Is it Live...or is it a Conversational Agent?
Web Self-Service that Blows Away Expectations

It’s 11:15 on a Sunday night. Your $3,000 plasma TV flickers, makes a loud whirring sound and powers down. It won’t turn on again, no matter what you try. You take a deep breath, assess your limited options and decide to pay a visit to the retailer’s site.

Prepared to accomplish nothing, aside from calming down, you’re convinced locating relevant warranty and return details will take forever. And then you see a text box labeled "Ask Us a Question." You scoff, but decide to give it a try. The following interaction transpires:

You: My HDTV just flickered and shut down for no reason. It won’t turn back on.

Agent:  I’m sorry you’re having problems with your HDTV. Did you purchase the product online, or at one of our stores?

You: Online.

Agent: Okay, please log into your account using the form below, and I can provide you personalized assistance. [You type your login and password]

Agent: I see you purchased a #A423142 BrandA HDTV on 10/1/2007. Is this the TV that is having problems? [You see a photo, specifications and supporting documentation for model #A423142 on your computer’s screen.]

You: Yes.

Agent:  BrandA announced a recall on this HDTV on 12/27/2007 due to a faulty power supply. Your purchase on 10/01/2007 may be impacted. Please enter your serial number below and I will check for you. The serial number of your TV can be found in the location shown below. [You see a diagram of a BrandA HDTV, with an arrow pointing to the location of the serial number. You retrieve it and return.]

You: 142-X67-74932-07.

Agent:  142-X67-74932-07 is included in the 12/27/2007 faulty power supply recall. One of our expert BrandA technicians can repair it for you at no charge. Would you like me to contact a local technician?

You: Yes.

Agent: Your account information indicates that your zip code is 43231 and phone is 614-555-1111. Is this correct?

You: Yes.

Agent: Okay. I have sent your contact and HDTV information to our local technician. They will contact you within four business hours.

You’re shocked. The agent understood the situation immediately—no guesswork, lengthy drill-downs or painful searches. The speed and simplicity was impressive. With only your login information, the agent retrieved pertinent details from your order history to deliver precisely what you needed…it even anticipated future needs.  Meanwhile, the technician already has the details he/she needs. If only all Web self-service interactions were this easy!

Why Was This So Dreamy?

Although your experience seemed like you were chatting with a knowledgeable employee, in actuality, you were interacting with an automated "conversational agent" (CA). A CA leverages computational linguistics techniques and natural language technologies to interpret and respond to a user’s text-based statements. CAs can understand and address questions, retrieve specific information and engage users in human-like "conversations" for a broad range of applications. For example, CAs can:

• Provide a powerful, interactive knowledge base through a company’s website, intranet, CRM application, kiosk or IVR;
• Guide customers, technicians and service agents through problem diagnosis and resolution;
• Provide targeted answers throughout the sales process;
• Provide personalized account, order and warranty details;
• Provide interactive training; and
• Deflect inbound calls and emails while improving overall interaction quality.

These applications have the potential to enhance satisfaction, improve revenue and save millions.

Why Are Companies Ignoring This?

Given the advantages of implementing CAs, why have so many companies approached Web self-service haphazardly? They really haven’t. They’ve simply failed to examine all of the associated metrics.

Organizations deploy keyword search and FAQ tools believing it will be an inexpensive way to appease customers and deliver sufficient results, while being easy to maintain. But they do not account for damaged customer relationships, increased per-incident costs and lost sales when calculating cost of ownership. If they did, the "real cost" would be prohibitive.

The key to ensuring Web self-service success is choosing a technology solution with essential capabilities. There are many factors that separate the successful Web self-service deployments from the rest, including these essential capabilities:

Efficient natural language processing. The solution should allow users to communicate "naturally" by understanding multiple word forms, synonyms, pronouns, company or industry-specific terms, common slang and incomplete sentences. Otherwise, user adoption is at risk.

Interactivity. Conversations are ingrained in our behavior, so the solution should answer and ask questions through interactive dialogs. This requires a substantial base "dictionary," and the ability to understand intent, syntax and context.

Precision. Users want precise answers—not a long list of links to evaluate. They should be direct text responses, documents at the paragraph level, multimedia files and/or key related links.

Multi-channel support. Nothing enrages users more than receiving inconsistent and/or conflicting information. The solution should support multiple customer-facing and internal-facing deployments. Responses should be "tunable" based on delivery channel and the user’s role and security level.

Clean integration. The solution must access CRM systems, customer databases, order and warranty systems and more in milliseconds.

Accuracy and continuous improvement. Choose a solution that automatically "learns" the best responses and identifies knowledge gaps. Advanced CA self-service systems can quickly reach accuracy rates exceeding 97%.

Cost of ownership. Some CA-like solutions require extensive programming to update, driving maintenance costs into the millions. The system should offer flexible tools, so non-technical business users can update the system.

Companies using advanced CA self-ser-vice systems (such as Astute Solutions’ RealDialog™) have achieved high user/customer satisfaction ratings, reduced overall interaction costs and reduced inbound service and support contact volumes. Their employees are more productive with current information at their fingertips, and can resolve complex issues quickly. Valuable insights captured impact all areas of the enterprise. Together, that’s ROI.

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For more information about Astute Solutions’ RealDialog, visit www.astutesolutions.com/cawebselfservice

 

 

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