Technology Trends 2012- Intelligent Virtual Agents

As we start to wrap up this series of posts around the technology trends of 2012, I think it makes sense to include in the list a few technologies that are on the forefront of breaking through the early adopter phase and are positioned to grow considerably over the coming year to 18 months. The first of these technologies is the Intelligent Virtual Agent.

For those of you that have been around the call center for a while, this is not the idea that you put people in their home and let them take calls from the PJ's. Of course, there are a number of companies that are having great success with that model, but we typically would call that the At Home Agent model. Intelligent Virtual Agents are a combination of technology and design that render a software based "Agent" to field questions and have a human like dialog with a consumer on a website, mobile device or social media page. Think of Apple's Siri technology, only for your corporate website.

The adoption of these types of technology for corporations is still in the early adopter phase, but the steam is picking up for continued growth over the coming year to 18 months. But, as with anything else, there is a right way and a wrong way to acquire and deploy this type of technology. Because of the newness of the market space, there are a few companies that understand the detail behind deploying virtual agents and then there are other companies that are just trying to jump on the bandwagon now and ride the wave. Be sure that if you are evaluating this technology, that you take the time to evaluate the intangibles of a company. In my research, it is not all about the technology behind the scenes. In fact, it is less about the technology and more about the design, strategy and continued improvement of the virtual agent than anything else. Especially if you are looking to deploy on your website. The last thing you want to do is to deploy something that does not engage your user community and only leaves them with a sense of frustration or anger. So make sure to dig deep and understand which company views this as much more than just a fun new add on or a cheap gimmick. Because it has the power to be much more than that.

Again, the Intelligent Virtual Agent is still making it's way out of the cutting edge and only now starting to establish itself as a viable main stream technology and player in the marketing, sales and customer service space. Over the coming months and years, the Intelligent Virtual Agent will start to fight at the budget table with other customer service technologies to pick up funding and start to siphon off some of the momentum from the more established technologies.

Technology Trends 2012- Live Chat

I have been in customer service technology now for about 10 years and there are only a few technologies that I can remember having such a meteoric rise as Live Chat has seen in the last 18 months. So many technologies in CS come and go, but few really have the juice to break through and become that next "Must Have" tool that everyone is budgeting for and deploying. Cloud Routing from Genesys and GeoTel was one, Quality Monitoring and WFM were another. Recently voice analytics picked up steam and filled this position. And now it seems like as all those technologies mature and start to pick off the last remaining laggards, Live Chat has taken the mantle and assumed the position of the "Must Have" new technology.

For years, live chat has been around. I can remember working with some more voice related companies like Nortel, Avaya and Cisco and how they were packaging the Multi Channel approach to customers and as a part of that was live chat. But over the last 5 years, it seemed like Live Chat just lingered in the background without any significant energy to break away from just the few early adopters.

But wow, what a difference the last few years have made. Everybody and their brother seems to be either fully deployed, in the midst of deploying or going out to RFP to put in Live Chat. And it is not just CS that is pushing this initiative. I am seeing a huge ground swell of activity in the Sales side of the business, sales leadership demanding that they need to have Live Chat to support customers immediately from the website. So there has been a flood of vendors into the market space, from very large to very small and from stand alone unique solutions to packaged apps from the big software vendors. Just a few that are really eating up the market right now are Moxie Software, LivePerson, Oracle (through numerous acquistions), RightNow (now Oracle), Bold Chat and Whos On.

They all have their pluses and minuses, just like any technology out there. I have heard some companies say that it has been a wasted investment. I have heard the majority of others say that it was a great investment. The ones that say that it worked for them, are the same companies that get any new technology investment right. They are the ones that figure out why they want it, understand what it will do for them, design a set of requirements that hit on a specific use case and then limit the first project to a mission that is focused and quantifiable. The ones that complain that Live Chat was "oversold" to them, are the same ones that complain every time because they did not put in the effort to make it successful and just hoped that the technology would have all the answers.

Website Re-Design Follow Up

Just after I wrote my last post on Web Site Re-Design, I was looking through my Twitter feed and found a really interesting post about a new web site. I have no connections to this company and have no interest in promoting their product. I just think it is a really unique, interesting and creative way to think about using visuals to engage users instead of so much text. Cutting edge design choices in my mind that will be interesting to see how it pans out for them.

Here is the site:

www.marketo.com

Technology Trends 2012- Web Site Re-Design

So, I must be honest and say I was not sure whether or not I should include this one in a blog that focuses on customer service and customer service technology. Why? Because historically, the CS team has very little to do with the website design and sadly they typically have very little to do with how customers get serviced on the website. Yeah, they might be the ones writing and maintaining the FAQs section, but other than that, other parts of the organization tend to control the design and flow of how a website functions for consumers. I see this changing even as we speak, but in my opinion, not fast enough.

Three things really are influencing the move to redesign the websites of most organizations, but specifically within customer support.

#1- Political Will- CS execs are stepping up and demanding a seat at the table more and more about decisions that are impacting their more traditional channels of communication with consumers. Instead of just waiting on Marketing or Sales to launch a new site and then bear the brunt of the disgruntled customers that call to get service because the website doesn't have their answers, CS execs are raising their voices about what CS should look like on the web. They are stepping forward and demanding that even if they don't own it, they want to influence and drive the experience of consumers. Kind of a no brainer, but becoming more and more common.

#2- Consumer Expectations- I was talking to a company recently that told me that they are rethinking their whole online strategy around service because they felt like the expectations that consumers had were so far advanced from where they were as a company. And this was not some old world company that hadn't had an update for 10 years. This was a major consumer brand name that was trying to figure out where the hockey puck was going to and trying to skate in that direction. They are looking at other big brands, that ironically are not in their industry, to understand what consumers like and don't like. And what they are hearing is that consumers want simple, easy and fun. Imagine that.

#3- New Concepts and Technology- The other major reason, I am being told, that companies are refreshing their sites is because there is technology coming out faster than they can even evaluate it that could drive major enhancements to the site. CS execs are looking at Community Forums, Knowledge Bases, Gamification, Live Chat, Virtual Agents, Interactive Videos and so much more to help drive activity online. Most of this technology is SaaS based, Cloud based or Hosted and can be turned on or off quickly to see if it will drive value. So what we are seeing as a result of this new technology are site redesigns that are built purposely to be more modular and flexible to accommodate the entrance or exit of any one technology that might be useful.

To summarize, web site redesign is a major initiative that I am seeing happening today in the CS landscape. Each company takes their own customized approach to what they think will ultimately serve the consumer best, but the good thing I am seeing is that CS Execs are owning it, they are trying new technology quickly and they are listening to what consumers want. Sounds like a recipe for success to me.....

Technology Trends 2012- IVR Follow Up

This post will be a quick one, but a follow up to my last post on the IVR projects. One of the things that is interesting about the IVR is how boring it has always been. No one that I have ever seen, used or worked with every really used any sort of creativity to make the experience something to be remembered or even celebrated. But I saw this today: http://ht.ly/8OJV8 and it made me think about how many really fun, creative and unique ideas are out there that could be applied to IVR's in awesome ways.