BOTs in customer service - not science fiction, but an important supplementary building block for providing optimum customer service at all times and in every situation.
A lurid title, you might think, which sounds more like a good Hollywood blockbuster than something to do with customer service? But you are wrong! Let's take a look into the future together.
But let's start with a little look into the past. The topic of automation has been with us for a very long time. And especially in times of shortages or crises, people have always found ways and methods to find solutions, reduce costs, compensate for a shortage or minimize risks. In most cases, processes were standardized, optimized and supporting tools were introduced. A pioneer in this respect was certainly Henry Ford with his introduction of assembly line assembly. However, approaches can also be found in the more recent past, for example in simple more or less intelligent FAQ and knowledge management systems. The topics BOT as well as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and related solutions have already started their triumphal procession in the recent past.
But let's jump into the here and now. What is the situation today?
Many of our customers and interested parties are now dealing with the topic of BOT. Use cases, which in the past were mapped on simple mostly DTMF based IVR systems or simple FAQ's, are ported to BOT solutions and further application scenarios in the environment of standardized processes are being looked for. The fact is that today BOT solutions are very well able to automate interaction processes and to a large extent can also serve them without the intervention of an agent. And a wide variety of approaches and solutions already exist for the so-called hybrid models BOT + agent.
And it is precisely this initial situation that I would like to use as the starting point for my outlook into the future. Another important fact is the current geopolitical crisis situation and the associated economic development trends. Everything is geared towards digitization. Whereas reactive crisis management is currently still being practiced in order to let employees work at home and to be able to offer at least the simplest customer service, this will quickly change into proactive action. This means analyzing the problems that have arisen with today's crisis and quickly recognizing the need to be better prepared for such new situations. Automation will be even more in focus.
Based on the findings, this will mean that, among other things, employee shortages and thus declining accessibility will have to be addressed. Cloud solutions and home offices are not the only things that will help here. Rather, it will lead to a further push in the direction of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in customer service. BOT solutions (whether chat BOT or voice BOT) will be increasingly introduced in order to be able to offer optimum customer service even when employee resources are no longer available. And this will not only be helpful in times of crisis, but will also save costs and process times in quiet times, thus contributing to the success of companies.
The technology is ready! Are you? It is the time to act!
We at Deliberate will be happy to accompany you in this introduction process, advise you on which application scenarios can be implemented and how sensibly, and will also be happy to implement the right solution for you based on Genesys Cloud in conjunction with solutions such as Google Dialogflow, Amazon LEX or Microsoft LUIS.
Sven Schuhknecht (Senior Consultant - Deliberate GmbH)
At Deliberate, we are happy to help you take your customer service to the next level.