What is Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning

The idea of creating machines that are as smart as humans goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks myths of Hephaestus and Pygmalion incorporated the idea of intelligent robots (such as Talos) and artificial beings (such as Galatea and Pandora). Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague, Czech Republic in 1580 coined the word “Robot” in a book called “Golem”, about a clay man brought to life.

In practical terms, however, the idea didn't really take off until 1950. Isaac Asimov published his Three Laws of Robotics. The phrase artificial intelligence was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy, who organized an academic conference at Dartmouth dedicated to the topic. The phrase "machine learning" also dates back to the middle of the last century. In 1959, Arthur Samuel defined machine learning as "the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed." And he went on to create a computer checkers application that was one of the first programs that could learn from its own mistakes and improve its performance over time. In that year, Alan Turing published a groundbreaking paper called "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" that posed the question of whether machines can think, in the famous Turing test. Joseph Weizenbaum (MIT) built ELIZA, an interactive program that carries on a dialogue in English language on any topic.

Like artificial intelligence research, machine learning fell out of vogue for a long time, but it became popular again when the concept of data mining began to take off around the 1990s. Data mining uses algorithms to look for patterns in a given set of information. Machine learning does the same thing, but then goes one step further – it changes its program's behavior based on what it learns. Other people prefer to use the term "machine learning" because they think it sounds more technical and a little less scary than "artificial intelligence." Someone on the Internet commented that the difference between the two is that "machine learning actually works." However, machine learning has been part of the discussion around artificial intelligence from the very beginning, and the two remain closely entwined in many applications coming to market today. For example, personal assistants and bots often have many different artificial intelligence features, including machine learning.

Over the past few years  artificial intelligence has exploded, and especially since 2015. Much of that has to do with the wide availability of GPUs that make parallel processing ever faster, cheaper, and more powerful. It also has to do with the simultaneous one-two punch of practically infinite storage and a flood of data of every stripe (that whole Big Data movement) – images, text, transactions, mapping data, you name it. Stories about IBM's Watson AI winning the game show Jeopardy and when Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo deep learning program defeated S. Korean Master Lee Se-dol in the board game “Go”. These two examples and the appearance of BOTs have returned artificial intelligence to the forefront of public consciousness. Of course, "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence" aren't the only terms associated with this field of computer science. IBM frequently uses the term "cognitive computing," which is more or less synonymous with artificial intelligence.
However, some of the other terms do have very unique meanings. For example, an artificial neural network has been designed to process information in ways that are similar to the ways biological brains work. Things can get confusing because neural nets tend to be particularly good at machine learning, so those two terms are sometimes conflated.

The easiest way to think of their relationship is to visualize them as concentric circles with artificial intelligence — the idea that came first — the largest, then machine learning — which blossomed later, and finally deep learning — which is driving today’s artificial intelligence  investment explosion.

Artificial Intelligence: Most Active VC Investors
Ranking, 2011 to 2016 year-to-date (as of June 2016)
1 Khosla Ventures
2 Intel Capital
2 Data Collective
4 Google Ventures
5 New Enterprise Associates
6 Andreessen Horowitz
7 Formation 8
8 Horizons Ventures
9 Accel Partners
10 Plug and Play Ventures
11 GE Ventures
12 Two Sigma Ventures
13 Samsung Ventures
14 Norwest Venture Partners
15 Bloomberg Beta

Khosla Ventures is the most active VC investor in AI-based companies. They 15 unique companies, including Atomwise, MetaMind (recently acquired by Salesforce), Scaled Inference, and LiftIgniter. 

Intel Capital backed startups including Lumiata, DataRobot, Perfant Technology and Parallel Machines and Data Collective (backer of Blue River Technology, Descartes Labs, SigOpt, and Nervana Systems).

Maybe the VC guys forgot the failure of Thinking Machines, let's hope whatever you call it, it will be successful.

Cheers,

James Wilson
+1-404 936 4000

Call Center Pros
james@call-center-pros.com

www.call-center-pros.com

3 IoT Issues to Consider Before Moving Forward With IoT

• 

  The IoT (Internet of Things) links together networks, devices, and data. It helps you learn more about the things vital to every level of your business. To build your IoT solution successfully you need agile products, services, and networks that enable you to gain real-time insights about the things your company values most. If you are deploying IoT-enabled products for customers or IoT-based devices in your own factory, consider these three issues before moving ahead with IoT implementation plans.
  1.    Software maintenance updates and software feature updates
  a.     IoT devices can be computing devices, software problems will occur at some point, and software updates will need to be applied to fix them.
  b.     In addition, new features are likely to be developed to further software updates are needed to enhance IoT operations.
  c.     IoT devices trigger alert by software updates, which have been ignored, so a call center with IoT connected software is needed to schedule a time for needed software update.
  d.     Issues are likely to arise around both connections to the devices and the legal rights to apply software updates to systems already in service.
  e.     Software updates can become even more complex if software updates actually cause unintended issues requiring on-site access by IoT personnel.
  f.      Make necessary verbiage in your product terms and conditions to cover all these cases.
  
  2.    Fast Restart and Flawless Authentication
  a.    IoT engineers need to build in restart utility to enables fast and flawless authentication.
  b.    In an industrial environment with hundreds or thousands of devices in difficult-to-find and reach locations, fast restart and flawless authentication can make the difference between shutting down an entire factory and waiting for IoT techs to perform manual resets.
  c.     The nature of IoT devices is to connect to other:
                                                     i.   Other IoT device connections
                                                   ii.    Other IoT users connections
                                                  iii.    Data storage connections
  d.    Authentication must be flawless and IoT reconnect without interference:
                                                     i.   Network environments change
                                                   ii.    Lose of connection of IoT devices
                                                  iii.    IoT devices restart
  e.    A call center with a human with a current escalation plan is always a smart plan.
  
  3. Handling failure
  a.    IoT sensors can trigger communicate both via SMS and email to proactively fix a problem before it becomes a failure and if both SMS and emails are ignored a human in a call center can proactively escalate.
  b.    It is always best for IoT technologies and services can rely on humans to be involved in a contact center to make the final decision.
  c.     Having IoT devices can greatly enhance operations and make them easy to observe and manage. It’s important to remember, adding IoT devices should never interfere with the working environment of the device the IoT is there to help monitor and control.
  d.    Failure of any segment of the IoT process to communicate must leave the IoT device in a nonmalignant state and as fully operational as achievable.
  e.    Build in the ability to allow the device to revert to manual operation as needed when fault conditions happen.
  f.      The computing portion of the IoT device should attempt to transmit error status codes when impending failure is detected.
  g.     When an IoT failure is detected and the equipment is dangerously still in use, it might take the IoT’s manufacture’s call center to actually call the factory and identifies the safety problem.
  h. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) will help contact centers declutter the new torrent of additional IoT information by 80% for false alarms and 60% of repetitive work.
  
  Contact centers and Enterprises need to ask Call Center Pros or their software providers to provide A.I. sooner than later. Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.
  
  Thank you,
  
  James W Wilson
  Call Center Pros
  james@call-center-pros.com
   http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson
  1-404-936 4000
  

  
  

4 Steps of Bringing Social Media in the OmniChannel Contact Center

Regardless of which step of involvement in social media in the OmniChannel contact center you’re currently in, there are tools to help you navigate the social media and the customer contact conundrum and social media. A variety of tools exist to help monitor, analyze, and route, social media interactions, providing reports, analytics and A.I. to help you understand how well your BPO or company is meeting your goals. These tools are appropriate for any BPO or company’s approach – no matter if your social media customer care is provided by the marketing department or contact center agents. A variety of proven products are helping companies hear what customers are saying, understand the context of these interactions, and respond to customers’ issues and questions, while maintaining the company brand and social identity. We found 4 steps of social media progression, what step are you in today, and what will it take to move to the next step?

Step 1: Manually Monitoring & Reactive Response
1)    Most companies starting out are using free or low cost tools such as Addict-o-Matic, HootSuite, Google Alerts, SharedCount, Social Mention, Trazzup  and TweetReach plus a variety of Facebook® free tools.
2)    These software utilities can look for key words and phrases, companies monitor public social media sites to determine what is being said about their company and products.
3)    Monitoring what their competitors’ customers might be saying? Finding a competitor’s unhappy customer is a perfect time to introduce that customer your product.
4)    By searching for keywords, company name, products or by following hash-tags on Twitter, as well as by entering in company or product-related names in Facebook, companies can see what is being said about them and their products.
5)    Usually marketing that is responsible for responding to public social media comments.
6)    Responses can range from:
a)      No response
b)    Simple acknowledgement of the comment
c)  An invitation to move the conversation from public to: phone, email, Facebook messenger or Twitter DM.

Step 2: Automated Monitoring & Manual Routing
1)    By using automated monitoring tools such as Brandwatch, Buzzient, Buzzsumo, CyberAlert, Keyhole, Mention, NetBase, Nuvi, Talkwalker, Trackur and other companies aggregate social feeds and get notification about when and how their brand is mentioned on social media sites.
2)    These monitoring tools provide real-time monitoring and alerting, allowing companies to respond to critical items promptly.
3)    Companies receive the alerts and information about the social media comments, which may include information on sentiment (e.g. is the customer very angry).
4)    The comments are then manually triaged and sent (usually via email) to the appropriate group (customer support, tech support, billing, collections or sales) for the next step.
5)    Depending on the specific relation and inquiry, communications can be manually sent to the right person on the customer’s need: language, time-zone or maybe a VIP team.
6)    The problem, these replies are all separate silos of information held by marketing

Step 3: Automated Monitoring & Automated Routing
1)    This goes a step beyond simply using monitoring tools to automatically routing the comments to an appropriate individual based on keywords and skills required to respond to the customer.
2)    In most cases, this involves integrating the social media monitoring tools with the company’s contact center technologies, such as skills-based routing, to ensure that the appropriately skilled person is handling the interaction.
3)    In this step where contact center agents start getting more involved with the process and the contact center technologies can be extended to the marketing department.
4)    When integrated with the company’s contact center platform, social media interactions can be treated as other customer service interactions: phone, email, or chat.
5)    Companies can then view contact center reports, indicating not only how many interactions came in via social media, but how long it took to respond to the customer, whether the situation was resolved, BPO’s might have different SLAs and more.
6)    Now, social media is mostly under control of the contact center and working well.
7)    Customers want to move between social media, chat, voice, email, SMS without having to repeat their situation with every new agent they meet.
8)    Customers want to access more channels which improves the customer experience (CX). And this is less customer friction through OmniChannel, but only when the channels are not forced or in separate silos.

Step 4: Full Integration with OmniChannel Contact Center Solution with A.I.
1) The customer having control through OmniChannel is the key to great customer experience.
2)  True OmniChannel always removes the separate silo channels, every agent can see every past conversation no maker which channel.
3)    The next step is connection the social media monitoring and routing with the rest of the contact center tools: WFM, CRM, CTI, scripting, ERP, BMP, databases, inventory, logistics with A.I.and finding repetitive commonly asked questions / giving suggested answers and finding the next money saving business trends.
4)    By integrating with the CRM system, companies can push up information about the customer to the CRM as a single silo.
5)  The IRV being smarter and properly set-up and actually being helpful and useful.
6)  And after a social media interaction (this requires being able to identify who the social media customer is, which isn’t always easy)
7)  Pulling all past communication from the CRM to give the agent the 100% view of the customers’ past.
8)  The agent needs to be provided with purchase history and any other context about through the OmniChannel interactions, again a single silo for everything.
9)  For example, agents should be able to see if the customer has already spoken with a contact center representative on this issue but didn’t get a resolution, or that this is an ongoing situation that hasn’t been resolved.
10)  Most often customers turn to social media as a last resort, and the individuals handling the interaction needs to understand the context of the past interactions.
11)  Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in OmniChannel is where the magic happens.
a)    Experts are assigned for the A.I. to learn based their questions and replies.
b)    With about 200 most common questions and replies A.I. will start giving better suggested answers to the newer and less polished agents.
c)     These A.I. best suggested replies will get better and better with more time and more varied questions and answers.
d)    These A.I. best suggest replies will also be working in all other OmniChannels: email, chat, texting and even scripting for voice.
12)  Chat-Bots will gain enough information from the ‘expert’ agents to answer maybe 50%-80% of the repetitive questions from A.I. based on company expert’s answers.
13)  All true OmniChannel vendors have great APIs and will connect to any CRM or system.
14)  Email and mail with A.I. to give best suggested answers.
15)  There are not many true OmniChannel contact center vendors. I see three groupings:
a)    Some OmniChannel vendors are an ecosystem and best if you take most of it.
b)    Some OmniChannel vendors are “best of class” and only offer one part but they are great. Just like other single purpose vendors and started with recording and may have branched out to another contact center specality: WFM, Queue call back, PBX, Predictive dialer, CTI, Analytics, Social media monitoring and Social media answering to name a few.
c)     Some OmniChannel vendors are truly modular and have a great full offering as well as “best of class” modules to work with any systems you would like to keep.
16)  With OmniChannel will give better Customer Experience (CX) with these advanced solutions used right in the right way

Call Center Pros ran a small survey found 75% of BPOs and companies are still in the first two steps of social media usage for customer care, including both BPO and end user companies.

• 40% are in Step 1
• 35% are in Step 2
• 16% are in Step 3
• 9% are in Step 4

Still the large majority of BPOs and companies we spoke with said that they currently monitor and handle social media manually, but these BPOs and companies expect this will change in the near future.

• Analyze your customers needs and wants.
• Analyze your customer service operation.
• Analyze your social media strategy.
• Analyze your BPO and company’s goals.

Then decide the best way to move forward. Social media is here to stay, and you need to be ready to service your customers through the social sites that they’re using.

Call Center Pros says we shouldn’t even call it OmniChannel anymore…. That’s just how customer experience should be.
 
Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,
James W Wilson
Call Center Pros
james@call-center-pros.com
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson
1-404-936 4000

How Can A.I. Help Contact Centers?

Customers have more choice of product goods and more communication channels than ever before and the customers are without a doubt, in charge. At the same time, companies are fighting with new digital products, which channels to market, business models, looking to get used to the hopeful digital world. While these market pressures were first noted in the travel, retail and financial trading services industries, they are rapidly becoming the norm in other industries. It is becoming progressively more apparent that companies must engage their customers on their choice of channels, or risk losing them to competitors who do offer those channels.

Enter OmniChannel, one of the hottest approaches to customer engagement in years. OmniChannel strategies seek to deliver a reliable and tailored experience to customers across all communication channels and store the info in a single silo. OmniChannel now affects customer service and support, as well as to all aspects of engagement in sales. The history of the word “OmniChannel” go back a few decades to leading-edge advertising firms, who then sought to deliver consistent communication across all marketing media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards and so on) hence the name OmniChannel.

Achieving success in OmniChannel is not easy. The seamless combination of consumer experiences in a customer’s pathway that cross mobile devices, PCs, phones, SMS, email, chat and social media is a massive ordeal. This is especially true where companies were just adding these separate silos of communication channels, as needed just to catch up with customer’s demands.

How does A.I. work with OmniChannel?

1. Classifies and Allocates - Incoming transactions are analyzed and allocated to available employees according to topic, skill, and urgency.
2. 100% Vision of Transaction History - Relevant background information from existing systems is displayed for customer support, tech support and sales.
3. Response Suggestions - The expert responses are learned from historical expert replies and are offered a small selection of text templates.
4. Sending and Archiving - Select the best reply channel (chat, SMS, Social Media messaging or e-mail) and automatic archiving – according to content in a single silo.

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), which involves the design and development of applications that ‘learn’ based on flexible, evolving analytical models. One of the (many) areas where A.I. can make improvement is through customer engagement, and particularly for those seeking insights to optimize OmniChannel. These on-going evolutions, accomplished through algorithms that learn from repetitious data, are what really distinguishes A.I. OmniChannel is to identify hidden patterns and unseen trends without precise programming to look for these patterns and trends. As A.I. is exposed to new data, they adapt automatically, looking to produce reliable and repeatable answers.
Advances in computing technologies have fueled A.I. advancement, allowing many established A.I. algorithms to be repeatedly applied to enormous data sets with orders of magnitude boost the cost saving results. Today A.I. can be demonstrated in such notable areas as A Hong Kong VC fund has just appointed an algorithm to its board, Google’s self-driving car, online recommendation engines (such as Netflix using Amazon's A.I. cloud ), social media using A.I. and bank fraud detection by A.I.
Here is a list of: A.I. / machine learning / deep learning technologies companies:

• Add-Structure
• Angoss Software
•  Ascribe
• Attensity
• Attivio
• Basis Technology
• Bitext
• Brainspace
• Cambridge Semantics
• Clarabridge
• Content Analyst
• Revealed Context (Converseon)
• Dell, Digital Reasoning, EPAM
• Etuma
• Expert System
• FICO
• Fractal Analytics
• Haystac
• HPE
• IBM
• Infegy
• KNIME
• Knowliah
• KPMG
• Lexalytics
• Linguamatics
• Luminoso
• MaritzCX
• Meaning Cloud
• Megaputer Intelligence
• Northern Light
• OpenText
• Rant & Rave
• RapidMiner
• SAP
• SAS
• SpazioDati
• Squirro
• SRA International
• Taste Analytics

Let’s explore where A.I. promises to help OmniChannel Contact Centers.

1.    A.I. understands the customers’ pathways through the customer service or customer support process. Understanding customer experience from an ‘outside in’ standpoint, requires a regimented, controlled view of customers’ communications. Analysis of these pathways can highlight where procedure need to be improved by removing obstacles to customers accomplishing their goal. A.I. could take this one step further, predicting the customer’s goal through their actions, and providing faster track to improve their experience. Additionally, A.I. could improve customers’ experience while encouraging up-selling. A.I. could also be used to guide the pathways, to achieve a ‘win-win’ for both customer and supplier.

2.    A.I. can most obviously help product and service recommendations. We’ve already mentioned Amazon and Netflix recommendation engines as successful deployments, but these are early examples. Using A.I. along with analysis, history and current environment, A.I. could truly personalized product recommendations and tailored communication.

3.    Improving service and support. OmniChannel service and support are equally important to retain customers. A.I. can help in multiple areas:
       a.    Self-help can remove much of the more routine questions; A.I. gives opened questions and not boxed in choices that are answered with “Press 1”.
       b.    Based on current context and history, it could be used to predict why the customer is seeking support, speeding the response.
       c.     A.I. can provide recommendations for problem solving, both from the perspective of recommending a particular pathways, but also providing recommendations to the customer and support staff on how to address the problem, improving support effectiveness.
       d.    A.I. through continuous learning, it can refine these pathways and recommendations, optimizing the customer experience (CX).

In summary, A.I. promises significant breakthrough in improving customer engagement and experience, and OmniChannel is a clear target in need of application.

Please contact Call Center Pros, LLC for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,
James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.comr
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

What is Cloud vs. Cloud-Washing?

In July, Seth Robinson from CompTIA released his new report on the state of cloud computing with some puzzling results. The survey’s data ran contrary to statements from every consultant and tech research firm. CompTIA’s new Trends in Cloud Computing report shows that while well over 90% of companies still claim to use some form of cloud computing, but the pace of progress appears to have slowed. In some cases, it even appears to have taken a step backwards. What accounts for this phenomenon? Have attitudes towards cloud everything cooled, even though cloud continues to be a prime reason in IT growth? The survey included 500 CIOs and IT executives in the CompTIA survey and the use of SaaS applications showed a decline since the last time CompTIA completed the survey in 2014.

“When the data came back it didn’t look like we were marching along the adoption path we’d defined and we didn’t quite know what to make of it,” said Seth Robinson.

• Business Sectors        2014   vs.    2016
• Business productivity 63%    vs.    45%
• Email  59%    vs.    51%
• Analytics/BI   53%    vs.    35%
• Collaboration 52%    vs.    39%
• Virtual desktop         50%    vs.    30%
• CRM   44%    vs.    37%
• HR Management       42%    vs.    29%
• Help desk       37%    vs.    29%
• Expense management            35%      vs.    29%
• ERP     34%    vs.    26%
• Call Center     31%    vs.    23%

Why “cloud washing” artificially inflates the implementation numbers
The contrarian statistics found two trends:

1. Gartner expects the public cloud services market to grow by double digits in 2016, with $204 billion in worldwide revenue representing a 16.5% increase over 2015’s $175 billion. For 2017, Gartner believes the market will continue expanding, with year-over-year revenue growing by 17.3%.
2. The survey shows the drop of Cloud adaptation from 2014 to 2016 is due to understanding the definition of “Cloud”. The new term "Cloud washing," or on-premises software re-branded as cloud software, and CIOs' lack of understanding of what constitutes a cloud service. The most basic cloud washing practice includes a vendor that hosts an implementation of their existing packaged software and calls it cloud because they are maintaining it in a virtualized data center.

First let's have a common agreement or understanding what is the “Cloud” as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). 

Crucial characteristics as defined by NIST:

• On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.
• Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).
• Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, and network bandwidth.
• Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.
• Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability1 at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models as defined by NIST:

• Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure2. The applications are accessible from various client devices through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited userspecific application configuration settings.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming.
• Deployment Models as defined by NIST:
• Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers (e.g., business units). It may be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.
• Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a specific community of consumers from organizations that have shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be owned, managed, and operated by one or more of the organizations in the community, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.
• Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for open use by the general public. It may be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic, or government organization, or some combination of them. It exists on the premises of the cloud provider.
• Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).

CIOs are now savvier in their cloud choices
Many Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) pitch it as cloud software just because it's hosted in their data center. They have not used something like CloudStack or OpenStack or built a proprietary cloud system to do the types of things to do the types of things that Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud are doing. Cloud washing perpetuated as on-premises software providers and implementation partners told CIOs that they were adopting cloud. Some CIOs claimed they were using private clouds when they were actually depending on hosted data centers. So “cloud washing” was perpetuated.

The lower SaaS adoption numbers from his new study suggest CIOs have a better understanding of what comprises CCasS, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS and are becoming more savvy and making better educated technology choices. CIOs are still adopting cloud … they’re asking the right questions, before a making a decision.

Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,
James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

Email and Mail with AI

No machine has yet been built with a human echelon of intelligence, A.I. technologies are now maturing to the point where this is not science fiction and more about reality. Did you know that some of the news you read may not be written by human beings? The Associated Press (AP) has been using A.I. technology for a majority of U.S. corporate earnings stories for their business news report. Did you know a Japanese venture capital firm Deep Knowledge recently became the first company in history to name an A.I. robot to its board of directors?

In many companies, the slower night shifts in a contact center are the ones that answer the days email and mail. If you think about amount of general company email and mail coming into companies every day, and the number of hours to reply and how long it takes to respond in a consistent manor, imagine the improvement that can be made with A.I. Right now most every step is a manual process for email and mail that takes place on the basis of confusing, complex rules, resulting in high labor costs. Up to 75% of the potential optimization lies in automatic classification and further processing of email and mail content.

The problem with Document Management Systems (DMS) and incoming correspondence has only supported the movement flow of documents in the digital mail-room and do not understand the content of the correspondence.

The A.I. solution analyzes incoming letters, forms or invoices, automatically identifies customer data and organizational terms, enriches customer transactions with information from third-party systems and distributes them automatically to business processes and employees based upon priority. The right A.I. solution would need to be automatic and not manual based on algorithms to recognize relevant content in your correspondence and transfer the message automatically and reliably to the follow-up processes of your company. The best A.I. email and mail system would be dynamic and non-rigid; it learns the behavior of selected “expert employees” during the dispatching and information retrieval process. The effectiveness of A.I. automation grows dynamically. The system learns and gets better.

How does Email and mail with A.I. work?

1. It classifies and allocates. Incoming transactions are analyzed and allocated to available employees according to topic, skill and urgency.
2. It validates and enriches. Relevant context is extracted. Discrepancies are detected automatically and submitted to available employees for validation.
3. In single click forwarding. The email is automatically indexed and forwarded to the recognized handling process. Most times the CSR will look at the incoming email and prepared reply and hit send.
4. Is the machine learning or A.I. processing. The system learns independently, because of its successful classification and processing, the automatic efficiency of the document processing is improved daily.

This is an fast, affordable, standalone product for mail with OCR and email. When combined with other modules, this can help with OmniChannel (documents, faxes, e-mail, apps, text messages, Facebook, and Twitter). The real future may be in man joining machine. Human and Robot interaction is emerging as a more practical, near-term application of A.I.
Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,

James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

OmniChannel with AI

OmniChannel with AI is the application of technology that allows employees in a contact center to configure AI software to capture and interpret existing applications for automating a transaction, manipulating IoT or any other data sources, triggering automated responses and communicating with other digital systems. Automating and accelerating those processes won’t come from Siloed solutions who can’t see the big picture, or think holistically about the contact center and also the enterprise.
Any enterprise that uses labor on a large scale for general knowledge process work, where people are performing high-volume, highly transactional repetitive work, will boost their capabilities and save money and time with OmniChannel with AI. These solutions can be integrated into the enterprise contact center without the “rip-and-replace” mentality.

Just as industrial robots are remaking the manufacturing industry by creating higher production rates and improved quality, OmniChannel with AI is revolutionizing the way we think about and administer, customer care, business processes, workflow processes, remote infrastructure and other repetitive back-office work. OmniChannel with AI provides dramatic improvements in accuracy and cycle time and increased productivity in transaction processing while it elevates the nature of work by removing people from dull, repetitive tasks. OmniChannel with AI can be applied specifically to a wide range of industry sectors.

OmniChannel with AI and Process Automation
Exciting changes are happening: customer care will be everywhere and with IoT sensors that are embedded in everyday products; many interactions will be automated with virtual agents on common reoccurring activities. Deeper engaging and meaningful conversations with customers will happen when the CSR knows the issues from the displayed knowledge for the advanced calls. Companies will learn from every customer interaction, through every channel, and analytics will allow profoundly personalized exchanges that deliver immense customer satisfaction. If your CSRs have multiple systems to enter the same data, this can be automated. The more customer service history your OmniChannel with AI includes, the more it will learn. Certain agents who are stars at writing perfect emails can have a heavier weight, the other agents will read and email and the AI will suggest lesser CSRs the best reply based on the star CSR’s previous replies. The same will be true for chat, SMS, and the social media channels

Right now, every contact center CEO has a choice:

• Stay the course with the existing solution, improving efficiencies and balancing the increasing demands for as long as you can.

          OR

• Start the transformation journey, knowing that there’s a more sustainable, more value-generating way to offer Customer Care going forward.

As in voice recognition software or automated online assistants, developments in how machines process language, retrieve information and structure basic content mean that OmniChannel with AI can provide answers to employees or customers in natural language rather than in software code. This technology can help to conserve resources for large call centers and for customer interaction centers.
As OmniChannel with AI bring in more technologically-advanced solutions to businesses around the world, contact centers that adopt this automation process, whether in-house or outsourced, will cut costs, drive efficiency and improve quality.

The next big leap will come from technology — but not just any technology. Please feel free to contact Call Center Pros to leverage OmniChannel contact center workflow automation, analytics and A.I. across all of your contact center processes. Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,

James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

How to Add Chat-bots to Contact Centers

With advances in A.I. or artificial intelligence, this is enabling companies to combine live support staff with automated bots or Chat-bots to create compelling and cost-effective chat-based interaction systems for their customers. Enterprise Chat-bots should have a few key capabilities. First, enterprise-grade Chat-bots should leverage A.I.  engine that is trainable by the enterprise. This way, the organization can easily teach the Chat-bot enterprise-specific information. Secondly, a Chat-bot with an A.I. engine that includes a natural language set of APIs relevant to the enterprise is critical. Chat-bots also need to provide a level of security and assurance with regards to the information pulled and pushed as requested, and delivered via the Chat-bot.

Chat-bots should be an essential part of your OmniChannel service approach. Call Center Pros has 6 OmniChannel Contact Center solution with A.I. and half include Chat-bot technology. Call Center Pros can also can recommend “Best-of-Breed” Chat-bots with A.I. that will also have APIs to pull info from your systems and push info to your systems. Start with the most frequently asked questions. Here are some steps to help ensure your Chat-bot plan will work smoothly:

Make sure customers can easily escalate to human-chat service without having to repeating previous questions, content and context.This is a critical necessity, because not only does it provide a smooth and seamless OmniChannel experience to the customer, but it also increases self-service adoption. In addition, email a transcript of the entire chat session to the customer.

Chat-bots can be effective in B2B customer service as well, although the technology has been traditionally used in B2C or G2C service (government-to-citizen). The company  ZipfWorks is building community centric shoppingapps. Go and innovate a new Chat-bot service, here are 11 examples of Chat-bots from the UK!

Give the Chat-bot, a persona that is suitable for your markets served. For example, many US-based clients often implement Chat-bots with outgoing personalities. A Japanese beer uses the face of a popular actor who features in their TV advertisements—the Chat-bot using that same voice reinforces the brand by leveraging that actor’s persona Technology and entertainment companies tend to use a sexy voice from Allison Smith for both recordings and Text2Speach. I had a Debt Consolidation call center who asked Allison Smith "Can you sound less sexy?"… they quickly mutually agreed to separate. You need the right persona, to match your clientele.

Use adaptive content management to sustain the relevance and performance of your content. Here the main adaptive content management factors:

• Device (operating system, mobile, tablet, desktop, screen resolution)
• Context (time, region, location, velocity, humidity, temperature)
• Person (age, gender, stage of life, language, relationships)

How are where to put a Chat-bot on your website:

• Place the Chat-bot near the top of the screen, but not at the very top. Customers expect advertisements at the top of the screen.
• Have the Chat-bot consistently (but discreetly) available on every page.
• If the Chat-bot has to be started with a button, label the button clearly.
• Very important, when a Chat-bot gives a web page, provide a link to that page.
• Make the chat text box large enough to contain a typical query so that users can see all of what they have typed without scrolling.
• Avoid a pop-up window for the Chat-bot. Consumers don’t like communicating with Chat-bots if the chat window obscures the web pages they are on.
• Make sure the Chat-bot accepts common SMS Slang as well as spelling and grammatical errors.
• Make sure you phrase error messages so they do not antagonize customers who are already frustrated, instead try "Tell me more about that" or "Is that what you think?" and not that they’ve made “errors”!
• Apply human-to-human communication best practices to Chat-bots. Implement Chat-bots that are emotionally intelligent and display empathy through expressions as well as language.

Eliza was the most famous and successful early Chat-bots and was developed by MIT in 1964-1966. Eliza was supposed to be a parody of psychotherapists at the time, asking open-ended and vague questions about everything the person said. "How do you feel about that?" "Why do you think you did that? "What do you think it means?" The questions just kept going and going. MIT’s subjects really responded to it. Many said that Eliza helped them, and some asked the people conducting the test to leave them alone with Eliza so they could discuss things in private. Eliza was so successful that people were proposing it as a low-cost way to handle people with mild psychological problems.

Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,
James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.comr
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

Social Media in OmniChannel Contact Centers

Just when Contact centers were starting to get act together regarding multichannel mix of phone, IVR, email, chat and SMS, somebody goes and piles Social Media on top. I know many contact center professionals are tired of the hype surrounding social media’s impact on customer care; there is no denying that our industry is facing a game changer. This is not to say that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube have turned contact centers completely upside down, but such sites are altering the rules of customer contact enough where organizations that ignore these channels place their brand and customer loyalty at significant risk.

We’re looking at much more than a passing fad, Google gets 3 billion searches a day and Facebook gets 2 billion searches a day. A large volume of interactions are coming into organizations directly via social channels. Increasingly, customers who start in a traditional servicing channel, such as a contact center, are turning to social media if they do not receive the response they want. These consumers skirt the traditional service channels, finding that their issues are likely to be addressed more quickly by "going social," because companies fear social media's ability to turn a small problem into a viral PR disaster. In a study conducted by the Society of New Communications Research (SNCR), 59% of respondents said they regularly use social media to "vent" about their own customer care frustrations - a pretty frightening finding (to corporations) when you consider that 72% of respondents said they used social media to research a company's reputation for customer care before making a purchase, and 74% choose to do business with companies based on the customer care experiences shared by others online.

As the primary customer touchpoint for most organizations, the contact center is the obvious choice for taking charge of and carrying out an enterprise’s social media strategy. The challenge is that most business have let Marketing have the Social Media and they sort of do a great job because they know and understand the importance of brand protection. However Marketing might be best to keep an eye out for new Social Media on the public side but need to flip the conversation to a Facebook messenger or Twitter DM and let the contact center keep up with their servicing strategy where it can be handled consistently and recorded properly.

Contact centers must acquire a true OmniChannel Solution with A.I. to properly respond to Social Media and like email, chat and voice recording – push that contact history to their CRM. Contact centers can embrace social media to get closer to customers, spot trends, identify influencers, and create customer advocates, but they must align with social media norms and have faster response that reflect an understanding of the norm of these Social Media sites.
Embracing Social Media in the Contact Center

1. Executives: Social media is proving to be a game changer in business and customer support. Enterprises that ignore this new channel and the impact it has on customer advocacy do so at their own peril. Senior managers need to provide marketing with the proper Social Media Monitoring tools and the Contact center with True OmniChannel technology it needs to continuously keep its finger on the pulse of customer sentiment within social networks, and to effectively engage customers and solve issues via the new media. 
2.  
3.  Directors/Managers: Leaders in the Contact center are charged with defining the specific role the center plays in managing this critical new channel and developing new strategies and initiatives to ready itself for the emerging social media challenge. Such processes and programs as agent hiring, training, workforce management and quality assurance must be carefully analyzed - and altered, where necessary - to ensure success in the social media environment. And certainly an OmniChannel solution will be implemented. 
4.  
5. Supervisors: The often unsung heroes in the Contact center, supervisors play an instrumental role in converting all the social media talk and strategy into action. This includes getting agents ready for the new role; helping agents to continually improve via coaching; and keeping staff engaged and motivated during this challenging transitional period. In addition, supervisors will be called upon to assist with such higher level processes as technology selection and customer satisfaction measurement and management as it relates to social media interactions.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has rapidly become one of the most familiar, and maybe should be phrased most hyped — expressions across business and technology. What is crazy, is the hype, is entirely justified and is backed up by the volume of data. Over 44 zettabytes of data will be created by seven billion people and 30 billion IoT devices connected to the internet by 2020, according to EMC. 


One zettabyte is equal to a billion terabytes and 2.8 zettabytes produced in 2012.

• One zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes.
• One exabyte is 1,000 petabytes.
• One petabyte is 1,000 terabytes.
• One terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes.

To meet their needs, enterprises need to focus on a number of core areas such as agile innovation, delivering real-time experiences and predicting new ways to serve customers. Gartner recently completed a IoT survey of business and IT executives noted manufacturing and retail are two sectors with particularly high expectations of the IoT. I thought of twelve IoT basic fields (I’m sure there are 100s more, but just there twelve will definitely revolutionize the traditional way of doing things.

1. IoT in Home Automation
2. IoT in Industrial Machines
3. IoT in Connected cars
4. IoT in Healthcare
5. IoT in Sports and Fitness
6. IoT in Wearables
7. IoT in Agriculture
8. IoT in Cities
9. IoT in Utilities
10. IoT in Traffic
11. IoT in Security
12. IoT in Identification

Clearly, the IoT will have a great impact on the economy by transforming many enterprises into digital businesses and facilitating new business models, improving efficiency and generating new forms of revenue. However, the ways in which BPOs can actualize any benefits will be diverse and, in some cases, painful. Enterprise Contact Centers and BPOs will need to make plans and preparations now or risk being left behind by their faster-moving competitors.

Every day our CSRs still fill out forms manually, restate the obvious on a call or embark on redundant data entry of information for the millionth time. These changes will lead to major opportunities for contact centers with OmniChannel with A.I.

Here are 10 examples for where IoT needs Contact Centers to make M2H connection:
1.     IoT software updates (call center will call IT team and schedule downtime needed time to update/upgrade (car, factory, oil drill, etc)
2.     IoT reporting outage (high value SLA (service level agreement) triggers an alert where call center must call human if email or SMS are ignored)
3.     IoT maintenance reminders (Customer service can call with emails have been ignored)
4.     IoT non use (Contact centers can proactively call a customer with instruction that were too difficult, or change dissatisfaction with satisfaction)
5.     IoT usage (Manufactures will pay for BPOs to design workflow based on: rpm, height, speed, location, distance, temp, etc)
6.     IoT safe driving (trucking companies need a workflow built to better understand: speed, breaking, acceleration, top speeds, average speed)
7.     IoT consumption (Copy machine contact center can call about a new copier based on actual usage. BPOs can design workflow based on: amount used, how much in inventory, Amount of customer’s inventory, days before reorder)
8.     IoT inventory (BPOs can make their customer’s workflows based on: when products go into use, location tracking)
9.     IoT agricultural crops (BPOs can make workflows for Seed, fertilizer and herbicide companies with the following info: water, Ph, root depth, density, color)
10. IoT agricultural livestock (BPOs can make workflows for corporate farms or feed companies based on: weight, height, feed, water)

A savvy BPO would need to find a great OmniChannel Contact Center solutions and make sure IoT is one of their channels. For their Enterprise customers they would create M2M reporting and M2M workflows with A.I. The programming would be billable, high value, professional service hours and ongoing there will be a cost per action. I believe the lack of a compelling business case is a major impediment to IoT growth for enterprises and BPOs. This is not so much because of a lack of a business case, rather than the IoT business cases for BPOs have yet to be discovered.

Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,

James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.comr
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

Moving From MultiChannel Chaos, to OmniChannel

Companies that don't develop processes and internal structures for handling their OmniChannel strategy can fall short on serving customers through multiple communication channels. Experts say, businesses are rushing on impulse into a full OmniChannel offering because their customers are rushing there even faster. OmniChannel strategies are considered “less friction” because they enable companies to serve customers wherever they are, whether consumers communicate via a company's website, via email, by text message or social media platform. As the channels of communication increase and as customers move from traditional phone calls, this OmniChannel approach to customer service has often become a matter of company survival.

Companies have gotten aboard “MultiChannel” without really thinking about their next steps or a strategies with the rest of the company. As a result, companies that dive too quickly without examining in-house structure are often doomed to failure. Often, companies that view MultiChannel as a matter of simply having marketing to respond to Facebook and Twitter. Marketing is better at building a brand name and protecting the brand name. But after market removes conversation from public Facebook or public Twitter, the marketing strategy can get lost in a sea of tweets and comments without really addressing customer issues and creating the right customer experience. There are many great social media monitoring tools for marketing, but customer experience needs to remain with customer support. Just like you keep your recording, you keep your email, your keep your chat history, but you need a central place to keep these and also your Social Media interactions or you have chaos.

The two key differences in MultiChannel and OmniChannel is that the MultiChannel has separate silos of information. The CSR should be able to see from a single screen every channel of previous customer communications. OmniChannel should also have A.I. to help automate the additional channels. A Smart IVR will help move the customer to the right place using A.I. And customers expect that they shouldn't have to repeat basic account info, repeat their authentication and order information as they get bounced around between departments.

In a short amount of time, it's become critical to address this problem: of companies siloed channel structure, processes that require double CRM entry, communication gaps between departments and workflows without A.I., Call Center Pros can bring in the tested OmniChannel vendors, make the OmniChannel strategies are solid and connect data between communication points and get the necessary teams involved -- and trained to handle the different channels of information.
Here is a little more to think about: What customer experiences are we trying to create? How real-time does each channel need to be? What is the response expectation time of a tweet versus an email reply? If you don't have a plan, you may be opening yourself up to a huge problem. We all know, problems on the Internet can go viral very quickly.

Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,
James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.comr
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

Will Smart IRVs and Bots Replace Human Customer Support?

Right now, the demographic that holds the most buying power is the Millennial generation. These young buyers or Millennials seem to embrace anything that is self-service for customer service. This leads to the great debate of who will win in the end: man or robot?

Smart IVRs, Chat-bots and web-based self-service have made things easier. In some ways, it seems like customer service is turning more robotic than anything else. When dialing customer service phone numbers, it’s extremely rare to have a human being answer the phone rather than an IRV. You can often handle all of your transactions and get your questions answered without ever being put on hold or speaking with a representative. Many instances, you don’t even need to make a phone call. Once upon a time, you had to call airlines in order to make a reservation for a flight, but now you can do it online or through an app on your phone. Self-service machines are making it much easier to accomplish simple tasks. This makes things much easier on businesses as well. Business’ costs are dramatically cut when they are able to rely on a smart IRVs, Chat-bots and websites to handle mundane and repetitive work.

Humans Are Still Indispensable

However, this doesn’t mean that human beings are totally out of the picture. In fact, some would argue that humans are even more important than ever. One of the first rules of technology is, “If something can go wrong, it will.” When you run into a problem, there must be a backup plan, and your customers will want a human to take care of things. There are many times where the unexpected occurs and the IRVs, Chat-bots and websites will not be able to respond. Read this to see specific cases: The 10 Biggest Cloud Outages Of 2015. And when you’re dealing with tens of thousands of customers a day, when things go wrong they go really wrong. Delta Airlines flights were grounded by a global system outage two weeks ago,  that brought the airline to its knees. No flights, no boarding passes, no communications. When all's said and done, the smart IRVs, Chat-bots and websites of customer service could have been extremely useful, but it’s only useful until something goes wrong. When that happens, customers demand the help of a human beings. Any company that tries to do away with human CSRs entirely will lose business as a result.

• Tech outage (website, billing, booking, cloud, database, etc)
• Weather related outage (flood, snow, hurricane, volcano cloud, etc)
• Human related outage (labor strike, illness, bird flu, salmonella, etc)
• Marketing has unplanned product release
• Product update goes bad
• Product outage or shortage
• Product recall or defect

Don’t worry, Humans will still have jobs

A major concern in the robot vs. human debate is that automation is taking over human jobs, and pretty soon, the job market will plummet. But that hasn’t happened yet. If anything, it’s created better jobs. Although most companies need fewer CSRs answering the mundane, the CSRs will be answering the 20% of the more advanced questions. The CSRs will be answering the crisis calls that build brand loyalty. Business will need more people who can solve the problems of technology-gone-wrong. These jobs pay better and are often more comfortable than phone jobs.

In addition, this age of automation has led many businesses to recognize the power of humanization in their CX (customer experience). When automation and online experiences first became popular, businesses were struggling to create strong relationships with their customers. It’s difficult to engage on a personal level with empathy, relevance, and kindness when your entire operation is being run by smart IRVs, Chat-bots and websites.

There will always be people worried about robots taking over the world, but there’s no need to be concerned here. There’s more need for humans in customer service than ever before, and savvy businesses are making a strong effort to humanize every customer experience as much as possible.

Call Center Pros can bring the right OmniChannel software to your Call Center.

Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,
James W Wilson
Call Center Pros
james@call-center-pros.com
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson
1-404-936 4000

OmniChannel with IoT for BPO & BPaaS

In order to achieve maximum business efficiency and effectiveness, enterprises rely on industry standard processes that are supported by the latest in technology. However, disruptive technology, a low capital and shrinking budgets are driving more and more enterprises to adopt Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) or "OmniChannel with BPaaS" to achieve their goals.

The BPaaS delivery model, which is a part of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services, now companies can take advantage of best-in-class technology and standardized business process services for customer support, without any major expenditure. With the help of OmniChannel solutions that support BPaaS, we have enabled global clients shift from a high-cost model to a much more flexible, consumption-based price model.

New Global delivery models, cloud-based solutions and best-in-class OmniChannel capabilities can offer flexibility in optimizing your customer service operations. IoT (Internet of Things) is the 4th Industrial Revolution, and BPaaS will need to embrace this technology or be left behind. Enterprise OmniChannel with BPaaS solutions provide a next generation customer experience platform, which can be used to efficiently manage customer service interfaces across: chat, email, web, voice, SMS, IoT and social media channels.

BPaaS need to prepare for IoT, as 5.5 million new Internet connect things are made every day. By 2020 it is estimated 100 billion IoT devices will be connected.BPaaS need to embrace OmniChannel including IoT and Social Media Monitoring. Yes, I understand your fear of Self-help, smart IVRs and Chat-bots cannibalizing your headcount. Yes, the Tier 1 support calls (80% of contact center calls are repetitive) are going away but will be replaced with more valuable Tier 2 support. BPaaS with OmniChannel capabilities including the IoT channel, will be able to build: Self-help, smart IVRs and Chat-bots for their customer. Being able to fix the the broken Self-help, smart IVRs and Chat-bots for their customer will also be needed, The BPaaS that invests in OmniChannel will be able to monitor Social Media as another channel. Today marketing departments are being overwhelmed by Social Media. These Social Media channels are not properly being staffed by marketing and these conversations are not being saved in the CRM. With IoT their will be critical alerts, recalls, SLAs and superior customer service coming from the IoT.

Some of the key features of OmniChannel with BPaaS service offerings include:

• OmniChannel with BPaaS uses foundational cloud services like PaaS, laaS and SaaS
• OmniChannel with BPaaS will fit your processes without impeding your productivity
• OmniChannel with BPaaS has most all APIs which enable a quick and easy connection
• OmniChannel with BPaaS supports multiple deployment environments and languages, so that a business process can be modified easily in the future, without any major alterations
• Omni Channel with BPaaS we recommend will handle massive scaling - from a few processes to thousands, as per your requirement

Why is OmniChannel with BPaaS an Effective Alternative?
OmniChannel with BPaaS is often automated and the pricing models are consumption or subscription based. Since business process solutions are cloud-based, they are accessed via an internet-based technology. OmniChannel with BPaaS is a multi-tenant delivery model uses a shared set of tools, which your enterprise can tap into on a pay-as-you-go basis. Through OmniChannel with BPaaS, you can leverage on premise solutions, cloud-based ERP solutions and other  applications that enhance global collaboration and connectivity in a streamlined manner.
O2I's BPaaS services can suit a multitude of business verticals, and is especially helpful to clients facing the following issues -

• Scarcity of capital investments, which limits your ability to take on large initiatives
• Unequal technology environments, which results in inefficiencies
• Limited or no access to best-in-class technology and processes
• Changing regulatory norms, that needs a fast reaction
• Benefits of OmniChannel with BPaaS

Call Center Pros offers global clients multiple carrier class, state-of-the-art infrastructure, professional and trained staff and streamlined, tested processes. Let Call Center Pros help with your requirement for the following benefits:

• Flexible pricing: A flexible pricing model that requires minimal capital expenditure while ensuring all your requirements are met
• Faster time-to-market: Drastically reduce the time spent in finding and deploying new processes and assets
• Immediate access to best-of-breed processes, technology and skills: Quick access to easy upgrades and efficient processes that are built into the technology platform
• Better control and compliance: Eliminate the need for long or complex change management transitions
• Reduced costs: Minimal costs during the course of the business engagement

Please contact Call Center Pros for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,
James Wilson, CEO
Call Center Pros
+1-404 936 4000
james@call-center-pros.com
www.call-center-pros.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson

5 Ways Better to CX with OmniChannel

Do you experience a mild sense of dread when you need to call a company you do business with to resolve a problem? If so, you’re not the only one. We’ve grown used to expecting less than stellar experiences when it comes to interacting with CSRs, and receiving timely, helpful, and courteous resolution to our problems.

In this always-on age, your company’s door is always open, and customers may choose to contact you through any support channel you’re willing to provide—including email, phone, web chat, social media, IoT, Chat-bots, and self-service IVRs. These OmniChannels aim to make things easier for the consumer, but for businesses some of today’s biggest challenges are a direct result of this newly added complexity. There are a few things that every organization can do to ensure that the human beings at the other end of any given service interaction receive the help and care they deserve. Here are five of the best:

1. Empower Your CSRs
CSRs need to be empowered with the right tools, which might include software that provides a complete view of customer interactions across all of your service channels. Before you buy any new tools, starts with your CSR staff—the people in your business who interact the most with your customers. If either a frustrated customer or a confused CSR is forced to escalate an interaction to a supervisor, you’ve already lost the battle. That’s why you have to empower your customer care staff with the training and autonomy they need to cut through that complexity and do their jobs well. Give even your most junior CSRs permission to use their best judgment, and then give them everything they need to succeed—then you’re going to see more happy faces.

2.Play to Your Workers’ Strengths
It’s always good to remember that your CSR staff consists of human beings. And that means, no matter how hard you may strive to iron out these differences to create a group of 50 or 500 CSRs. The best customer care managers find ways to use the human differentiation to their advantage, so you can then best match those skills to the appropriate caller or situation. Maybe that means assisting a customer in a different skill groups: language, up-selling a customer, or dealing with a particular tech support issue that some agents have more experience than others. If your company has a collection department; staff it with CSRs who are mainly adept at helping customers who are angry and upset. Certain people can defuse tension, respond to objections, or deal with upset people more effectively than others.

3. The Right Script for Unusual Circumstances
In the normal course of business, there’s rhythm at which customers make contact with your company, and it’s smart to staff your CSRs accordingly. But then there are the special occasions:

• A big product release
• A marketing campaign
• A natural disaster
• A technical interruption

If your customers received an email about a special promo and called in to request more info, and your CSRs continued with a scripted response to “unusual” request, this is not good but this happens all the time. You need a solution to empower the supervisor, to make the needed script changes.

4. “Grandmother Test”.
If your company’s OmniChannels are confusing or difficult to navigate, and the user experience that makes more sense to Engineers than to your actual customers, maybe it’s time to rethink your strategy. Try applying the “Grandmother Test”. Ask yourself, “Would my grandmother understand this?” If she wouldn’t understand your company’s OmniChannels, then you’ve just identified another obvious source of friction to eliminate. Just a few extra instructions for the human beings at the other end of your brand—will go a long way.

5. The Golden Rule
CSRs must always remember that they can’t choose which customers are going to contact them. To make your own life easier, I suggest you take the Golden Rule to heart: Whenever possible, offer customers the same care and courtesy you’d hope to receive as a customer.
In the end, providing great customer care is an evolving art, not a science. What works well for one company may backfire for yours. Hopefully to extend the best practices, like the ones I’ve described here, for a better foundation for a great human relationships. Call Center Pros can bring the right OmniChannel software to your Call Center.

Please contact us for any call center technology need or telecom challenge.

Thank you,

James W Wilson
Call Center Pros
james@call-center-pros.com
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswwilson
1-404-936 4000