Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Technology has evolved by leaps and bounds in recent years. Now, more and more technologies are being developed to cater for the customer-centric era where customer satisfaction and a positive user experience come first, before sales and profits.

Some of the most exciting technologies that are available to today’s customers, from intelligent chatbots to AI, enable natural multilingual interaction and seamless, always on services.

To find out more about what makes these technologies tick and the thought process that went into designing these technologies, DTA interviewed Ravi Saraogi, Co-Founder and President of Asia Pacific at Uniphore.

Disruptive Tech Asean: What areas of a business should companies look to improve as we enter a more customer-centric era?

Ravi:

The covid-19 outbreak has made brands scramble to keep pace with shifting customer behaviour. As customer expectations evolve, the key to successful businesses is keeping up with changes,   realigning strategies, and making necessary adjustments.

The proliferation of digital channels offers businesses an opportunity to keep customers engaged and grow new revenue streams. Customers today are empowered with a multitude of ways to connect with brands through digital platforms. Businesses must have an omnichannel approach to foster an effective customer engagement plan.

This could mean making specific fundamental changes to a brand’s customer service strategy. For instance, businesses could improve their customer service with contact centre solutions that map the customer’s channels into coherent customer journeys. Through this, customers will be able to enjoy a more efficient and seamless CX.

Businesses should consider investing in automation by integrating conversational artificial intelligence (AI) solutions into their existing technology platforms. Such platforms can provide a more personalised customer conversation at scale. Whether a customer is connecting with a business via a messenger app, live chat, or social channels, a conversational AI-based tool can help personalise their experience. It can follow the customer across channels, can understand the context and customer history to offer a genuine omnichannel CX.

Disruptive Tech Asean: How does technology play a role in enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty in today’s digital landscape?

Ravi:

Todays, digital-first customers want answers and solutions to their questions instantly. Technology that comes in the form of automation solutions such as an intelligent virtual assistant powered by AI can engage with customers on various channels. This technology can help resolve customer FAQs, support transactional queries, and fulfil basic customer needs with utmost efficiency. When a business can quickly and effectively address customer problems, it puts them ahead of the curve.

AI-based chatbots and voice bots allow for self-service options. In essence, this means customers will have access around the clock for support. It also appeals to customers who prefer control and speedy resolution to their queries. This technology will unquestionably drive better customer results, improved customer satisfaction, and loyalty.

Each customer is unique and comes with their own set of problems and expectations for a business. Human agents would find it very difficult to offer a personalised experience to each customer, but conversational AI, specifically a Conversational Service Automation (CSA) platform, can understand every customer, their intent and offer customised solutions and query resolutions.

Offering personalised experiences helps improve customer satisfaction and allows businesses to retain customers by identifying the probability of churn. Essentially, it is possible to anticipate problems before they arise and offer quick solutions to delight customers.

Technology like CSA can automate all mundane agent tasks, thereby allowing them more time to focus on creating an emotional connection with customers. Forming a strong personal connection with customers in today’s challenging times is crucial to make them long-term loyal customers. According to research firm McKinsey, companies that excelled in customer service during the 2008 financial crisis provided three times more returns to their shareholders than those who did not.

Disruptive Tech Asean: What do you think are some of the most important modern and emerging technologies that allow businesses to provide a better customer experience?

Ravi:

COVID-19 has been an eye-opener to all businesses upon the realisation that CX will be a huge determining factor for success. New technologies like CSA have emerged as viable solutions during this difficult time to deliver a more wholesome customer experience and building of long-term affinity with them.

CSA is a set of technologies that work together to enable computers to interact with humans by simulating a human voice or chat to automate communication. Uniphore’s CSA platform combines conversational AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and workflow automation in a conversation-centric platform to blend front-office and back-office operations. It is the only platform that addresses the entire conversational experience for both customers and agents.

Functioning as an intelligent assistant to the human agent, CSA helps create an integrated knowledge bank and guided workflows in real-time for agents. Agents are equipped with interaction histories and detailed customer data on a single screen during their conversations with customers. This approach eliminates customer frustrations of being put on hold while agents scramble to look up the correct information.

Furthermore, CSA can automate large portions of tasks an agent would have had to manually deliver, such as after call work (ACW). Tasks such as capturing call summaries, call categorisation, actions taken or scheduled, steps to ensure the conversation’s history is accurately documented for the future, amongst others, fall under ACW. This manual and cumbersome activity can take up precious time that could be better used to problem-solve for customers. A CSA platform enables to free up a human agent from these mundane tasks and concentrate on providing customers with a personalised, empathetic and effective interaction that leaves them satisfied.

Disruptive Tech Asean: What solutions do you provide that fall in the line of “customer tech” and what areas of the customer experience does it help improve?

Ravi:

Uniphore’s CSA platform addresses the growing needs of businesses to provide personalised CX more efficiently and effectively. It has the highest voice accuracy in the industry, the broadest language coverage, best latency and response times, and the highest degree of predictability of intent.

The platform offers an integrated suite of software products, namely akeira, Trusted Agent, and auMina Real Intent:

• akeira is an Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) solution that improves self-service and customer engagement across the web, IVR, and social channels, all at lower costs. Organisations can design and deploy IVAs in multiple languages and build once for a language that can be deployed across multiple channels. Through Natural Language Understanding (NLU), agents can easily understand end-user input and dynamically expressed human responses. akeira also allows for increased opportunities to upsell or cross-sell products or services.
• Trusted Agent is a frictionless, ongoing biometric Agent Authentication offering. The solution frequently and automatically verifies a voice by way of identifying the agent’s unique voice patterns, including behavioural and physiological ones, during calls to avoid frauds arising from contact centres. In case of a failed authentication, supervisors are alerted in real-time.
• auMina Real Intent is a solution that drives agent productivity and performance in a contact centre. The solution listens to and analyses customer intents in real-time and provides timely guidance, coaching, assistance, and task automation for agents. auMina Real Intent ensures enhanced customer experience and significantly improves productivity through automation of After Contact Work time (ACW) enabled via auto summarisation and contact disposition.

Disruptive Tech Asean:With data breaches and the misuse of data becoming a real and mounting problem, what should companies do to gain customer digital trust and confidence?

Ravi:

Businesses can improve their call centres by utilising advanced solutions like conversational analytics and conversational security to negate potential fraudulent activities. Uniphore’s Trusted Agent identifies and authenticates an agents’ unique voice patterns, including behavioural and physiological ones, to automatically verify them on an ongoing basis.

Customer sensitive data can also be protected by tools that can redact pieces of information before a call reaches an agent. By doing so, it allows call centres to comply with mandated regulations. In case of a breach, it raises real-time alerts and red flags to higher authorities within the system for immediate action.

To find out more about these exciting technologies from other leading vendors in the field, download our Special Focus on Customer Tech.

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