Will BOTs Take Over the Customer Experience?

Have you noticed that more and more automation is finding its way into our daily lives? Think of all the new (or near-new) conveniences we have available to us. Home appliances, self-checkout, consumer electronics, entertainment, medical devices and smart buildings help us every day. In a recent blog post, I talked about IVAs (Intelligent Virtual Agents), which are deployed widely to enhance the customer experience by streamlining and handling the customer need immediately, with little to no human intervention.

“Why should I replace my IVR with an IVA?” I’m starting to hear that question a lot from companies that I work with on a regular basis, so I’d like to address the question more broadly.

Believe it or not, composable architecture is a concept that’s been around for a while. There are many articles dating back to 1998 (and possibly beyond) which touch on the merits of taking this approach to designing a reliable and secure network. However, it has become all the rage in recent times due to the unpredictability brought by COVID as well as Gartner’s recommendation that organizations strive for composability. The purpose of this blog post is to help folks understand why this is important and how it relates specifically to customer experience.

This week at Cisco’s annual partner conference, Cisco recognized ConvergeOne with a Global Award for Customer Experience Partner of the Year for rising to market shifts and demonstrating transformative thought leadership that ensures the highest level of customer success, expertise, and dedication as customers transition to subscription and XaaS buying models.

Customers want to be more than a number. They want companies to quickly recognize who they are, anticipate what they want, and solve their problems quickly. And they want this recognition to extend across any interaction they have with a business—whether it’s phone, email, chat, SMS, or social media.

Healthcare IT vendor Allscripts recently faced a significant and costly upgrade for its operating system environment. At the same time, its premises-based contact center system was up for annual maintenance renewal. Allscripts decided to take the opportunity to simplify contact center operations and move to the cloud—a move that was in line with its general commitment to cloud migration.

Healthcare: If any industry or vertical landed on the map more than ever this past year, it was healthcare. We’ve talked to more healthcare customers than any other vertical during this time, and it makes sense why: healthcare has touched all of us in some way or another this past year. Whether someone has been ill, needed checkups, or is now getting vaccinated, it has or will touch all of us.

Just ask your Customer Service Representatives, "What is the toughest or most annoying part of your daily tasks?" The answer may not surprise you. You may find that your workforce is spending a large amount of time on things that are necessary, but repetitive. Frankly, these items do not add significant value to the business and, in turn, they diminish employee satisfaction. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is built to handle tasks that are slowing down your employees, as well as ones that are just very boring for them to do. A trusted partner can help you figure out where automation can add to the efficiency and effectiveness of your Contact Center or Back Office.

Recently, I was asked to speak about Public Cloud Services, and specifically, CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) during a training call. It was actually really good timing, because this has been a hot topic with vendors, partners, and customers. In those discussions, I find that there’s a lot of misconceptions about what CPaaS actually is. As mentioned, CPaaS stands for Communication Platform as a Service, but even that term can mislead you into thinking that it’s a much broader and more inclusive thing than it actually is.

Harvard Business Review published an article on “Reinventing Customer Service,” and I believe they—and one of our customers—are onto something.