contact centre employees feel truly part of the team. Feedback should be both

informal (e.g. via suggestion boxes, buzz sessions, monthly review sessions etc.) and

formal (e.g. Employee Engagement Surveys).

5. Regularly survey employees

The focal point of many organisations’ formal approach to collecting feedback is the

Employee Engagement survey. These have traditionally been run on an annual basis.

However, a growing number of organisations are introducing quarterly or even monthly

trackers, recognising the value in more regularly checking the mood and opinions

of employees in their organisations. Surveys should be anonymous, and short but

comprehensive - with employers collecting feedback on every aspect of the working

environment from manager/employee communications and relationships, to the

workplace environment, work engagement and career development. Share people’s

comments with the entire team, and get their help in designing improvement actions.

SEND SMS

6. Build specialist skills

In order to reduce stress and enhance employee engagement, it’s vital that employees

have built the skills and knowledge to cope with a diverse range of customer situations.

So train your advisors to be effective and knowledgeable communicators - as well as

superb problem solvers - when dealing with both written and verbal communications.

This could extend from developing listening abilities to skills-based training around

questioning techniques, rapport building, resilience training, cash collection skills,

conflict resolution and influencing skills, and more. Also, train team leaders to be more

effective managers, so that they can engage with their teams on a personal level,

understand what it takes to motivate and empower, and thereby add real value.

7. Optimise the workspace environment

Optimise your workplace for comfort, team-working and productivity. Consider the use

of smaller, more intimate work areas - as well as open, airy, collaborative spaces.

And, when it comes to furniture, consider the ergonomics of the desktop environment

(including the comfort of chairs) and even standing desks.

8. Ensure people are remunerated fairly

It almost goes without saying, but employees that don’t feel that they are rewarded fairly

aren’t going to be fully engaged. So compare your pay and reward structure with industry

benchmark reports, as well as with the local competition. And don’t just consider take

home pay, consider the whole package!

9. Provide opportunities for career progression

Provide a broad range of opportunities for people to progress into more senior contact

centre positions, and ensure that effective training is in place to ready people for these

roles. Also, wherever possible, ensure that they can switch to different roles, or careers,

within other departments. Their customer service skills, and understanding of customer

needs, will be an invaluable asset - not just to your contact centre but to the wider

organisation.

10. Invest in effective planning tools

There are few things more frustrating than having to work flat out, without sufficient

resources to deliver an acceptable level of service, simply because no-one has planned

ahead effectively. So invest in the workforce planning tools necessary to enable your

centre to forecast future customer contact volumes and ensure it has the right number

of people and W-service resources, with the right skill sets, in place at all times to

satisfy expected levels of service demand.

11. Recruit the right people

Disengagement can arise from asking people to perform roles that they are not

interested in, or are unsuited to. So ensure that you recruit the right people, i.e. not

only based on the skills that they possess and their employment history, but also on the

behaviours they exhibit. Customer service skills and knowledge can be taught. Aptitude,

energy and attitude, however, rarely can be. Understand people’s motivations for wanting

to work at your centre, what shift patterns they are able to work, whether they have any

specific career ambitions, and so on.

12. Ensure effective two-way communications

Ensure that you have effective communication channels in place to keep people aware

of company, department, product, service, social and other developments. Make the

effort to reinforce the message that communication is not a top-down but an interactive

process where all opinions and suggestions are considered.

13. Try gamification

Gamification, the application of game mechanics to influence behaviours and measure/

motivate people, is a tool that’s now used by many contact centres to improve

commitment, competition and collaboration amongst employees. One contact centre that

introduced gamification for its 20,000 frontline advisors reported that 80% of advisors

chose to complete training via gamification, with 72% volunteering to complete skills

courses that weren’t even required. As a result, customer satisfaction improved 10

points with call handling time falling 15% in just three months.

Gamification, however, isn’t for everyone. Indeed, it can have a negative impact

on employee engagement - with Gartner³ predicting that “80% of current gamified

applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily due to poor design.” So work

out a clear business case before pressing the button on any gamification scheme. It’s

less about fun and entertainment and more about meeting people’s need for intrinsic

and extrinsic motivation. Finally, recognise everybody for excellent performance, not just

your top performers.

14. Use metrics to drive positive engagement

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that focus on hard metrics such as time-to-answer,

average handle time (AHT), and percentage contacts answered (PCA) can drive

behaviours that improve productivity. However, an over reliance on these measures can

also have a negative impact on employee engagement. So, while it’s always advisable

to focus on productivity, it’s also important to consider broader measures of quality that

promote behaviours that result in improved customer experiences. These include voice

of the customer, customer recommendation (including Net Promoter Score), customer

effort, and customer satisfaction measures. Promoting behaviours that result in a more

customer-focused approach can have a knock-on effect in terms of improved morale and

employee engagement.

15. Ensure the commitment of senior leaders

According to Gallup, employees who are supervised by highly engaged managers are

59 per cent more likely to be engaged than those supervised by actively disengaged

managers. So ensure managers provide a sustained effort in championing initiatives

and that you have their full commitment. Words must be reinforced by actions. Adopt a

leadership philosophy based on developing strengths rather than just fixing weaknesses.

16. Encourage transparency

Be clear and transparent in all dealings between management and employees with

open communications (see point 12). This will help avoid a ‘them and us’ culture.

Nurture a strong sense of community and shared purpose and encourage employees to

speak openly and frankly with managers without the fear of consequences. Ensure that

everyone in the contact centre, from advisor to quality analysts, feel that their input is

appreciated and valued.

17. Engage employees in projects outside the contact centre

Employee engagement and people development projects don’t need to be restricted

to the office. Social events, team-building events, and out-of-office brainstorming days

can be a welcome break from the office and help build a sense of team-working and

togetherness. As can community-based projects. By engaging in projects such as

mentoring kids in schools and colleges, building gardens for elderly, disabled and under

privileged people, and working with self-help groups in the local community, employees

can build self-esteem, and bring invaluable new communication and life skills back to

the workplace.

18. Build a super knowledge base

Create an extensive super knowledge base (SKB) to help front line advisors deliver the

right outcomes to customer queries, each and every time. The SKB may include some

or all of the following: Frequently Asked Questions and templated answers; customer

data from previous live and automated phone conversations, email, Web Chat, fax, SMS,

web self-service and social media interactions; customer account histories; product

and service literature and presentations; service tutorials; input/advice from product

specialists; service tips and advice from experienced advisers; and helpful videos.

Regularly review this content and use additional community content to add to your online

knowledge base to empower employees. Also provide instant access to product experts

and other service team members via group chat, IM and other collaborative tools.

19. Empower advisors with desktop data

In addition to the SKB, ensure that CRM, workforce optimisation, workflow and other

tools are optimised to empower advisors. Use these solutions to deliver relevant data

onto desktop screens, ensuring that each interaction is handled in a smooth and

timely manner. The cost of failing to do so can be huge! Indeed, ContactBabel research

revealed that 85% of contact centres require advisors to use multiple applications within

a call, with 49% of these centres requiring advisors to access 3 or more applications.

The research additionally estimated that wrap-up processes were costing the UK call

centre industry around £2.6bn every year.

20. Constantly review/refresh your strategies and programmes

Contact centres are invariably dynamic places, constantly evolving to meet new

customer, technical, environmental, process and people challenges. Hence to be

successful, employee engagement strategies must evolve too - not just to meet new

customer and organisational needs but also new employee circumstances.

Review your employee engagement strategies and initiatives regularly to check that they

are still relevant and complete, as well as whether they are delivering against objectives.

Sources

1. Source: The Gallup “State of the American Workplace” survey, Feb 2017. Based on data collected from more than 195,600 U.S. employees via the Gallup Panel and Gallup Daily tracking in 2015 and 2016, and more than 31 million respondents through Gallup’s Q12 Client Database

2. Source: The 2016 UKCCF HomeAgent Study is based on responses from 402 people - making it the largest UK survey ever conducted into the state of the contact centre homeworking market from both Employer and HomeAgent perspectives. To download an Executive Summary go to http://uk-ccf.co.uk/2016-uk-homeagent-survey-request/#sf

3. Source: Gartner 2014

4. Source: The ContactBabel 2011 UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers’ Guide

The Framework for Working Smarter as a Contact Centre

How often is your contact centre the cause of inbound

customer contacts? That’s a question which can change

everything. From how the contact centre sees its role to

the kudos it receives from the rest of the organisation.

However it’s quite a journey from where most contact

centres are currently operating ie as a dustpan and brush

cleaning up after the rest of their organisation.

How often is your contact centre the cause of inbound customer contacts?2

So what percentage of calls, emails, chats, social

enquiries etc occur because of something the contact

centre did? The often quoted industry average of 70%

for first contact resolution suggests that a proportion

of customer demand is certainly within the gift of the

contact centre to fix. This can be addressed with a mix of

improved resourcing, skilling and queue management.

But the likelihood is that the majority of inbound contacts

are caused by upstream organisational activity. And this

is where it gets interesting. What are you inclined to do

as a contact centre leader in response to this insight?

Traditionally, our industry mindset has been to double down on working harder. How can

we meet SLAs with this level of demand? It then becomes an issue for the workforce

management team to juggle resources and backlogs.

In this context, we are now stuck with a problem akin to trying to dam an incoming tide.

It’s an expense that no organisation likes to incur. The pushback to the contact centre

has been to demand greater efficiencies to control these service costs.

Not only is this an unwelcome corporate expense, it is also a tax on the goodwill

of customers. No-one wants to lose time and invest effort doing things that are

unnecessary.

“Why is this so confusing or just plain wrong in some way?”

“Why is it so hard to get something done that I have to ask for help?”

The impact of what is labelled ‘poor customer service’ has been a popular headline

and subject of research over the last few years. These inform us that a hefty

percentage of customers will leave. Or at worse are willing to amplify their complaints

online and pollute the social proof new customers use to validate a purchasing

decision.

Today’s customer expects a lot for their loyalty. Reactive customer service is therefore

yesterday’s game plan. So rather than simply working harder which is never going to

satisfy either customer or brand, why not re-adjust your ambitions and strategy and

embark on a journey of working smarter?

In this context, we swap efficiency for effectiveness and demand management for root

cause demand reduction. Our new mission is to expect only the minimum effort from

customers based on a service strategy that prioritises:

1. The best form of service is no service’ - we make reasons to make contact

go away

2. The second best form of service is anticipating the customer need and

proactively resolving it

3. The third best option is to offer instant 24x7 self service once suitable

customer journeys are made sufficiently simple to be handed over to

customers (i.e. no longer become complex or emotional enough to need

escalation to live assistance)

4. The last option is to make access to live assistance as easy and effective

as possible meaning a customer experience based on shortest queue,

appropriate handle time and fulfilled outcomes (functional and emotional)

Here is a framework to help you realise this service strategy.

Getting Better as Part of Business as Usual

A key decision of any leader is how to best deploy their resources. A ‘work harder’

mindset will gravitate towards maximising the time spent on answering customer

enquiries. Can wrap time be reduced? Would multi-skilling help? Could multi session

chat improve advisor productivity?

Running a tight ship is always good practice but in contact centres this approach is

seldom sufficient to satisfy the competing expectations of stakeholders.

Instead a ‘work smarter’ mindset is prepared to invest in a different approach. One that

carves out time from just managing customer contact to understanding why customers

have made contact and how this could be improved in ways just suggested in our list of

servicing priorities.

This needs a disciplined approach that is woven into daily activity right across the

customer service team. Here’s a framework you can use to design your approach from

scratch or review how well your current approach to service improvement works.

Some of the steps might be already undertaken by other teams in your organisation. For

instance, ‘listening’ is often organised into a Voice of the Customer (VoC) initiative and

run centrally by a customer experience or research team. Equally the ‘embed/improve’

phase may well be part of a traditional change management or business optimisation

function.

Part of your planning will be to decide whether these resources become virtual members

of your own team. Or whether you need focussed resource within customer service in

which case they need to directly work for you with a dotted line relationship into other

centres of excellence.

In other words, make sure you are not duplicating effort. But equally, make sure you are

developing a capability that can provide the required focus and approach for your service

agenda.

Let’s now explore each framework stage in detail.

Listening

There are many ways to listen to customers. Each has their strengths and weaknesses.

Mystery shopping or ‘drinking your own champagne’ can be a very revealing way of

exposing the customer experience as they engage with your customer service. What

happens when different channels are used during the course of a customer journey?

How consistent is the experience and advice being offered?

However since mystery shopping is a relatively expensive way of generating insight, it

is best relied on as an occasional viewpoint. Instead, questioning the customer straight

after an interaction can yield decent volumes of up to date feedback. That said, we are

now in danger of over exposing customers to requests for feedback with the result they

no longer participate or really think about their answers.

Alternatively service designers favour an ethnographic approach which involves getting

up close to customers and observing how they actually undertake tasks. Why do this?

What customers tell you is often different from what they actually do e.g. on your

website. So it’s powerful tool for understanding actual customer behaviour. But on the

downside it is obviously expensive and does not scale.

In other words, there is no silver bullet for listening. However there are guidelines that

will help you design an effective approach:

1. Be clear in your purpose for listening. Is it to understand what you do not

yet know or is it to achieve a certain customer score to trigger a financial

incentive? Ask open questions you can really learn from such as ‘what

matters to you’?

Just as you can’t see a panoramic view through a single keyhole, you will not

hear the full customer voice through a single source. Start with at least two

sources and build from there. A good start is to activate both customer and

advisor surveys with a view to generating as much real time feedback as you

afford and can extract benefit from.

2. Make it as easy as possible for customers to offer feedback. For instance,

UMB a financial service organisation headquartered in Kansas USA, have

plumbed a feedback tab onto the side of their web site which customers can

access before they leave and while their memory is fresh.

3. Scores can be a handy shorthand to communicate to internal audiences.

But scores by themselves tell you little about why customers feel that way or

what needs fixing. Ask for more detail when scores are either high or low.

4. The very best source of customer feedback is the unvarnished truth that lies

within the text and voice interactions held between you and the customer. Be

determined to persuade others that an investment in interaction analytics is

the most powerful way of listening to the voice of the customer at scale.

In terms of what you could use as input to your listening activity, here is a fuller list of

possible sources.

• Complaints

• Advisor feedback via surveys, digital suggestion boxes or exit interviews

• Post interaction surveys that ask for customer satisfaction, net promoter or

customer effort scores

• Text analytics (email, chat, social)

• Speech analytics (voice)

• Sentiment analytics (measuring emotion)

• IVR reports

• Web site search logs/user navigation and online self service usage reports

• Intelligent assistant/bot transcripts

• Mystery shopper surveys

• Customer visits (they visit you or you visit them).

Interpret/Prioritise

The next stage is to interpret/prioritise. The goal here is to turn the feedback into

actionable insights and then decide which to act on.

In terms of your first objective, it’s a question of making sense of the customer

feedback.

• Are you hearing symptoms of the problem or the root cause? Customers often articulate the symptom. You need to identify the origin of the problem

• Can you define the problem accurately? This is where multiple sources of feedback can help. Is this an isolated incident? Or a recurring issue only just noticed? If so, how often, over what period? Can we quantify the impact on the organisation and customer?

If you need a shot in the arm on this approach then training in evidence based problem

solving will help. Your second objective in this stage is to identify what to act on. Most

organisations will find they have more opportunities to fix than capacity and budget.

So priorities have to established. There are many ways to do this. Internal strategic

objectives or outstanding failures in key customer journeys might help set priorities.

Here is an example of this approach for a mobile operator. The two most important

elements here are impact on customer experience and the reduction of effort and cost

to serve.

Here is another example from the Soha housing group based in Didcot, near Oxford UK.

They use a simple yet effective way of prioritising customer issues. (image.1)

The end point of this stage is to get the green light for making improvements. This

may require a business case. It may also require the contact centre influencing other

teams, explaining what is happening and maybe helping them in making improvements.

(image.2)

This is a critical stage and a challenge which contact centres have traditionally failed to

get beyond since it enters the tricky domain of tribal politics within organisations. It has

to be said that the role of contact centre as dustpan and brush has suited most others

within the organisation. Being asked to change however is not always so welcome.

Sometimes a senior sponsor is required to remind everyone that they are all on the

same customer agenda. Other times it’s just a question of diplomacy and fierce

determination.

(image.1) (image.2)

Identify service failure

Runners - things going wrong often

Repeaters - things going wrong sometimes

Rarities - things going wrong very occacionally but may have big impact

Redesign/Invent – Pilot/Learn

These two stages are iteratively interconnected so they are best described together. The

goal here is to redesign something or invent it if nothing yet exists. The approach is to

pilot and learn what works. The end of this stage is as soon as there is clear consensus

from stakeholders that things have started to improve however that is sensed or

evaluated.

Before starting this stage you should have developed a clear understanding of what

matters in terms of desired outcome. But what might not be so clear is how the ‘better

mousetrap’ actually works, positively or negatively impacts other things or is actually

experienced by stakeholders.

The key to discovering all this as cost effectively and fast as possible is moving rapidly

between design, test and learn phases. In much the same way that IT teams use an

agile methodology to run their projects. This is done by only designing a ‘minimum

viable product’ version before inviting users to test it and provide feedback to inform the

next cycle of redesign. All this is carried out as a series of ‘sprints’ which essentially

timeboxes activities and keeps things moving along at pace.

Working in this way is an essential skill for anyone leading this phase of the framework.

Training might be necessary.

Embed/Improve

The final stage focuses on making sure all your hard work enjoys a lasting impact. While

it seems an obvious set of activities, many organisations undermine themselves by not

investing sufficiently in embedding the new way of doing things and then continuing to

optimise.

What do we mean by embedding? We are all creatures of habit and get used to doing

things in certain ways. That means time and resource have to be invested in persuading

us to change and help us practice if something new is required of us.

We all know how irritating it is when your favourite food store changes its layout.

Suddenly you feel wrenched out of your routine. Where is everything? Or the new

improved CRM with a spanking new GUI might be a thing of wonder and familiarity for

the design team. But it becomes a matter of confusion and panic when used for live

interactions if the training has been too brief.

So embedding recognises the time it takes customers and customer service teams to

upgrade a habit. Captivating education is the key.

‘Improve’ or ‘optimise’ recognises another important truth. Great products, services and

experiences are the result of a never ending obsession with making things as perfect as

possible.

Sir Dave Brailsford of Team Sky & GB Cycling fame was famous for his approach

to continuous improvement. He would talk about the value that accrues from ‘the

aggregation of marginal gains’.

In his world, a new type of clothing material might provide the slightest advantage for his

riders.

However, when added together with all the others he had obsessively hunted down, they

combined into the reason for winning by the narrowest of margins.

So Why Bother?

The framework we have just been through does require investment. This investment is

mainly in people’s time and, to some degree, in new skills. Is it worth it?

Yes, if you are motivated to work smarter and become more valuable to your

organisation than just delivering at lowest cost. The framework allows the contact centre

to realise its strategic potential as an improvement and innovation hub to the rest of the

organisation.

If your organisation has customer experience ambitions, it cannot realise them without

a strong contribution from each of its major customer touch points. It is therefore in

everyone’s interests to empower the contact centre with its own transformation remit.

Much of the opportunity will lie beyond its direct control. Whether that becomes the

responsibility of a single, determined individual to cause change or a co-ordinated effort

amongst the tribes depends on the dynamics of each organisation. But for contacts

centres, it is only good news.

These days there’s more to life than being a dustpan and brush.

Everything you need to know about Intelligent assistants, bots and self-service for your contact centre3

Market awareness of today’s generation of intelligent

assistance was triggered during 2016 with a series of

quick fire announcements.

• Web site search logs/user navigation and online self service usage reports

• Intelligent assistant/bot transcripts

• Mystery shopper surveys

• Customer visits (they visit you or you visit them).

It took some time to digest what was happening. Was this

a sudden collective pivot from the world’s most powerful

group of technology brands? Or more likely, was it a public

declaration for a race already well underway?

In fact the rise of intelligent assistance and its

characteristic ‘conversational’ interface is both something

new and rooted in a longer history. For instance, bots are

not new. They existed before the World Wide Web version

of the internet. Neither is Artificial Intelligence. The journey

from science fiction to tangible daily benefit has been in the public mind for over thirty

years.

In other related areas, designers have been trying to improve the user experience of

IVR using a natural language interface for at least a decade. Over its eighteen years of

life, Google has become a billion dollar behemoth through the strength of its semantic

search.

So in this sense, the underlying technologies that enable intelligent assistance are not

new. However what has changed is just how effective they have become as individual

technologies. Even more so when combined.

As we will see later in this white paper, user cases over a three year period prior to

2016 already showed the impact that this class of technology was having on self

service adoption. Anything from 15% - 50% of live interactions were being converted to

self service.

Now let’s fast forward to today’s world of open source neural networks powered through

the scalability of cloud services. They have already raised speech recognition for the

English spoken language with rates to 90% which in real world terms means consumers

will continue to use a voice interface because ‘it just works’. For other languages rates

differ, but there are continuous improvements closing the gap to make this a usable

technology globally.

This is why we are now in a new era called ‘cognitive computing’. Part of this definition

means technology can get smarter without direct human input. Those neural networks

can digest vast data sets such as the growing volume of customer interactions serviced

by intelligent assistants.

The networks use statistical patterning to spot ongoing opportunities for enriching the

underlying knowledge bases. This delivers commonly reported performance levels of

70%+ first time resolution rates. In other words this generation of self service works as

effective as live assistance.

As a case in point, one of the more well known digital assistants is called Amelia.

Enfield Council in the UK has commissioned the technology to transform their cost to

serve. Part of Amelia’s value proposition is that new knowledge can be automatically

captured and categorised whenever she has to escalate unresolved enquiries to live

assistance.

As cognitive computing becomes commonplace, our world becomes smarter as the

technology learns to better service our needs. In the light of this, self service rates are

likely to keep growing. Human live assistance will not entirely disappear of course. As a

rule of thumb, interactions that trigger strong emotions, are deeply complex or require

the human touch to strengthen the quality of relationship remain with people.

Based on our experience however for many

organisations, this will not be more than 15% - 20% of

inbound service enquiries. The rest can be re-routed.

In other words, self service could absorb up to 80% of

inbound enquiries.

The implications for customer service and contact centres are clear. The traditional

contact centre operating model is coming to an end. Assumptions around headcount,

skills profile and environment all need a complete re-examination as live assistance

becomes a tier two support option instead of the primary interface.

Of course, this assumes customer uptake, well designed service journeys and a certain

level of knowledge management competence. Customer service teams will have to

overcome these challenges and redesign their service approach over the next few years.

This is because the broader trends to accelerate widespread consumer uptake are

already in place as we shall explore later.

In summary, next generation intelligent assistance (IA) now promises to transform

customer uptake of self service. Early adopters have already succeeded in transitioning

live assistance into IA enabled engagement - we think anything between 15% - 50% of

their inbound volumes depending on sector. This dramatically changes the cost to serve

model that most service organisations operate. And also meets customer expectations

for low effort, always on, personalised service.

Examples of Traditional Intelligent Assistance

So what’s the benchmark around what can already be achieved?

Opus Research is a research firm headquartered in San Francisco. They have been

tracking the ‘conversational commerce’ market for many years. Since 2014 they have

hosted intelligent assistance conferences across America. In 2016 they ran their first

European conference in London.

The following achievements are taken from presentations made by early adopter

organisations at these conferences and made public on the Opus Research web site.

They show what is already possible.

• Between 2012 - 2013, US based ISP Windstream reduced their chat volumes by 45% achieving a first contact resolution rate of 75% using a text based avatar

• In 2013, Australian telco Optus reduced demand for phone and email support from 84% to 24% following the launch of their Ask Optus self service option

• In 2014, Coca Cola achieved a 70% - 80% first contact resolution rate using a text based virtual assistant. They estimated this would have needed an additional 18 headcount to service this level of enquiry

• In 2014, Hyatt hotels offered a voice based virtual assistant for bookings which delivered a 95%+ comprehension level for an agent like customer experience. They estimated a 125% ROI year-on-year. 10% of agent time was freed up for more revenue generation with an estimated £50 - 80 million upside

• In 2015, Swedbank achieved a 78% first contact resolution rate using a text based assistant which resulted in a 60% deflection from live assistance

• For its lubricant customers, Shell achieved a 40% reduction in call volume to live agents with 74% of issues successfully resolved over a two year trial

• In 2015, Ticketbiz (an intermediary for the resale of unwanted event tickets)

reduced demand for live chat by 80% using their text based virtual assistant.

These examples demonstrate that within the traditional expectations for browser based

online interaction, high levels of self service can be achieved.

Some organisations have also worked hard to give customers plenty of choice in how

they can access this type of self service. Here’s a great omni-channel example.

Booking.com knows that 75% of its customers prefer self-service options to handle

simple requests. So they have made that as widely available as possible.

Customers can ask questions of their hotel host from within their Booking.com account

on any device. That includes messaging directly from the desktop, mobile web, or within

Booking.com apps on iOS or Android. Users can initiate any kind of conversation they’d

like with the accommodation.

Alternatively, a self service chat can be initiated from the host’s side. A hotel can send

a notification to the user’s phone, which pulls the user into a conversation within the

Booking.com messaging service.

The way that Booking.com thoughtfully extended its service reach takes us nicely to our

topic: the new world of mobile engagement.

P A Y

How Intelligent Assistance has Adapted to Mobile First Consumer Behaviour

Just as a snapshot of our mobile lifestyle in the UK, eMarketer estimates there are 41m

smartphone users and 35m tablet users. Our connectivity to ‘always on’, fast mobile

internet dramatically increased between 2013 and 2014 from 2.7million to 23.6 million

4G subscriptions. (source: OFCOM - The Communications Market Report 2015)

Making everything so readily available has, without doubt, raised the bar for 24x7,

instant service. Incidentally this is one of the core reasons why consumer reaction to

intelligent assistance and its improved capability has been so positive.

However, we are now at an interesting tipping point in our mobile use which we need

to understand as part of scene setting for the rise of bot based service which we

mentioned at the start of this white paper.

Until recently, the dominant type of app used on smartphone was for social networks.

In that sense we continued to use our phone for their original purpose - to connect and

communicate. However this public form of communication has started to give way to a

more private 1:1 form of communication.

In part, this is due to Facebook’s drive to persuade its users to adopt its Messenger

platform. In part it is because of an increased desire from consumers to take back

some control of their online life combined with a growing awareness of ID theft and

government surveillance activity. Apparently 82% of what we share online is now done on

a 1:1 basis. (Source: Internet marketing analysts RadiumOne)

Traditionally SMS has satisfied our needs for 1:1 text based communication. However

it remained a text interface, was not always instant, and in some cases remained an

expensive way of communicating. This created an opening for the next generation of

internet based messaging platforms such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Wechat, Skype,

Slack and the rest to capture user interest.

According to eMarketer, messaging apps will reach 2 billion people within a few years.

WhatsApp users average nearly 200 minutes each week using the service, and many

teenagers now spend more time on smartphones sending instant messages than being

on social networks.

As the poster child of this form of engagement, Wechat has set the pace for what is

possible. WeChat users in China can access services to hail a taxi, order food delivery,

buy movie tickets, play casual games, check in for a flight, send money to friends,

access fitness tracker data, book a doctor appointment, get banking statements, pay

the water bill, find geo-targeted coupons, recognise music, search for a book at the local

library, meet strangers, follow celebrity news, read magazine articles, and even donate

to charity - all in a single, integrated app.

Getting all that from one app is a key reason for user adoption. Right now there are

several million apps available. This means it can be difficult for users not only to choose

which apps to download, but to manage them all and then move between them to get

things done. The result is so called ‘app fatigue’ and a desire to find something better.

Given the massive uptake of messaging apps, it was only a matter of time before the

rash of bot announcements we mentioned earlier.

So, in summary, messaging platforms are becoming the new social networks in a mobile

first world. Bots sit on top of messaging platforms as concierges. They simplify the user

experience by reducing the need for separate search services and hopping between

apps.

Welcome to a brand new way of delivering self service.

How Good are Bots?

The simple answer is that they are not yet as capable as the examples of intelligent

assistance we discussed earlier. However right now they are not designed to be.

Instead they are revolutionising the mundane tasks in our daily lives:

• Ordering lunch – look out for Tacobot on Slack

• Tracking ad performance – check out Zoey on Messenger

• Being served as a hotel guest – experience Edward at the Radisson Blu Edwardian in London

• Remembering to get things done – look out for Jarvis on Messenger

• Scheduling a diary appointment – ask for Amy over at x.ai.

However this is an unfolding story in terms of what can be achieved. Forward thinking

brands are already capitalising on these new opportunities and extending what bots can

achieve.

For instance, 1-800-Flowers recently launched on Facebook Messenger and has since

expanded to Amazon Alexa and the IBM Watson platforms. Of the tens of thousands of

people who have ordered flowers in these new ways, more than 70% are new customers

- and these new customers skew toward younger demographics than the company’s

existing customers.

KLM is using Messenger to onboard their passengers resulting 40% greater

engagement. Spring is using Messenger to reframe the experience of online fashion

shopping. Now each of their digital customers can have a personal shopping assistant

who helps them select from the online catalogue and make recommendations.

Insurance companies are experimenting with that same style of conversational personal

assistant to automate claims management.

Amex has launched its own bot based service. It tracks card members’ transactions

and, like a concierge, offers related content. Buy a plane ticket, and the bot will send

you the receipt, along with restaurant recommendations and a tip to take advantage of

AmEx’s complimentary airport lounge.

And as a final example, here is one that undoubtedly captured public imagination. A bot

service that helps you appeal against unfair parking tickets. In the 21 months since

the free service was launched in London and now New York, DoNotPay has taken on

250,000 cases and won 160,000, giving it a success rate of 64% appealing over $4m

of parking tickets.

In summary, here are the reasons bot based services are likely to keep growing:

• Apps are much more expensive and take much longer to build

• Consumers have to download the apps and install them on their phones

• Consumers only routinely use an average of 5 apps

• Bots are far less expensive and will run on a single chat/messenger platform

• Messaging platforms are exploding globally, more rapidly than apps

• Almost all consumers use some form of chat and messaging on mobile devices

• AI (Artificial Intelligence) is rapidly improving the bots ability to adapt and predict.

The Future Of Customer Service

At the start of this White Paper we made some bold claims about the ongoing transition

from live assistance to self service.

In some instances, live assistance could be reduced to under 20% of all inbound

volumes. However, organisations with a higher than average mix of emotional and

complex enquiries, will have to retain more advisors to suit those needs.

Nonetheless the age of self service is upon us. Natural language processing, speech

recognition, deep learning combined with the new consumer appetite for mobile,

messaging and conversational interfaces offer plenty of opportunity to redefine the

contact centre operating model.

As a final insight into what is becoming common place, consider this capability that was

revealed mid 2016 by the company that developed Siri. VIV represents a new generation

of personal, voice based assistance. Ask yourself this – what remains in your inbound

queue once this type of solution is deployed?

Perhaps these?

“Make a reservation at Main Street Cafe for 8pm, but only if it’s not going to be raining when we’re there”

“Are there any concert tickets under $65 within 25 miles for any of my favourite bands?”

“Is this a good lawn mower to buy based on the reviews? Is this the best price I can get, and can I return it easily if I don’t like it?”

“If I book this vacation, will I still be within my quarterly budget, and if not, are there some better vacation deals that my family would enjoy?”

Intelligent assistance is here to stay. Hopefully this white paper has given you something

to think about for your contact centre and how you can keep up with the next generation

of customer service.

We hope you have enjoyed these three white papers and that they have provided you with some fresh perspectives and a few takeaways to implement. To download our complete series of white papers or to find out more about how Puzzel’s cloud-based solutions and expertise can help you build a high-performing, motivated contact centre, speak to your account manager orvisit www.puzzel.com

Conclusion

Puzzel builds on 20 years’ heritage. It was one of the first pioneers to develop a cloud-based contact center. Puzzle also encompasses leading mobile messaging and mobile payments to deliver a flexible and customisable customer

interaction platform to meet the needs of today’s omni-channel and mobile environments. Puzzel can be adapted to

accommodate from one to several thousand agents using any device, in any location and integrates with multiple

applications seamlessly.

Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Puzzel is passionate about delivering innovative customer interaction solutions for

contact centres and mobile environments.

For more information please visit www.puzzel.com

About Puzzel