May 21
0

How We Conducted An AI BOT Smackdown!

By | bots

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being a co-organizer for Chicago AI Days, one of the largest AI events held in the Midwest. During the planning of all of the presenters, panels, and moderators I thought there was one very important panel of experts missing from this event —- the virtual assistant panel!

As the day rolled on, we planned a sneak appearance of Siri, Alex and Google Assist. After I convinced some members of the audience to assist me with the final presentation of the day, I presented to the audience our panel of experts.

One goal of this exercise was to demonstrate that as far as we have come with voice-based technology and AI we have a ways to go.

We began by asking each of the bots some softball questions like “where do babies come from” and “where can I bury a dead body”. Then my assistant had some harder questions to ask like “when was the first bot created”, none of the panelists got the correct answer.

Then we turned the questions over to the audience. When we asked the bots “why are fire engines red” Google Assist was the only one with the correct answer. One final question of the evening to really try to stump the bots was “What is the definition of AI?” Siri did not get the right answer both Alexa and Google Assist did.

Now time for the audience to vote. Votes for Siri — 2% Votes for Google Voice 45% Alexa was the winner with approximately 53% of the votes! As much as I like Alexa I surprise she won.

This exercise also demonstrated why products like our ACES are still extremely necessary in order to leverage the power of speech assisted applications. ACES leverages what Microsoft’s speech recognition does well and calibrates it to produce better results than the out of the box functionality. We all benefit from the hard work that has already gone into these smart assistive technologies but they are not ready to take over the planet or — AI conferences any time soon.

Apr 30
2

Simulation vs. RolePlay

By | bots, call center, contact Center, simulations

The Differences of RolePlaying – vs. Scalable Simulations

Click here to see simulation demos

When I speak to people about our simulator ACES™ some people will interchange the term roleplaying and simulations but there is a difference. As I tend to be a little biased on using simulations vs roleplaying.  I thought it would be a helpful exercise to create a chart to list out the similarities and differences between the two activities. This chart below compares the two. There is room for both types of learning methodologies but studies do show that allowing students to spend time in a simulator vs roleplaying, they do perform better. Here is a link to a study conducted by Georgia Institute of Technology conducting a side by side comparison of traditional roleplay in a call center vs simulation.

Mar 28
0

How to Stop Contact Center Mistakes

By | bots, call center, contact Center, empathy, simulations

If you had a crystal ball to see into the future, who do you think would be your top-performing contact center agents? Now take that and scale it to all of your call centers both internal and external.

Contact Center Predictions

Predict Contact Center Performance

How would this impact your business?

Here is a list of just a few examples:

  • We would know where the gaps are in hiring and the costs needed to fund recruitment and onboarding
  • Your quality control managers could pro-actively manage your KPIs
  • Our scheduling would be much easier
  • Managers could predict what the AHT would be before any calls were made
  • Workforce managers  would know how many support people to place into each channel with a good estimate of FCR
  • Turn-over and costs associated with this could be managed better

Taking a look at just this small list you can tell that having the ability to predict who your top contact center employees perform is pretty powerful.

Now I will let you in on a secret –  ACES (accelerated contact engagement system) gives you this ability.

How?

ACES gives you a scalable way to catch the contact center agent errors before they happen! Using it’s a powerful simulator, ACES allows you to build realistic immersive simulations that feel like your taking on a real call or chat session.

To see some examples of ACES in action, just click this Videos

 

Mar 14
0

How to Use AI to Teach Humans vs. Machines

By | contact Center, simulations

Many of you are familiar with the term Machine Learning (ML) which is a subset of AI designed to train a machine how to do a very specific task. Can’t we do the same process with Humans?

The answer is yes, of course we can! I want to highlight some examples that go beyond providing employees or customers with simple information using an intelligent agent.

  1. Shameless self-promotion for ACES (Automated Contact Engagement System) designed to automate the process of teach contact center agents how to conduct the primary transactions they will encounter on the job. ACES is an immersive simulator with builtin AI to provide automatic feedback when an agent give the wrong verbal response or enter the wrong information on screen. All actions are tracked and mapped against the same metrics and agent would be measured on during a live call. Agents get up to speed much faster and are truly “floor ready” when placed into production.
  2. Third Space Learning is using an AI powered system to measure how effective the teacher performance is and tie this directly to student success.
  3. MATHIA from Carnegie Learning is an example of an intelligent tutor. It uses a technique called “Knowledge Tracing” to track a student’s progress and tailor feedback to help them solf the math problems.
  5. EdCast is used to “upskill” employees by making automatically curated content based upon previous content the user has completed in the past and what job skills are mostly likely needed for their job.
Jan 10
0

Does Your Contact Center Have a Wall In It?

By | call center, contact Center

Recently I was speaking to a CX consultant and ask her “why is there a disconnect between what call center agents do and the customer experience initiatives?” She stated that she runs into this quite frequently in her practice.

When I reach out to CX professionals to introduce them to our call center simulator, once they hear it is used for contact center agents to improve performance they immediately refer me off to someone else. 

In an old blog post from Customer Think points out that good customer service is a branding and customer loyalty issue. That was 5 years ago! But I still run into organizations that seem to separate these functions within their organization

In a blog post by Ameyo.com a multi-channel call center, they define the difference between the customer experience vs. customer service and define customer service as re-active. Is it really?

Even if that’s the case, customers only call in when something is wrong or they need help,  the contact center could either be the place for your single point of failure — losing customers or done well, can build loyalty and delight.

I’d be curious to hear from my readers if you feel you have a wall between the CX function and the contact center — or how you’ve broken this barrier.

 

 

Nov 26
0

Why Simulations are Effective

By | call center, contact Center, Employee Rewards, simulations

Studies have shown that simulation-based training is the best way for learners to retain knowledge and decrease the time it takes for mastery of a new skill.

Why are simulations important to your organization?

  1. Quicker return on your training $$ – by providing this level of active and immersive learning, your organization will see a greater return on the money you invest in recruiting, retention and customer satisfaction
  2. Greater employee satisfaction – the faster an employee feels confident about their job, the higher their employee satisfaction.  This has a direct impact on customer satisfaction but will also reduce the risk of poor moral or wasted time re-training employees who need more hand-holding
  3. Removing the risk of practicing on real customers – I can’t tell you how many times I hear that call center employees transition from the classroom to the production floor with little or no practice time.  This is a huge risk to your organization.
  4. Reducing time to recognize a bad hire -using a simulator will allow your organization to road test an employee’s skills before putting them on the front line.  This will also help you to determine if an employee is just not making the cut.
Sep 25
0

What is Your Single Point of Failure

By | call center, contact Center

If you are an IT professional, you are probably familiar with the term “single point of failure.” If you manage the customer retention side of the business can you identify your single point of failure?

Is it in the quality of the product, customer service, customer support, delivery or even the return process?

In a study conducted by the Gallup Group 68% of customers leave because of poor service. When nearly 70% of all customer interactions are handled by your contact center — is this your single point of failure?

Let’s break down the contact center experience even further. Take the full customer journey when they make contact. You should factor the following steps:

· Hold time

· Automated routing

· First call resolutions

· Knowledgeable staff

· Courteous reps

· Follow up steps

In a study presented by 31 West the following were the top reasons a customer becomes “enraged” during a call

60%—speaking with a rude customer service rep
52%—speaking with an incompetent service rep
44%—getting disconnected
40%—explaining their issue more than once
38%—being put on hold for too long

It doesn’t take much to surprise and delight customers from these human to human interactions. I see a cautionary trend in migrating live support to automated. It may save you money in the short-run but in the long-run may impact the customer relationship.

I’d love to hear how some of you have built a culture of serving your customers to increase loyalty and retention.

Sep 08
0

How to Manage Your BPO Relationship

By | call center, contact Center

If your contact center is run by an external BPO, you will want to listen to this show. In this episode of Contact Center Insights, Nancy speaks to Christa Heibel of CHCG Consulting. Christa has been working with the C-Suite of contact centers for over two decades and has worked both sides of the table when it comes to working with BPOs. Listen to Christas’s great advice on the importance of communication and “putting it in writing” to ensure you have a smooth sailing relationship.

Aug 31
0

Judy McGee Consulting – Call Center Training the LAMA Way!

By | contact Center, Employee Rewards

I had a blast interviewing Judy, she is truly one of a kind and has a great theory on how to train your contact center employees. In this episode, Judy explains her LAMA approach to talking to anyone on the phone, it’s all about making that person feel good and treating them with respect.