The future is here! Recently, Gartner forecast that 50 percent of customer service interactions would be conducted via a virtual assistant (VA) by 2015—this year! Chances are, you have already interacted with a virtual assistant or agent several times during customer service experiences.
In case you’re thinking a VA is the same thing as a “remote agent,” you’re wrong. (See Trend # 9) You’ll be closer if you think of the 2013 movie Her, a romantic comedy in which a man develops a relationship with an intelligent computer operating system personified through a female voice. Spike Jonze, who wrote the screenplay, conceived the idea in the early 2000s after reading an article about a website that allowed for instant messaging with an artificial intelligence program. Virtual Agents have received marriage proposals!
What Is a Virtual Agent (VA or IVA)?
Basically, a Virtual Agent is a computer generated, animated, virtual character, usually with anthropomorphic appearance and artificial intelligence, that serves as an online customer service representative. Other names you might have seen for this technology are Intelligent Virtual Agent, Virtual Rep or V-Rep. In CRM, a virtual agent is a chatterbot program that serves as an online customer service representative for an organization. Virtual agents are embedded with a predefined script and responses.
Intelligent virtual agents (IVA) are built on the laws of artificial intelligence (AI), and are programmed to interact with humans. They are powered by a knowledge base, which includes an extensive list of possible different questions, responses and gestures, allowing the bot to react and respond to human input in a relatively human way. An intelligent virtual agent can serve as a company representative and be programmed around a specific task, such as answering customer questions on a website’s homepage.
Virtual Agents can:
- Lead an intelligent conversation
- Perform appropriate non-verbal behavior
- Respond to customer inquires
- Combine artificial intelligence (A.I.) with graphic representation to help people perform tasks
- Convey a human appearance and personal service feeling
Practical applications include:
- Locating information
- Placing orders
- Making reservations
- Answering questions about customer accounts
- Providing product information and customer support
ICMI research shows that more than 64 percent of contact center leaders feel advanced self-service options such as virtual agents improve the overall customer experience.
Best-Practice Virtual Agent Technology
Best-practice virtual agent technology can actually interpret the intent of a customer’s question, using natural language processing, so it’s very different from entering a keyword or two in a search bar. A classic example is a passenger who types in “left iPhone onboard.” A virtual agent will instantly interpret this as a lost property query and direct the customer appropriately, whereas the words “left”, “iPhone” and “onboard” probably would not elicit the necessary outcome when using a traditional keyword search.
Other Virtual Agent Technology Benefits:
- An unbiased, unadulterated voice of the customer
- Automated reporting that reflects the opinions of limitless numbers of your customers
- Insights that can be available in real-time and be used to improve products and services
- A reduction of calls, emails and chat sessions bombarding the contact center
- A quantifiable ROI
- No hassling customers for feedback
Virtual agents allow the customer to express their query in their own words and get an answer, without being constrained by whether those words appear on the company’s website. This enables the user to find answers faster, correlating lower customer effort with higher customer satisfaction.
Virtual agents can also appear on mobile devices and Facebook pages, presenting a unified, omni-channel, self-service brand. They can provide consistent and accurate answers/information across all channels. They sit on websites 24×7, inviting the customer to “ask a question.”
The Future of Virtual Agents
Most customers prefer self-reliance and want to avoid wasted time, whether it is with real or virtual agents. A recent Forrester Report showed that only 28 percent of U.S. online consumers “prefer to contact companies via telephone or e-mail rather than using a company’s website to get answers to their questions.” As younger generations make up more of market segment, they are likely to drive up the percentage of people who would rather not interact with humans for assistance.
Bloomberg reports in The Debate Room, “Leading Web companies are already using virtual agents. SFR, a division of the mobile communications giant Vodafone, employs a virtual agent to facilitate 750,000 conversations a month to answer customer questions about their accounts and the company’s services. Online auctioneer eBay (EBAY) is already facilitating 200,000 customer conversations a day with virtual agents across six countries. Apple (AAPL) recently bought virtual agent company Siri. IBM (IBM) will soon release an artificially intelligent agent named Watson. Leaders are moving to virtual agents, and although we will no doubt continue to have human assistance available via live chat or a phone call, it will soon turn into the exception, not the rule.”
One Final Thought
If a customer becomes frustrated by interactions with a virtual agent, the VA could be programmed to respond to being called something like “stupid!” with, “You’re insulting an inanimate object. I’m not real. Which one of us is more likely to fit Webster’s definition of stupid?” Well….maybe not! If customers have trouble communicating successfully with the VA on their own, they should still be able to connect with friendly live agents who are on-hand to help them…YOUR PEOPLE!