Personalisation is the key to an exceptional customer experience

We all know that happy customers are an important ingredient in the recipe for a successful business. Enviable customer service has been proven to lead to improved customer retention, loyalty and of course revenue. There’s something to be said for the standout employee who is always receiving high praise, but consistency is key and should be reflected across the board no matter who handles your call.

So how do you ensure that all your customers leave a call feeling like they’ve just spoken to your best employee?

The ‘Six Pillars’ of customer experience excellence, discussed in a recent report are;

  • Personalisation

  • Integrity

  • Time and effort

  • Expectations

  • Resolution

  • Empathy

All of these factors combined create one unique ‘story’ for a specific customer relating to their experiences with your company. The key is personalisation, it might seem like a small factor but wishing a customer a Happy Birthday if they call around that time and you have that information or providing your own recommendations about a product or service that your company offers makes a customer feel you’ve gone the extra mile.

There’s nothing worse than having to repeatedly call a company for the same reason only to find that none of the previous conversations you’ve had with other agents are recorded in any way. Is there a way that your agents can record and access this information?

  • Know your customer

  • What did they purchase or what are they interested in based on past interaction?

  • Know why this customer may be contacting you

  • Know what the customer may want based on previous interactions

All of this information can be used by your agent to better interpret or assist with the customer’s needs, create a better B2C relationship, help shape future interactions with the customer for other agents, increase the likelihood that your customer will leave the call feeling positive about the level of personalisation and thus be more likely to recommend you.

Like it or not we’re all suckers for a compliment, make your customers feel special, respected, that their time is like gold dust and you are a heaven-sent customer service angel ready to wow them with your professional, yet approachable nature. It’s human nature to feel just a little self-obsessed from time to time so why shouldn’t we indulge ourselves with a bit of flattery every now and again?

KMPG Nunwood found in their report that personalisation had “the most significant impact on advocacy and loyalty.”

The report looks at how as business you will likely have looked at metrics and targeted customers based on their individual behaviour yet when we put ourselves into the customer’s shoes this changes your whole strategy, your focus should be on how your agents and company respond to your customer’s needs as this is a crucial element in developing and improving their experience.

How can you include personalisation in your customer service?

  • Friendly and warm greetings

  • Use of the customer’s name

  • Know your customer’s history

  • Patience and empathy with the customer

  • Personalising and recommending products and services

  • Listen to your customer and ask questions

If you’re ready to start making customers feel that their relationship with your company is one worth maintaining, then you need to ensure that there’s consistency, this means putting in the time and effort! If you’re not quite sure where to start why not speak to us about how we can help improve your customer experience, we know our stuff!

Are you investing enough in your customer service?

It might be time to take a leaf out of the big gun’s book, after earlier in the week Vodafone pledged to invest £2 Billion into their customer service over the next two years. OK, so maybe it’s not feasible for your company to do this on the same scale but it’s time to think about how you look after your customers and those you employ to carry out that role.

In Vodafone’s case, the refreshed outlook on customer service follows a damning report by Ofcom in 2016, highlighting issues with the company’s billing system and the way they handed customer’s complaints. The company previously routed a substantial amount of its calls to centres based in South Africa and India, increasing customers’ frustrations but since the report they have looked at re-shoring their contact centres.

Vodafone are increasing their in-shore call centre roles, with 2,100 new jobs in locations around the UK including areas of Wales, the Midlands and Scotland as well as almost half the new roles being allocated to the company’s Manchester call centre.

Mobile network EE was supposedly the first operator to bring their calls back to the UK in 2014 after previously using off-shore call centres. Other giants are following suit, with EE’s parent company BT also choosing to reduce outsourced call centre roles and bring these back to the UK and Ireland, hiring around 1500 new call centre employees.

With this in mind, why is it so important to a customer that the support they speak to someone UK based? A survey carried out by Which? found that call centres, in particular those not based in the UK were the nation’s biggest pet peeve in 2015. This all boils down to customer service, a dislike of automated phone systems, being passed around from person to person and likely feeling that your call isn’t as important if it’s been directed to the other side of the world.

“Overseas call centres soon sparked a consumer backlash spurred on by difficulties associated with language barriers and the concern that jobs were being taken away from the UK.”

The cost of operating a call centre overseas is comparably cheaper to employing UK based contact centre operators, it seems some companies are prepared to save money at whatever cost, even if this means reduced customer satisfaction. Yet as we’ve discussed, the importance of customer satisfaction is being recognised and having UK based staff to deal with customer queries and support is almost a marketing tool now!

A 2016 consumer survey found that:

86% of customers would pay up to 25% more for better customer service

Are you focusing enough on training agents to handle calls?

Could your customers be better directed through your automated system?

Are you investing enough in your customer service?

If you’re unsure about any of those questions then it’s time to see how IVR-Recordings can help!

Sources:

http://callcentresummit.co.uk/the-evolution-of-uk-call-centres/

http://callcentresummit.co.uk/vodafone-pledges-2bn-customer-service-investment-next-two-years/

 

What you can learn from the Zappos company culture

Online retailer Zappos has long been the beacons of customer service excellence. It was the highest ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's 'Best Companies to Work For' the company goes to great lengths to make sure both customers and employees are happy. 

Take a look at the video below to see if there's anything you could implement with your teams.

zappos-2.jpg

Want to rival the kings of customer service?

This weekend you might have been fooled by Nick Jablonka’s festive ‘spoof’ of the beloved John Lewis Christmas advert, which already has everyone talking. Jablonka’s advert was actually part of his A-Level Media coursework. By Sunday the video had been viewed more than 375,000 times. If a student can rival the John Lewis Christmas advert, then you can do your best to rival them as one of the top companies in the UK for customer service.

There’s no excuse when it comes to good customer service, it’s something we can all learn, we just need to know where to make the improvements.

1 – Knowledge & Experience
You may never have worked in customer service before but you could have spent the last ten years in a role which has given you the skills and prepared you to excel in that position. Companies need to look at the people they have in place and realise that development of current staff is crucial not only for morale but also to highlight the talent they already employ, rather than choosing to outsource. Consider putting together a skills matrix, a graph or spreadsheet of the main tasks your business completes and who within the company;

  • Requires full training
  • Requires some training
  • Could complete the tasks assisted
  • Could complete the tasks unaided but with review
  • Is fully Trained
  • You might find that certain areas need some work or that you’ve misjudged your staff’s capabilities.

 

2 – Stop treating the contact centre as a separate entity to your business.
Departments that work together stay together. If your contact centre is performing well, communicating effectively and helping customers, all other departments need to be performing at the same level, so as not to drag other sections of the business down. Contact centres are a hub of communication, there’s no excuse for this being ineffective. Interdepartmental communication can be a challenge, with various managers, team relationships and probably a particular approach.

In order to appreciate why interdepartmental strategising is so important, look at what the contact centre is responsible for and how this relates to other aspects of the business. Talking to customers, your staff will learn about their common queries, how they prefer to get in touch, what they like and dislike about the company. All of this knowledge will affect how you as a company decide on your marketing, your services, your FAQs and how these are presented to the customer.

Vice Versa this is just as important, what use is great customer service if your contact centre staff don’t currently know what is being marketed or offered or can’t tell your customers where to go on your website to find what they’re looking for? Integrate the contact centre into your whole business.

3 – Using a Net Promoter Score

This index ranges from -100 to 100, it looks at your customer’s behaviour and measures how willing they are to recommend or criticise your business to others. It works by measuring your customer’s experience and is based on their answers to common survey questions like; “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

The customer’s response then fits them into one of three groups;

-          Promoters – A score of 9-10 – Loyal customers who are most likely to continue to buy or engage with your company whilst also recommending you to others, encouraging growth of the business.

-          Passives – A score of 7-8 – These people are happy with your service but are not overly enthusiastic and are more likely to seek other competitive brands.

-          Detractors - A score of 0-6 – Customers who provide this score are dissatisfied, they can impede company growth and damage the brand through negative feedback.

If you have this information about your customers, then that’s a good start, but what will really set you apart from the rest is what you choose to do with it. If you’re continually getting poor reviews or feedback on one product or service then act upon this and make improvements. It’s also a great way to highlight what your customers love about your company. Don’t make the mistake that many do by collecting this information and letting it gather dust, act on your NPS.

4 – Spoiled for choice.

When you visit a major retailer now and click contact us, you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to getting in touch. There’s emails, phone, post, live chat, call back service, social media, text service – which gives your customer choice and convenience. Your agents need to be trained across the board of communication, transitioning from one channel to another should be as smooth as transferring a call.  

What if your contact centre’s customer service over the phone was impeccable but when it came to emails, they were littered with poor grammar and the queries your customers were getting in touch about, were frequently ignored or not fully resolved? 

You’d realise that your multichannels need to be integrated, meaning all channels of communication must adhere to the same quality and standard as your main method of customer service. Firstly, you and the customer must identify what each channel is best suited to dealing with. For example, social media queries are usually a place where customers will vent their frustration or praise, whereas it’d be a poor choice of platform for making sales. Discover the strengths and weaknesses of each method of communication, and then you can look at where best to direct a customer to assist them.

5 – Think you’re ready to rival the top dogs now?

Even the top 50 adopt a culture of continuous improvement, they don’t become lackadaisical once The Telegraph pops them on the ‘Best companies for customer service’ list, because they know that there are always ways to improve customer service or avoid a bad review and unhappy customers.

Avoid the failure demand, whereby a customer is getting in touch because the company has failed to do something or failed to do it right, it’s within your control to turn things around. Failure demand is the scenario where the customer is in touch for the second or even third time because something they requested hasn’t yet been done or solved.

Are your agents limited in what they can do to assist a customer? Is the customer’s issue passed on to another department? Then it’s time to read over point three again and see if there’s something that can be done to unify your departments and improve their communication.

Who knows, maybe after tackling these points we’ll be seeing you here next year?

Tips from the Top 50 UK Contact Centres

Why choose the phone when there’s so many other ways to communicate?

There might be many more methods of getting in touch with people, companies, customers or friends but does that mean that they’re actually better than the good old phone?

Aside from being face-to-face, the only way to really gauge how someone is feeling, their mood, how helpful they are and how enthusiastic they are is to speak to them. With your voice and not a keyboard.

So yes, times have certainly changed and we’re a lot more tech savvy now (apart from my mum who still doesn’t understand how to use a mouse let alone Google something..) and despite there being tons of apps that can be used to make a call like Hangouts, Facetime, Skype or Whatsapp, we still believe that the good old fashioned phone is the best way to keep in touch for a business.

Why is it so much better?

  • Immediacy
  • Technophobes friendly
  • Time Saving
  • Human
  •  Security
  •  Reliable

Easy to use – with the push of a button your call will be re-directed through an often very complex and long IVR system or tree, where there are many menus and options for the customer so that their call can be directed to the most appropriate department or contact. Even my mum knows how to navigate a telephone menu, it’s minimal and straightforward in comparison to using an online chat system where you often have to enter your details before you’re able to be connected to an agent.

Timely – We know waiting on hold is boring, it’s why iNarrator was born, to keep you entertained when you’re on the phone. The average time waiting on hold to the top 50 customer service companies last month, was a mere 1 and a half minutes. This is super speedy when compared with the average wait for a response from live chat (5 minutes), social media (30 minutes) and email which averaged anywhere between a snails paced 1 hour to a 1 day wait.

Knowledge – If you’ve ever used an online chat box then you will know how stressful it can be to get your queries across to an advisor using a keyboard, rather than speaking to someone over the phone. It takes time to type out your initial query, followed by the advisor asking you several more questions to help them decide on how best to advise you, something which could be done in a fraction of the time if it was to be done over the phone. It’s reassuring speaking with an advisor over the phone as their knowledge is readily available for you to request. I’m much more likely to respond with “Yes, actually there is…” when asked “Is there anything else I can do to help you?” over the phone, whereas I would much quicker to disconnect from an online advisor. Which brings me to our next benefit of speaking over the phone…

Personalised – Stock answers or scripts can only be used to a certain level over the phone because someone is reacting to your conversation in real time, they can’t sit back and mull over what to respond because that would create an unprofessional awkward silence. We’re not saying it’s impossible to be personable or friendly via live chat but you can’t beat having an actual conversation! Live chat has changed the sound of the office, where once there were rooms of melodic tones and happy chatter now there’s the pitter patter of typing.

When it comes to personalising a call we’re quite thankful that the switchboard is a thing of the past, after finding out that to advertise the appropriate manner in which to answer the phone in 1910, saying ‘Hello’ was quite frowned upon. As the phone was once quite an exclusive mode of conversation, it was used mainly by the middle classes and therefore service had to be perfect. Callers and office workers were sent the AT&T Telephone Pledge, where they promised to be as “Courteous and Considerate over the Telephone as if face to face” Something we think should still be a Golden Rule today!

Reliable – The phone is direct. Using the phone to resolve an issue is a two way conversation without playing email ping pong or having to go back and forth on a live chat, it’s one interaction where your query is likely to be resolved. The phone is still the dominant form of customer service, making up 68% of customer service interactions. Which shows how reliable it is still considered to be when there are now many other methods of contacting customer service departments.  

 

Who likes using the phone?

The idea that people might actually prefer to speak to a company over the phone might seem a little farfetched to some but there’s plenty of reasons why the phone comes up trumps, and we’ve already mentioned a few.

It might divide opinion but using social media as a dominant means of communication isn’t just changing the way customers and clients interact with your business but it’s changing how your employees do too. Hark back to the days before the internet went mainstream, circa 1999, and think of office life and how equipment has changed and developed. Without the chitter chatter of the phone your office becomes silent, you might be using the internet to speak to customers but is a reliance on online chat as a tool for customer service encouraging a stony faced generation of arthritic fingered advisors who are losing the ability to converse?

A recent study of how the top 50 UK customer service companies handled customer queries, across a range of methods, positions the telephone as the best method for communicating with customers. Pitting the phone against live chat, social media and emails, the phone came out top in all five categories. Each communication method was tested in the following and the phone scored best;

Timely – 87.2%

Easy to Use – 93.9%

Reliable – 94.9%

Knowledgeable - 89.5%

Personalised – 75.0%

The survey found that customers were most satisfied when the advisor asked their name and introduced themselves, coming across as friendly in their conversation was another aspect that callers reported added to a positive experience, something that isn’t as easily achieved over a typed conversation.

There were of course some elements that customers didn’t like about contacting customer service over the phone, which will be worth noting so that you can strive to make sure your callers don’t face them!

 

PHONE PET PEEVES

  • Making multiple attempts to call – Yes this one might be difficult to avoid if you’re a busy company but there are steps you can take to at least improve the caller’s experience. Why not offer a call back service or have informative and entertaining on hold marketing and messages, so that callers are more inclined to stay on the line. Just take a look at the average times people stayed on the line waiting when they didn’t have anything to listen to, compared to when they did and you’ll be sold!
     
  • Speaking too quickly or unclearly – It’s vital that your staff are trained in call handling, a customer is going to have a much better experience and become less irate if they’re not straining to understand what is being said to them. Provide your staff with some guidelines and have regular top up training to ensure the quality of the service is at the standard you expect.

There are of course benefits for using email or live chat alongside having call handlers available, but you need to make sure you’re offering the right type of contact and support for your business. You need to assess the type of contact each method is used for. For example the phone will usually be used when a customer has a complaint or a query that can be quickly resolved. Email is better for marketing or sending information that doesn’t require an immediate response or to confirm details, plus it can be used at all hours. Social media is more the fun side of communicating, where your customers may post how happy they are with their product or have a more general enquiry, it’s more light-hearted and informal than a telephone call would be. What suits you best?

If you’re a small business then it may be unwise to offer lots of ways to contact you, unless you’ve got the manpower and time to respond to and monitor each platform or method. It might seem like a great idea to be present everywhere but if you are only appearing as easy to reach, when in actual fact you don’t have enough staff to answer your calls or keep an eye on the inbox and social media channels, then it would be better to focus on one primary point of contact. Don’t spread yourself too thinly!

Is the phone best?

In a recent survey the phone again proves itself as the most popular choice of contact, handling half of all inbound calls, compared to the channels you would think are growing like social media, only accounting for 2.7% of interactions. Despite expanding the ways in which we can now reach customers and they can reach us, since the 1950s, the phone has remained as the most dominant method of customer communication.

The phone was the fastest growing method of contact during 2013 and was also predicted as the busiest method of contact throughout 2014 and 2015.

"The results also reiterate the fact that voice is and should continue to be a dominant channel in the contact centre.”

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!

With the telephone being the most personal and human way to interact, aside from face-to-face, it’s important to brand your company similarly. Whilst callers are waiting, does your IVR Menu or on hold marketing reflect the way your agents will speak with the caller? Adding in a personal touch before your customer is even connected is easy with On Hold Marketing and can be tailored, with regional voices or area specific offers.

Although times have changed, you can see that there is still a huge market for telephone based companies and customer service departments. It may seem like a dated option when compared with more high-tech means of communication such as video chat or social media yet it’s evidently the most reliable and easy to use method, having stood the test of time.

Sources

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/what-would-emily-post-say-about-droids-in-cafes/

Omnichannel infographic

Utility Company in Hot Water

If keeping your customers happy doesn't come quite as naturally as you’d hope in your business, then maybe the fire that Scottish Power has come under will spur you on to improve or polish your existing customer service protocols.

The energy giant found themselves in hot water with Ofgem, the government regulator for the gas and electricity market in Great Britain. They conducted an investigation into how Scottish Power handles it’s customer’s complaints, handle customer calls and conduct their billing, during the implementation of a new IT system.

The company has been handed a fine of £18 Million to compensate vulnerable customers who were failed by the way their queries or complaints were dealt with, with £15 Million to be paid to callers who were affected. The investigation found that customers had been treated unfairly and that there was little in place to protect them from the havoc that arose when Scottish Power implemented their new IT system.

If you’re part of a small company then hopefully your complaints department receives minimal calls, Scottish Power can’t say the same and received a staggering 1 MILLION complaints between June 2013 and December 2015. The reasons for the complaints varied but were mainly surrounding the unacceptably long periods in which customers were placed on hold when trying to contact the supplier, callers had to make several attempts or wait for extended periods of time before they were able to speak to an advisor.

The trouble arose when the new IT system didn’t perform as it should have, increasing complaints to the company. However it wasn’t just the increased volume of complaints that has caused Ofgem to step in, but also the way these were dealt with and the time it took to resolve them. A simple update to your on hold marketing to acknowledge that there is a higher volume of calls than usual or that you’re aware of a problem, could help to keep customers peachy during a longer wait.

There’s also lesson to be learned here, you need a solid contingency plan for all aspects of your business but particularly for when you introduce something new, do you have a back-up plan if something goes wrong? You should treat your customers with the same high level of service no matter what dilemma the company is facing!

This is the perfect time to highlight how important communication is, whether it’s a quick post on social media, a mailshot or postal campaign - don’t forget to cover the phones! As we recently wrote, the phone is still the most effective and efficient method for customers to contact businesses, so adding a message to your On Hold Marketing to keep callers in the loop about news or company updates is vital and shows you’re prepared.

So if this story has got you panicking then it’s time to make sure your on hold is current, that you’re fully prepped on a backup plan and that your team know the importance of excellent customer service!

How average is your customer service?

“People won’t remember what you said or did... they will remember how you made them feel”

Can you think of a time you received exceptional customer service?

Can you think of a time you received poor customer service?

No one tends to remember the times that their customer experience was just average and at iNarrator we’re not fond of being mediocre.

We provide professional, clear and informative recordings to a wide variety of business types. No matter what sector you’re in it’s important to make a good first impression. Don’t mistake this for being the only important aspect of connecting with your customers. Coming across a helpful and friendly recorded message is only a tiny element of your customer’s overall experience.

Taking the time to prepare scripts and get your new recordings installed is time wasted, if once the phone is answered your caller receives poor customer service. Customer service is a talking point and we Brits love a good grumble, as the old saying goes news travels fast. The power of the internet has allowed us to see the good, the bad and the ugly of customer service go viral.

Poet Mary Angelou once said…

“People won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel”

This is the customer service mantra that we want your call handlers to adopt, the chances are that if they upset a customer that they won’t feel great themselves which could then have a further negative impact on their next few calls. Good customer service is underestimated, it doesn’t need to be a huge gesture to make someone feel that they’ve had a good experience with your company.

Your call handlers should strive to reflect the professionalism demonstrated in your IVR and In-Queue Messages. Mirroring and matching what your caller has been greeted with should be your standard. Customer’s expect to be met with a certain tone, manners and a handler who is adequately trained to assist them. Set the bar high and you’ll find callers are more satisfied, they may spend a little longer on the phone but this will help to build a positive relationship with your business and reassure them that they’re not just another number waiting in a long list of queries.

According to Walker Info by 2020 Customer Service and experience will be the leading brand differentiator, making how you treat your customers even more important than your pricing structure and products or services.  We take for granted how far a little empathy can go and the statistics below highlight the key skills that your customer service agents need to have in order to impress.

The research found that:

“71.5% of positive customer service experiences that people share in person or on social media began as negative experiences and in 82% of negative customer service stories employees were perceived as not caring.”

Training is vital in ensuring that your call handlers are able to deal with the kinds of requests and queries that they receive, there’s nothing wrong with going off script to make a call a little less robotic but the way agents handle calls should be monitored to ensure consistency, accuracy and professionalism.

If you don’t consider customer experience as something you need to be monitoring then you might want to read these statistics, consumers decide where their loyalties lie based on customer service so it’s important that you value them otherwise they won’t value you.

  •  88% of people have been influenced by online reviews while making their purchase decisions.  – Source:  Zendesk
  • 79% of high-income people, 51% of B2B clients, and 54% of Gen Xers will avoid your company for two years or more following one bad customer experience.  – Source:  Zendesk

If you've got the right team but you’re lacking the right first impression, that’s where we can help. Plug in and listen to our Case Studies to discover what a good first impression really sounds like.

 

Source of Statistics:
http://customerthink.com/customer-service-statistics-to-guide-you-for-2016/

The top 5 mistakes when implimenting IVR Messages

We create a lot of IVR menus for some very reputable companies, but you’d be surprised at how many companies don’t have comprehensive and easy to navigate menus, before they find IVR Recordings of course.

I’m sure you’ll have a few companies in mind who could really do with simplifying their current menu. Usually larger companies need IVR menus because their call handlers cover many different aspects of their company, with a lot of departments comes a lot of options and usually a lot of confusion.

We can think of plenty of ways to improve your current IVR System or give you some pointers to consider if you’re thinking of getting some recordings. In our opinion these are the top five mistakes made in IVR recordings.

Options Overload

Calling a company takes time, if there’s a long introduction at the start of your IVR, it is time to consider cutting it down. The issue is you’re providing a lot of irrelevant information to someone who might know exactly what department they need to speak to, especially if they have called before, forcing your caller to endure a two minute spiel that likely infuriates them before they’ve even reached your menu. We’d advise to only really have the necessary bits and bobs in the welcome message, after all it should be just that, welcoming! Avoid including your company history here as this is best saved for your on hold messaging.

Massive Menus

Your menu should be really straight forward with clear directions for the caller so they know exactly what to select. Having a simple IVR menu will save you time and money, meaning calls are directed to the right department first time, rather than having your customer passed from one department to the next which not only takes time for your employees but leaves your customer feeling like they’ve been passed from pillar to post. We’d ask you to consider where your options eventually lead to, if more than one option leads to the same department then merge them!

No Exit

It’s a familiar story, you need to make an important call but know you’ll be placed on hold so try to do so on your lunch hour or after work. When a customer takes time to contact your business, your IVR system should reassure them immediately that they’re query is going to be resolved quickly and hassle free. There’s nothing worse than calling somewhere and missing the options, either resulting in a panicked press of the wrong option in the vain hope it was the right one (likely wasting time when they get through to the wrong department and have to be transferred) or it means the caller has to hang up and re-dial. This could all be resolved by one last message, to hear the options again.

Melancholy Music

Call us bias but we hate rubbish on hold music. No matter how big or small your company is, you should come across as professional, particularly when the first point of contact your customer has with your business is through your phone system. Playing a muffled recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons into your callers’ poor ears for twenty minutes doesn’t quite give off that image. We’ve got a range of music available to suit lots of different types of business. Do you think it’s time to change track yet?

IVR Journey

Finally the most important point we’d like mention is that your IVR is never finished, you need to keep it up to date, interesting and relevant to the direction your business is taking. Managing your IVR system is really important, if you don’t think any of the mistakes above apply to your current system then we’d advise you to take the customer’s journey and call your company to listen first hand and see how easy your options are to navigate. This should highlight any areas to you that you think could be improved and simplified for your customers. Once you’ve done that, it’ll be time for you to give us a call!

The rise of AI

There’s no denying that technology and artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed significantly over the last hundred years. From the Turing Test in Alan Turing’s 1950 paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, to IBM’s super computer, Watson winning Jeopardy in 2011 and not to mention countless references in popular culture with AI as the centre of their plots.

IPsoft have unveiled the “first cognitive agent who understands like a human”. Their virtual agent, Amelia, who assists customers contacting a call centre is currently being trialled by several companies, with the ultimate intention to see if she can replace call centre operators.

Amelia is said to be able to understand how customers feel, learning as she completes tasks. IPsoft are using ‘cutting edge technology that emulates the human brain’, becoming more intelligent the more she has to deal with and respond to.

AI is a controversial subject, particularly when it can threaten your job; only recently did articles emerge giving you the option to see how safe your job was from being taken over by robots! We are all aware that this kind of technology exists and is used in technical roles and top secret places that only James Bond is familiar with, but it seems that recently the thought of introducing such advanced systems is going to affect normal, everyday roles in business.

Amelia can read and understand text, process new information and queries, effectively learning from her experiences, but is this going to make humans redundant in customer service roles when a robot can supposedly provide customer service to rival that delivered by your employees?

Counteracting the argument that a computer can’t interact in the same way you and I can, IPsoft describe Amelia as intelligent enough to adopt human behaviour, equipped with an EQ to sense emotions and react to these accordingly. She’s also able to search for an answer in several ways, by answering if she already knows, searching on the internet or internal databases, and if she doesn’t know the answer she will ask a colleague for help. She’s able to observe how the human colleague responds, helping her to learn about this process for future enquiries.

We’re not too convinced, there’s a good reason that we like to record our IVR with warm and friendly voices, you can’t beat good old fashioned human interaction and the ultimate goal when you have a customer on hold is for them to receive brilliant customer service from your agents, it’s meant to be a relief when they speak to a person. We’re not denying that Amelia is a brilliant invention but we’re not sure how necessary it is to replace human employment with a robot that can be deployed from the cloud…