More and more examples of how AI is changing our business environment. Read this article to learn what Stanford University and Brookings Institution researchers uncovered about the future of #ArtificialIntelligence and which industries will be most impacted by its applications.
When integrating AI into your organization, it’s critical to have the correct mindset, which means seeing past traditional #ROI benchmarks and considering how AI can truly augment and empower decision making. In this article, you’ll read about four compelling arguments you can bring to the boardroom to help make your #ArtificialIntelligence initiatives a reality.
In three years, businesses will report $40B in additional revenue driven by AI. This means that without a doubt, #ArtificialIntelligence will become a key factor in the ability of organizations to innovate and improve efficiency. In this infographic, you’ll learn how investing in #Microsoft #AzureAI can open up new revenue-generating opportunities for your business in the digital age.
Our simulator, uses an intelligent agent to monitor activity. Using this type of technology, is in line with where AI jobs are going. It’s expected that the number of professionals working in AI-focused roles will nearly double in the next three years. This shift will not only require changes to businesses’ digital environments, but to their organizational structures as well.
Read this article to learn four ways in which businesses need to evolve to fully prepare for the advent of #ArtificialIntelligence.
If you’re reading this, then chances are that getting easy access to clean, running water isn’t an issue for you. But for around 43 percent of the world’s total population, this simply is not the case. For them, obtaining the drinkable water they need to sustain their families requires hard work and commitment.
To make matters even more critical, most of them live in rural areas in which farming is their main source of income. This means that any available water must be carefully distributed between their crops and family. This is an exhausting situation that can take all day just to keep a small patch of land in farmable condition.
Such is the case for Monica, a Kenyan farmer who every day must assume the roles of mother of four, farmer, merchant, and housekeeper just to make ends meet. In this video, you’ll learn how she managed her dwindling water supply to keep her farm yielding, family fed, and trade at the local market—a situation that was soon to improve dramatically thanks to modern technology.
How Simulations Can Ensure Remote Workers Are Job Ready
Well, it’s now August and many of us optimistically thought in March that Covid-19 would be a fading memory. How naive we were. But here we are and every company is trying to figure out what the “long-game” is in regard to changing the way business is done.
Two years ago when I launched Verbal Transactions our small team was able to quickly land some well-known clients who saw the value of using our simulator as a way to augment their existing training programs. One key reason was that it gave them the reassurance that employees would get more “hands-on” practice.
Now with the majority of employees working remotely, tools like ours are even more imperative. Why you ask? Here are the top 5 reasons.
- Simulation training has been proven to produce better results compared to instructor-led, video, or eLearning. By giving users the ability to practice in realistic situations exposes them to a more tactile and true-life experience.
- Due to the fact employees are not sitting in a classroom or placed in a pod to where they can tap someone on the shoulder to answer quick questions, using our built-in “bot” simulations can be built to allow for users to verbally interact with the simulator to feel they have a guide or mentor to help them along the way
- A well-built simulation will allow users to make mistakes with some form of immediate feedback. We all learn from our mistakes. Using simulations to allow you to fail in a safe environment allows you to actually succeed faster.
- Because managers can’t physically observe employees doing their job, using analytics like that built into our ACES software removes any mystery around how well the employee can perform their job. Each behavior you want the simulator to observe can be tied into the scoring and reporting functionality. No need to watch a video or listen to a recording of the user completing this task, the real-time reporting gives you complete transparency to how well they did.
- Most importantly, users appreciate more hands-on practice and feel more confident about how to do their job. Many employees have a variety of anxiety in these uncertain times. Losing their job is one of them. By arming them with tools to ensure you are helping them to learn how to do their job well, ensures, you want them to succeed and to ensure they are well equipped to contribute to helping the company do their best.
Deliberate Practice vs. Traditional Training
I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell and I’m sure many of you are familiar with the term “10,000 hours to mastery”. This has since been proven to be taken out of context but he still references it as a guide to how long it takes for someone to master an innate skill. In Frans Johansson’s book, The Click Moment he explains that Deliberate Practice is a more likely predictor of success. Here are the core elements to Deliberate Practice
- Set a specific targeted goal or task you want to master
- Provide focused intense periods of practice
- Receive immediate feedback and self-correct
- Prepare to be uncomfortable in order to overcome barriers to success
One of the core reasons our customers use our simulator is that it uses this deliberate practice approach. Many of our customers need to get contact center agents up to speed quickly. Traditionally they are putting them on the front lines before they have had time to really master interacting with customers. By using our simulator, they see how this gives agents realistic practice so they can reduce the time it takes to get to mastery. Like Johannson’s approach, our simulator is a predictor of agent performance — here’s how.
- Simulations are built to look and feel just like your scenarios with a specific skill in mine – such as how to change credit card information, how to handle product returns etc.
- We recommend building different levels of immersion so that as agents score out of one level they continue to practice one transaction 3-4 times at a minimum
- They receive automatic immediate feedback from a built-in bot who guides them through how to handle verbal and on-screen interactions successfully
- They are uncomfortable at first due to the fact they have not had any exposure to this. Our conversational interactions are built on best practice responses. Once they become comfortable with each level, they can move on to more complex transactions
No need to use a crystal ball to try to determine who will be successful. Our ACES automates this process. The intelligence embedded into the system, allows the managers to know right where in the transaction the agent may have gotten off track.
Businesses don’t have the luxury of 10,000 hours of time to help employees get up to speed on their skills. So imagine if you had the ability to help your agents master many of your complex transactions in 5-10 hours vs. 5-10 weeks? You can view some examples on our video page.
Here is a quick video I shot to demonstrate how to use our “bot” technology to teach someone a new skill.
Why Bots Have a Long Way to Go to Take Over the World
Like Chicken Little’s cries that the sky is falling, everyone keeps shouting bots are replacing people. Well I am here to tell you they have a long way to go.
There is some truth that bots are beginning to manage simple transactions like help with resetting a password or authenticating your credentials. But in a recent article published int Silicon Republic, Forrester’s Srividya Sridharan states that bots will only be handling 20% of these basic activities by the end of 2020.
The interactions that bots are not able to handle will require higher-skilled agents. Even though many of us are accustomed to interacting with an intelligent agent, we won’t have the patience for this when we need immediate answers. Agents who can handle the tier two situations, will need to be trained skills such as:
- Expressing the right level of empathy for the situation
- Navigating their systems to quickly troubleshoot the issues
- Learn how to ask good open-ended questions
- Practice active listening and have the confidence to restate their understanding of the situation
- Recognize early on when they need to escalate the situation to a higher power
Historically it takes months to get an agent up to this level of proficiency. This is why many of our customers are seeing the value in using or call center simulator ACES™. With the clock ticking on speed to proficiency, companies are looking for ways to get these employees up to speed faster to manage the more complex transactions.
So rather than using AI and bot technology to replace employees, we are using it to help upskill them. By giving employees a realistic immersive experience, we can put them in the hot seat. The built-in bot gives them real-time coaching to help guide them through each scenario. By giving them repeated “deliberate practice” we can get them up to speed in days vs. weeks.
So have no fear, the sky is not falling. We see that AI can be used for good – not evil.
If you want to see an example of ACES in action just click this link.
