In part one of this series, I talked about a trend that I am seeing and hearing about broadly across all sizes of companies and all industry types, Multi Channel Customer Service. As a component of that group, I wanted to call out a technology that I am seeing start to pick up steam and I think will take over from Live Chat as the next hot technology for customer service in 2013 and 2014. That technology is Virtual Assistants.
A brief history for those that are new to the concept. Back about 10 or 12 years ago, a few select companies started playing around with the idea of Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence to create these characters that could assist people in using new technology. One of the first applications of this type of technology that we have all seen at one time or another was from Microsoft and the ubiquitous CLIPPY that also was incredibly annoying to most of us. This was the first crude version of what was going to come with the concept of Virtual Assistants and their application to the customer service space.
Building on that initial idea and concept, a few innovative companies started bringing to market the idea of CLIPPY, but in a Enterprise ready state and form. Of course these companies had their struggles with the technology and the application of it in the first early adopters customers, as any technology company does early on. But over the last 5 years or so, the concept of the Virtual Assistant has really started to pick up steam. There were companies like VirtuOz, NextIT, Creative Virtual and Intelliresponse here in the US that were signing deals with companies like PayPal, eBay, US Army, Continental Airlines, AT&T and many others. Although these big names were jumping into the market, the reality was that it was a very new market still and many companies did not have the risk tolerance to jump into the market head first.
Fast forward to 2011/2012 and the introduction of Siri into the lexicon of Americans and others around the world from our friends at Apple. As they introduced this new concept on a grand scale to the world, people have come to understand that although still limited in their abilities, Siri and Virtual Assistants in general are becoming more useful and applicable to our daily lives. Again, in the Enterprise space, vendors like VirtuOz and NextIT have been selling and deploying Virtual Assistants to websites for 10 years. But, when Apple released Siri, the market really started to build and move up and to the right.
So, we have now landed in 2013 and there are Virtual Assistant projects getting budget and resources in just about every large company now in the US. Many are looking at the mobile applications they have deployed and trying to understand how they can use a Mobile Virtual Assistant to help provide service in that channel more effectively than they do today. Others are looking at the application of a Virtual Assistant in their primary web channels and still others are looking at how they can use a Virtual Assistant in their social channels.
As I said earlier on in this post, I think that 2013 and 2014 are going to be the years that Virtual Assistants take off out of the early adopter companies and rush into the fast follower companies, just as Live Chat has done over the past two years. But as always, we need to keep our expectations in check about what a Virtual Assistant can and should do for a company. The technology is powerful, no doubt. But, the application of technology in the wrong area is always a recipe for disaster, no matter what the technology is. So, make sure that before you deploy any Virtual Assistant in any channel that you first understand the experience of the user and ensure that the deployment is a good match for your customer base demographic, the action they are trying to complete and the device they are trying to complete it on.
Are you planning a Virtual Assistant project this coming year? If not, I would suggest that you have your innovation teams for both web and mobile start looking at how it can serve your prospects and customers.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
2013 Technology Trends for Customer Service Part 1
As I mentioned in my last post, I have been hearing a number of leaders in the customer service space talk recently about what is on their Wish List. In these conversations, a number of items have been coming up, but I am trying to distil down these Wish Lists to the top five things that seem to be coming up in every conversation.
One of the first sets of technology that consistently comes up in every dialog that I have had in the past 6 months is the idea that companies need to consolidate their very much disparate technologies that they own now that service multiple customer interaction channels.
Over the past 10 years or so, as new companies have come into the customer service technology landscape and new channels have availed themselves to customers and to companies, there has been an ever growing set of "one off" technologies that service execs have purchased to round out their offering to customers. First it was just the phone. Then it grew to the automated phone with IVR's. Then it grew to email and self service knowledge systems for customers to use on their own time. Then it evolved over the past few years to Live Chat and Virtual Assistants and now of course you have the onslaught of social channels and communities that are starting to overwhelm companies. Oh and lets not forget the newest and likely most disruptive channel in recent years, mobile apps and the mobile web.
Interestingly, as a consumer, this expansion of the types of channels I can use to contact or interact with a company is fantastic. I can choose the experience and the channel that suits me best. But for companies, the sad truth is that a large majority of them end up dealing with 5-7 different companies to supply the technology for each of these channels. And of course the sobering reality of this multiple vendor state is that none of these systems talk to each other or track the whole customer journey which creates a poor customer experience, none of them are integrated in a way that makes it easier for the service leader and professionals to manage their business and most certainly the data that comes from these systems is not consolidated to help the business spot opportunities for improvement or growth.
So, this leads us to today and this overwhelming desire on the part of service execs to create a technology infrastructure that can support all of these channels in a way that is not only beneficial to the end using consumer, but also helps them, as a service leader, capture what is happening and make better decisions going forward. They are tired of having one company for phone, one company for email, one company for live chat. Another company for social media listening, another company for communities and another company for providing a mobile experience. Some companies have made the effort to consolidate a few channels together but most are still stuck with at least 5 different companies providing their technology for these channels.
It seems from talking with service leaders that they are going one of three ways to really address this consolidation issues.
1. Some execs are turning to their traditional customer service vendors like Avaya or Genesys or Cisco to help pull together all the pieces to the puzzle. These execs tend to see the world as a phone centric world still and are most comfortable with the solutions from these types of companies.
2. Other execs are looking to their phone vendors to continue to support them in that channel, as they have for many years, but then turning to multi channel digital players like Moxie Software, Live Person, Kana, eGain or 24/7 for the rest of the solution. Not a bad direction to go, as most of these vendors have full suites that will do their best to integrate to the phone channel for escalation or transfer.
3. But what I am hearing the most about lately in many big companies is a trend towards CRM companies becoming the one stop shop for the needs of the service exec around consolidation. So companies like Salesforce.com, RightNow, Microsoft Dynamics etc. The reason why many service execs are looking to these companies to provide the wholistic approach is that they tend to have the underpinnings that helps to bring it all together for companies. So someone like Salesforce has all the channels with KB, Live Chat, Email, Phone, Communities etc, but what they have that is different than the other two options is they have the customer record as well. And this, seems to be the most important part of the puzzle for most service execs. They want to be able to see, track and understand the journey of the customer and make adjustments that will benefit both the customer and the company.
I don't have the right answer today as to what everyone should be doing. That will play out over time. But my sense is that the CRM option will more and more become the default option for most big companies. There are ALOT of horrible SAP, Siebel and Amdocs applications out in the market still and most companies are looking at how they can replace those systems. Combine that with this desire to consolidate multiple channels and you have a situation very ripe for the new SaaS based CRM companies. Especially those CRM companies that are building out ecosystems knowing that they won't own or build all the next great ideas themselves. We are moving into a world of connectors and those that get that will likely win this war for the consolidated multi channel experience.
What do you think?
One of the first sets of technology that consistently comes up in every dialog that I have had in the past 6 months is the idea that companies need to consolidate their very much disparate technologies that they own now that service multiple customer interaction channels.
Over the past 10 years or so, as new companies have come into the customer service technology landscape and new channels have availed themselves to customers and to companies, there has been an ever growing set of "one off" technologies that service execs have purchased to round out their offering to customers. First it was just the phone. Then it grew to the automated phone with IVR's. Then it grew to email and self service knowledge systems for customers to use on their own time. Then it evolved over the past few years to Live Chat and Virtual Assistants and now of course you have the onslaught of social channels and communities that are starting to overwhelm companies. Oh and lets not forget the newest and likely most disruptive channel in recent years, mobile apps and the mobile web.
Interestingly, as a consumer, this expansion of the types of channels I can use to contact or interact with a company is fantastic. I can choose the experience and the channel that suits me best. But for companies, the sad truth is that a large majority of them end up dealing with 5-7 different companies to supply the technology for each of these channels. And of course the sobering reality of this multiple vendor state is that none of these systems talk to each other or track the whole customer journey which creates a poor customer experience, none of them are integrated in a way that makes it easier for the service leader and professionals to manage their business and most certainly the data that comes from these systems is not consolidated to help the business spot opportunities for improvement or growth.
So, this leads us to today and this overwhelming desire on the part of service execs to create a technology infrastructure that can support all of these channels in a way that is not only beneficial to the end using consumer, but also helps them, as a service leader, capture what is happening and make better decisions going forward. They are tired of having one company for phone, one company for email, one company for live chat. Another company for social media listening, another company for communities and another company for providing a mobile experience. Some companies have made the effort to consolidate a few channels together but most are still stuck with at least 5 different companies providing their technology for these channels.
It seems from talking with service leaders that they are going one of three ways to really address this consolidation issues.
1. Some execs are turning to their traditional customer service vendors like Avaya or Genesys or Cisco to help pull together all the pieces to the puzzle. These execs tend to see the world as a phone centric world still and are most comfortable with the solutions from these types of companies.
2. Other execs are looking to their phone vendors to continue to support them in that channel, as they have for many years, but then turning to multi channel digital players like Moxie Software, Live Person, Kana, eGain or 24/7 for the rest of the solution. Not a bad direction to go, as most of these vendors have full suites that will do their best to integrate to the phone channel for escalation or transfer.
3. But what I am hearing the most about lately in many big companies is a trend towards CRM companies becoming the one stop shop for the needs of the service exec around consolidation. So companies like Salesforce.com, RightNow, Microsoft Dynamics etc. The reason why many service execs are looking to these companies to provide the wholistic approach is that they tend to have the underpinnings that helps to bring it all together for companies. So someone like Salesforce has all the channels with KB, Live Chat, Email, Phone, Communities etc, but what they have that is different than the other two options is they have the customer record as well. And this, seems to be the most important part of the puzzle for most service execs. They want to be able to see, track and understand the journey of the customer and make adjustments that will benefit both the customer and the company.
I don't have the right answer today as to what everyone should be doing. That will play out over time. But my sense is that the CRM option will more and more become the default option for most big companies. There are ALOT of horrible SAP, Siebel and Amdocs applications out in the market still and most companies are looking at how they can replace those systems. Combine that with this desire to consolidate multiple channels and you have a situation very ripe for the new SaaS based CRM companies. Especially those CRM companies that are building out ecosystems knowing that they won't own or build all the next great ideas themselves. We are moving into a world of connectors and those that get that will likely win this war for the consolidated multi channel experience.
What do you think?
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Top 5 Technology Trends In Customer Service For 2013
As 2012 has come to a close, it seems to be that time of year again when it makes sense to throw out on the table what I am seeing in the market for this coming year and what technologies in customer service seem to be on the Wish List of most service leaders. So here is my 2013 list of technologies that consistently are bubbling to the top of the conversations I am having with leaders:
1. Multi-Channel Consolidation
2. Virtual Assistant Technology
3. Mobile Customer Service
4. Communities and Social Listening
5. Analytics Tools
Over the coming week or so, I will break down each of these areas and talk about a few players in that market and what I am hearing from leaders about why that specific area seems to be on the Wish List.
Check back soon.....
1. Multi-Channel Consolidation
2. Virtual Assistant Technology
3. Mobile Customer Service
4. Communities and Social Listening
5. Analytics Tools
Over the coming week or so, I will break down each of these areas and talk about a few players in that market and what I am hearing from leaders about why that specific area seems to be on the Wish List.
Check back soon.....
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