From the mundane to hidden gems - AI is here to help

 So let's dive into four areas that the customer experience can be improved with a variety of different AI / machine learning technologies.

Free the customer service team from the mundane

AI can automate some time consuming tasks such as data entry and directing a caller to the right person to allow customer service representatives to focus on the customer’s problem rather than gathering mundane information such as their name, address and date of birth or answering simple FAQ questions. This is where chatbots and virtual assistants can be deployed for basic automatic data entry.

Chatbots are designed to simulate human interactions and provide immediate, personalized responses 24/7. This is particularly useful managing customer questions or complaints. Virtual assistants on the other hand can engage customers in simple conversations to check on orders or find recommendations based on querying large databases of information, past responses or predictive next best actions.

By automating the mundane parts of customer service, the opportunity is to give the customer service team more complex tasks to deal with.

Predict next-best actions

Brands have made a seismic shift in the last decade away from telling customers what they want (okay, they’re still guilty of that somewhat) to creating a brand experience that feels like it was tailored for them. AI tools are enabling brands to accomplish this by sifting through customer data and personalizing the information to offer relevant products.

These technologies help identify the consumer's needs before they even know it (which in the past, visionaries like Steve Jobs have done this with products such as the iPod and iPhone).  In the world of marketing, an insurance company could use a recent doctor visit to offer a coupon for a medical device, or retailers could use smart shopping carts to understand where the buyer is in his or her purchase decisions to recommend a product, such as if they are buying ingredients to make a cake, it would recommend eggs, flour and milk.

Discover  hidden high-impact decisions

Delving deeper into the customer journey, data mining looks at the bigger opportunities in terms of what future brand engagements or actions could be, such as the banking example above with a customer inquiring about a wealth management product and subsequently ending up with a college fund. Whatever the challenge is, the key is that AI is being used to handle that particular co-relation over more traditional, manual methods used in the past.

Content that creates itself

Another way AI can be used to better the customer experience is training it on business-specific metadata to dynamically generate webpages, mobile alerts or other content-centric communications. For example, a professional sports association wanting to drive more attention to its games and get fans more engaged,they can use AI to deliver live statistics on each game and provide fans a unique display of their favorite player stats on their mobile device.   

Investing in customer experience and AI should be a high priority no matter what industry. And it’s not just about adhering to compliance and governance that should be the reason for doing so – the customer expectation is changing and if businesses aren’t appealing to them and making changes – the customer is going to find a different company to align their brand loyalty.

Art of the Possible - Artificial Intelligence and the Customer Experience

There is a craze right now about Artificial Intelligence ( AI  - or more likely machine learning) and its different applications in both technology and our culture.    I have spent the last few years in helping various industries to improve their customer experience or digital experience initiatives.   Now the conversation has turned to imagine the possibilities of adding AI to their mix of CX/DX activities.  In order to deliver the best experience, organizations need to know as much about their customers as possible. While there's no shortage of customer data available to them today, the problem lies in analyzing that overwhelming amount of data in an augmented fashion.

This is where the benefits of AI technologies in a customer-centric setting comes in. 

Those who see the value in connected end-to-end customer journeys, and are using machine learning to predict future customer behavior, can deliver intelligent experiences. Using a bank as an example, a customer visits its banking website to learn more about its wealth management products.  AI-generated insights based on the customer’s information are then used to optimize the content to help them make future decisions (and to help the bank keep the customer happy).  The customer can then contact a branch agent to talk about wealth management options and even go into a brick-and-mortar location to discuss the products further in person.  

Next, with the ability to analyze current and future needs, the wealth manager can be alerted that their client has excess funds that could be used to set up a college fund for their grandchildren. The data that the branch employee initially provided for wealth management online uncovered a hidden relationship to a new product – a college fund. 

In other cases, AI can be used to anticipate customer behaviors. While it is still in the early stages, contact centers are experimenting with voice recognition technologies that can detect sentiment in a customer’s voice. For example, if a customer calls into the bank and is upset, the technology can recognize that emotion and immediately direct them to an agent that is adept in dealing with emotional customers.

 These are just a couple of examples of how AI can improve the customer experience.  Over the next few posts, I will delve into more detail on four potential ways that AI can help in this regard.  We will look at the customer support center, predicting customer journeys, uncovering high impact decisions and augmented or automated information.

Interesting Articles and Updated Blog site

There is so much change that has happened in the Customer Experience Management (or Digital Experience area) that I wanted to capture a few interesting ones here.

  Blogs -   I noted in my last post that my blog articles are now on OpenText's site.   We have updated our blogging platform and now the new site is here:   CEM Blogs

               You can read a little more about me here  CEM Expert

  Articles -  I have written or been quoted in a number of articles that capture the digital disruption in our markets today.

               Changes in Customer Communications

              CEM trends webinar - video round table approach
 
              

Check us out at Engage U.

I realize that I should have made an update on this blog site when I switched from blogging here and having it syndicated to my employer's activity feed and started blogging directly under the Engage U. site. As most of my blogging is work related, it made sense to work from one source.

So, come and check out the site at EngageU (www.opentext.com/engageu) to read more about what is happening the the world of web and customer engagement.

thanks!
Marci

The News is not as it seems

A while back, watching the U.S. game show -Million Dollar Money Drop - there was a question asking, "Who was chosen as Time Magazine's "Most Trusted Man in News for 2009"?" Of all the choices, the answer was comedian Jon Stewart. In my opinion, his comedic take on headline news is a breadth of fresh air to the usual negative stories that seem to take top slot on the local evening news. What happened to the local kid who won the spelling bee or saved the cat out of the tree? Well, I suppose I will give credit to the world coverage of the Royal Wedding as a jolly event. I just prefer to avoid the negative evening news in favor of keeping tabs on the Trending twitter-sphere. The trouble with Internet stories, as I tell my mother, is to double check the facts and look for signs of Photoshop editing. Not everything you read on the Web is true. (she asks... "Really???" - LOL)

I am taking liberty on a comment Jon mentioned during an interview with Chris Wallis, about laziness. The Internet has made it easy to pass along "news" without verifying facts and thus propagating inaccuracies. Forwarding a tweet or email without verification is tantamount to the childhood game of whispering a word to your neighbor and seeing what becomes of it as it makes it's way around the circle - it is usually quite different from the original.

Corporations are not immune to this phenomenon either. The game players usually laugh at the morphed results, but it's not so funny when it happens in real life. Take for example the recent situation in Scott Bowen's blog "Check the Facts" regarding an inaccurate post by an independent analyst firm. As an employee of OpenText, I can confirm we are continuing to develop new features for Web Site Management as shown in recent case studies - like Lone Star College - showcasing their success with the product.

If we were playing the whisper game, what might have returned from its travel around the social circle, is not that WSM is in a "Death Spiral" but rather it has a "Great Future".

Death Spiral

Death Spira

Heath Spire

Heat Stire

Geat Sture

Great Suture

Great Future

Customer Experience is all about the ME

To paraphrase Don Tapscott famed author of Wikinomics, and Toby Bell of Gartner, who both described this new genre of information sharing -

"If the news is important, it will find me."

I can't remember the last time that I turned on the TV to watch the news. I get notified via my Twitter stream if there is anything important going on in the world. The connection of information from various sources to the numerous channels people visit is a daunting task for any marketer. Hence, part of my job is to make this transference of knowledge as easy and unobtrusive as possible. Multi-channel distribution is the technical term - for many it is "just let me watch what I want where I want and in the form I want."

As a mother of teen and tween girls, I am always fascinated by their easy adoption of technology that has been around only as long as they have been alive. They take it for granted that they can find out or watch just about anything on the Web today. I am reminded of a conversation that might just sound familiar to those of you with tech-savvy kiddos.

Scene: At the grandparent's house with limited internet gadgets.

child: "Dad, can I watch my favorite cartoon on TV?"

dad: "No, grandma doesn't have that channel."

child: "Then can I have the iPad?" (note - Netflix watch instantly is enabled there)

dad: "No, I am using it right now."

child: "Then can I have my iTouch?"

dad: "Yes, but grandma doesn't have wifi, so no cartoons are available."

child: "Does she have a gamebox to watch it on?"

dad: "No, just go play outside."

Try explaining the ubiquity of content being delivered to so many different devices using different methods of internet access - it is lost on a child who just wants to what their show - right now!

Now, being a product marketer for OpenText's Web and online product line, I appreciate the power of the technology that makes the Web work almost like magic. We just released an update to our Web Experience Management product line that makes finding content easier (with Semantic search) and viewing rich media seamless from browser to mobile phones. Our focus on the ease to which information can be shared and consumed is a must-have in this "Net-generation" world we live in today.

(check out the recent Press Release )




Here is a view of our inline editing that makes it easier to manage the Website.

It is important to cater to your different audiences - provide the most compelling Customer Experience possible. Forrester Research found that this is a top priority in 2011 for content and collaboration professionals. WCM systems make achieving this goal a lot easier.

The question to ponder is: Are you delivering the ME experience today?

The Magic of the Silver Screen

As I flew over the Hollywood sign to land at LAX today, I looked down on the tiny cars traveling the coastal and city highways and I was reminded of the magic this city creates through the motion picture industry. Having just watched Tron over the weekend, I see those tiny cars as the light jets racing along beams of light, like the content on the information superhighway. I was so anxious for Jeff Bridges (as Kevin Flynn) to get out of his trapped world of programs and linear order. ( I did wonder how he created water, though – hmmmmm). The magic that was created on the screen was even more impressive that Disney brought old footage into the new movie. I often talk to customers about reusing content in new ways – well there you go – Disney did it exceptionally well. Imagine the miles of footage that must exist in their video closet – whew! I would not want to be the one to go through hours of video without a digital media system to help sort through the chaos.

I have to provide a shameless plug for OpenText’s Media Management solution. It handles media assets with ease; the slick new user interface, storage and publishing capabilities has made many a media company happy to have it in control of their most valuable assets. Check it out at: www.opentext.com/magic

But wait, there’s more. Perhaps you can relate to this story.

Year 1990
Daughter: “Do you have a picture of me in that red dress when we went to someplace when I was little?”
Me: “Hmm… can you be a little more specific?”
Daughter: “You know, the one where I was sitting on the piano in that red dress?”
Me: “Well, if I did have such a picture, it would likely be in the box of photos in the attic.”

- Skip forward in time to where photography is digitally stored and old photos have been scanned in –

Year, 2011
Daughter : “ Mom, do you have a picture of me from last Christmas with that cute reindeer hat?”
Me: “Yes, I tagged it with your name, Christmas 2010 and cute knit hat. Just search on MyPictureAlbum for the tag – I also ranked it with 5 stars seeing how you were so cute in it.”
Daughter: “Found it – it was at the top of the results list for '5-star hat photos'. Thanks mom!”

Without media management tools to store, manage and publish our most prized digital memories, we’d spend more time sifting through pages over and over again instead of going out and creating new memories to share with relatives almost immediately across the globe. Business is the same way. To really leverage the investment you make into a photoshoot or video production, it should be stored, tagged and easily retrieved for future use. Keeping control on digital assets is easy with the right tools.