What is the motivation for companies to improve their assisted service?
The strategic importance of investing in the Customer Experience has led organizations to improve all aspects of the customer journey. While the self-service channel is being prioritized in part due to customer demand and in part due to cost advantages, companies are being driven to take a renewed look at agent engagement due to a number of factors:
- 1. Channel preference. While “omni-channel” is an overused buzzword, there is no doubt that the modern customer is more sophisticated, more demanding and has more choice. They do not want to be “forced” into a particular journey or channel. If CX is about delivering low-effort interactions, organizations must cater to customer preferences and conveniences. A single customer interaction should have the ability to start in either self or assisted service and bounce back and forth between the two in whichever manner drives the most efficient, low effort interaction. Companies simply cannot afford to think of either Self-Service OR Assisted-Service. A sound CX initiative MUST take both into account.
- 2. Rising complexity. Product and service complexity is on the rise. Some customer interactions are so complex that they simply do not lend themselves to the self-service channel (without high-effort). The irony is that the improvement of self-service means that ‘easier’ interactions are now managed entirely by the customer, leaving the more complex interactions for the agent. The fact that assisted service is now handling increasingly complex queries, means that investment is needed to improve the handling of these queries.
- 3. Technological advancement. Self-service receives all the press. The romantic notion of Artificial Intelligence, talking computers – the realization of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey – it’s exciting and in truth, has benefited from amazing advances in technology. Agent engagement has been the red-headed step-child. Fortunately, the same technological advancements that propelled self-service is now being applied to assisted service. Everything from AI to UI/UX is now being utilized to make the assisted service channel a peer with its self-service sibling.
- 4. Self-service adoption. Many organizations are finding that self-service adoption lagged behind the technology advancement, and certainly behind the hype. To be clear, the lagging self-service adoption is not due to a failure of new self-service technology which is proving to be exceptional – instead, it’s a combination of multiple contributing factors. Unfortunately, it has to be recognized that most of us have suffered from poor self-service experiences in the past thanks to unwieldy IVR trees, inaccurate call routing, and poor voice recognition. As self-service continues to improve and put the old perceptions to rest, we’ll see explosive growth in this channel. However, no matter how meteoric the rise of self-service, the demand for intelligent agent engagement will be stronger than ever.
About Uniphore
Uniphore’s automation expertise and IP within customer service operations continues to deliver end-to-end customer service automation solutions to global enterprises helping them move further down an autonomous CX path. From guiding the contact center agents and automating their manual tasks to fully automated customer self-service solutions, Uniphore automates interactions while improving customer experience.
Supporting all channels and systems deployed in high volume contact centers to low volume call centers, Uniphore customer service automation solutions are designed to improve customer self-service and agent-assisted service. Each solution can be deployed as a standalone or incorporated as part of a suite through the Robotic Automation & AI Hub we refer to as “Interact.”
As a leader in customer service and contact center solutions, Uniphore’s award winning solutions enable organizations, all around the world, to provide the absolute highest quality of service for their customers.
[About the author] Dylon Mills is the Director of Marketing Content Strategy & Development at Uniphore. As such, Dylon’s main responsibilities are to strategize, create and deliver content for Uniphore’s product portfolio that align with the global Go-To-Market strategy, corporate positioning, and marketing campaigns. Dylon’s prior work experience includes Product Management at one of the top Fortune 500 Technology companies, Symantec Corporation. Outside of work, Dylon enjoys problem-solving and any project that includes building/tinkering with tools. Dylon holds a BS Consumer Economics from the University of Georgia.