Tag: Agentic iQ

Faster Answers, Happier Customers With Generative AI Knowledge Assist

Posted on by Anupam Verma

Deliver Better CX With GenAI-Powered Knowledge Bases

When customers contact a company, they expect the right answers instantly. Traditional knowledge bases often complicate the experience, requiring agents to sift through overwhelming amounts of information. These delays — or, worse, inaccurate responses — frustrate customers, damage brand perception, and result in missed opportunities. 

iQor’s infinityAiQ™ platform solves this by turning our knowledge bases’ data into actionable insights with our generative AI-powered knowledge assist. This innovative solution helps deliver the right answers to customers faster, whether through self-serve options or through CX experts.

iQor’s generative AI knowledge assist reduces handle times up to 20%.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how iQor’s knowledge assist streamlines information access, empowers agents to exceed customer expectations, and helps businesses achieve measurable CX success.

What Is a Knowledge Base?

A knowledge base is a centralized repository of information that helps businesses organize and store key data, such as product details, company policies, troubleshooting steps, and FAQs.  

For CX leaders, an efficient knowledge base is a critical tool to meet customer expectations and drive loyalty. It provides agents with the resources they need to answer questions and resolve issues, but navigating them efficiently can be challenging. 

That’s where iQor’s GenAI-powered knowledge assist comes in. It unlocks the full potential of knowledge bases by converting data into real-time, actionable insights, helping agents find the correct answers and handle customer inquiries quickly.

Access Answers Instantly With GenAI

Imagine a customer comparing phone models. Instead of sifting through hundreds of pages of technical data, an agent uses knowledge assist to retrieve the key differences in seconds.  

This is possible because iQor trains agents to craft precise GenAI prompts, ensuring faster, more accurate resolutions and improved KPIs.

“Before knowledge assist, I had to go through hundreds of pages to find the right information for customers. Now, I get instant insights, and my customers notice the difference. They’re happier, and I feel more confident.”

CX Agent at iQor

iQor’s GenAI-powered knowledge assist delivers measurable results by: 

  • Reducing search time with real-time insights. 
  • Boosting CSAT and NPS with accurate responses faster. 
  • Streamlining workflows for smoother CX delivery. 
  • Scaling seamlessly across diverse industries. 
  • Building agent confidence and retaining top talent. 

Transform Your CX With GenAI-Enhanced Knowledge Assist

Fast, accurate information drives exceptional CX and measurable business growth. iQor’s GenAI-powered knowledge assist simplifies complex knowledge bases, reduces handle times, improves first call resolution, and, most importantly, boosts customer satisfaction. 

By exceeding customer expectations, you can turn every interaction into an opportunity to win and keep customers. 

Over 14,000 iQor employees are trained to harness the power of generative AI, resulting in faster resolutions, more satisfied customers, and improved KPIs.

Why Choose iQor?

At iQor, we deliver more than GenAI-powered tools. We provide tailored CX strategies that integrate advanced AI capabilities with scalable operations to deliver consistent results.  

From improving efficiency to building customer trust and loyalty, we help businesses transform customer service into a strategic advantage. 

  • Strategic Partnership 
  • Agile Operations 
  • Scalable Knowledge Solutions 
  • GenAI-Powered Innovation 
  • Compliance and Accuracy 
  • Proven Impact 

Ready to transform your customer experiences with AI? Contact us today to explore how iQor’s CX solutions can elevate your CX strategy. 

Anupam Verma is senior director of digital solutions at iQor. He works on simplifying CX through iQor’s Innovations Lab. Connect with him on LinkedIn. 

Solve Complex Customer Interactions With Real-Time AI Agent Assist

Posted on by Prabhjot Singh

Deliver Faster, Smarter CX Resolutions Through AI-Powered Efficiency

In today’s fast-paced customer service environment, complex customer interactions are a daily challenge. High call complexity can frustrate customers and overwhelm agents, leading to inefficiencies that hinder first call resolution and weaken the overall customer experience. 

Enter real-time AI agent assist. 

Part of iQor’s Symphony [AI]TM ecosystem, this transformative tool equips agents with instant insights and guidance to resolve even the most intricate issues with precision and speed. With AI-powered efficiency, CX BPO teams deliver faster, smarter resolutions that enhance customer satisfaction, optimize operational performance, and support regulatory compliance. 

As industries across the board adopt self-service options and automation, the need for more effective tools to handle evolving CX needs is clear. In this post, we outline the benefits of iQor’s real-time AI agent assist as part of our intelligent operations designed to meet the needs of today’s customer. 

Say Hello to AI-Powered Results

Long handle times. Inconsistent service quality. Escalations and transfers. Missed upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Frustrated customers. 

No CX professional wants to see these KPIs, but they’re often the case when customer service agents are expected to quickly solve complex problems with insufficient or overwhelming resources to sift through. 

iQor addresses these challenges through its strategic use of AI. iQor’s AI-powered agent assist technology monitors calls in real time and analyzes conversations to provide agents with the guidance they need. Whether troubleshooting a technical issue or navigating a customer inquiry, the system instantly displays relevant information and step-by-step instructions in a clear and concise format. This minimizes the need for agents to search through lengthy databases or escalate issues, reducing both call handle time and customer effort. 

AI-powered tools like real-time speech recognition and sentiment analysis equip agents with immediate insights, helping them respond quickly and confidently. This boosts agent productivity and ensures a superior customer experience with every interaction.

Natural language processing (NLP) plays a crucial role in this process. By analyzing conversations in real time, NLP helps the AI understand customer language, detect emotions, and recognize patterns from past interactions. This capability allows agents to respond more accurately and empathetically. NLP-informed AI also suggests resources specific to the conversation, accelerating resolution time and reducing call complexity. 

Win and Keep Customers With AI Agent Assist

Empowered by AI agent assist, iQor’s agile CX teams deliver optimal results across key performance indicators for global brands.

iQor’s agent assist technology helps reduce call handle time by up to 30%.

Coupled with iQor’s proprietary AI-powered interaction analytics that identifies key phrases, customer emotions, and potential signs of frustration during calls, AI agent assist enables agents to adjust their approach in real time.  

What does all this mean for you? You can keep your customers loyal and win new ones with a reputation for superior CX, regardless of the complexity.

Gain a Competitive Advantage

Real-time AI agent assist redefines what’s possible in customer care. By integrating advanced AI technology with human expertise, iQor’s real-time AI agent assist transforms high-complexity interactions into opportunities to exceed customer expectations. 

With instant insights, step-by-step guidance, and intelligent recommendations, agents are equipped to handle even the toughest customer challenges with speed and accuracy. When agents are supported, customers feel valued — and that’s the foundation of a CX strategy that wins.

Why Choose iQor?

iQor is more than a provider — we’re a strategic CX BPO partner dedicated to delivering transformative results that help you win and keep customers. With advanced AI-driven technology, global scalability, and tailored CX strategies, we empower brands to excel at every stage of the customer journey.

  • Expert Partnership
  • Agile Operations
  • Scalable Solutions 
  • AI Innovations
  • Compliance & Efficiency 
  • Proven Results

Transform your CX strategy today. Contact us to learn how iQor’s intelligent operations can deliver results that matter.

Prabhjot “Pj” Singh is chief digital officer at iQor. He drives digital transformation and innovation across global operations, leveraging advanced AI technologies to enhance customer experience strategies. Connect with Pj on LinkedIn. 

Fortune 500 Energy Provider Achieves Industry-Leading High Agent Retention Through BPO Operational Efficiency

Posted on by Nicole Gobbo

Why iQor? 

In this case study, iQor and a Fortune 500 energy company partner in a transformative strategic outsourcing relationship. This story builds on the energy provider’s global success with iQor throughout our 15+ year relationship. Discover how our CX operational expertise achieved $14 million in annualized savings for our energy client by reading the first case study here.  

In this update, we share the next chapter: unmatched speed to proficiency for contact center agent training, sustainable record-low attrition compared to energy industry trends, and CX innovations that unlock operational excellence for our energy client.

Employee-Centric Culture Differentiates iQor’s Operational Excellence

The high volume, high demand services our energy client provides to millions of customers initially led them to consider outsourcing. They required a BPO partner that could meet their high standards for customer service quality, operational excellence, and compliance. 

The energy provider selected iQor over recognized leaders in the Everest CXM PEAK Matrix. iQor’s culture of employee satisfaction differentiates us from other outsourcing vendors, positioning us as a strategic partner with a motivated, multilingual talent pool equipped to navigate personalized customer interactions and compliance requirements.

Investing in employee satisfaction is a long-standing core value in our business. Our dedicated client teams build successful programs that deliver best-in-class customer experience through strategic investments in our on-site and work-at-home agents. We proudly achieve exceptional 70% employee net promoter scores—40% above industry norm—across the energy provider program’s service locations, underscoring our commitment to superior customer service delivery that supports the client’s business growth.

iQor’s Strategic Transformation Blueprint for Energy Customer Service Delivery

Since the program’s launch, iQor’s BPO solutions have exceeded expectations, with strong gains in customer satisfaction, quality assurance, first call resolution, average handle time, client utility, and transaction satisfaction. Here’s what sets us apart:

1. iQor specializes in harnessing strategic, data-driven insights for optimal resource allocation, blending human expertise with CX automation.

2. iQor deftly integrates cloud-based omnichannel solutions, automation, process optimization, proficiency training, and security.

3. iQor’s diverse global footprint provides access to highly skilled talent whose satisfaction we maximize through award-winning training and career development processes.

Read on to discover the innovative strategic outsourcing solutions that have secured our client’s trust and satisfaction through millions in cost savings, making us their only BPO across their comprehensive CX operation and positioning us to support their future growth.

Success Snapshot

Unstoppable Performance

  • Seamless site launches. 
  • Holistic process management. 
  • CX automation insights. 
  • Trusted regulatory compliance. 
  • Scalable service excellence. 

Irresistible Outcomes

  • 3% agent attrition. 
  • 70% eNPS. 
  • Higher year-over-year KPIs.
  • 90%+ CSAT and FCR.
  • $14 million cost savings in Year One. 

Background

The energy provider’s sizable customer base requires high-touch support for the critical energy services our client provides. They place a high value on specialized customer service support that efficiently accommodates their energy consumer needs.  

Due to the complexities of energy bills and the vital role energy plays in daily life, customers of energy companies often require a high-touch approach to customer service, which requires skilled, empathetic customer service teams who consistently deliver excellent customer engagement.  

iQor customer service agents are trained to deliver personalized interactions and ensure energy customers understand the details of their accounts, make informed decisions, and receive prompt assistance during outages or service issues. Ultimately, high-touch customer service fosters positive experiences that can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty for energy providers.

How the BPO Partnership Evolved to Meet Growing Energy Customer Service Needs

Initially, the client sought non-voice back office support services to enable efficiency in their growing business. After conducting a rigorous evaluation process, they selected iQor as their BPO partner over several recognized Leaders in the Everest CXM PEAK Matrix for both voice and non-voice customer service.

iQor’s commitment to employee satisfaction and operational efficiency presented a unique value proposition for the energy provider to improve their CX operation. As our performance continued to exceed the energy provider’s expectations, they added additional lines of business to our portfolio of services delivered:

  • Early-stage delinquency inbound services.
  • Customer financial assistance program.
  • Payment processing with IVR support.
  • Service order calls.
  • Specialized meter installation support. 

Beyond the expanded service offerings, iQor supports the energy provider in a consultative role, providing insights designed to transform and optimize every level of their customer service delivery model.

Decades of Energy Domain Experience Inform iQor’s Performance-Driven Approach to Optimizing CX Operations

iQor’s proven experience in the energy industry played a crucial role in securing this partnership. Our CX experts are deeply embedded in the evolving regulatory landscape for energy companies, ensuring our solutions sustain our client’s commitment to compliance. 

iQor’s employee development practices accelerate agent proficiency across multiple geographies, ensuring reliable customer service regardless of location. This is reflected in our consistent achievement of the energy provider’s performance targets, including customer satisfaction, resolution rates, and more.   

iQor has become an integral part of the energy provider’s customer service ecosystem, earning their strong praise for the unmatched quality of our call center operations.

Business Opportunities

The energy provider’s rapid growth created a need for specialized CX staffing support. They turned to iQor for outsourced customer service agents empowered by optimized recruitment and retention strategies and trained to achieve high performance benchmarks.

BPO Partnership Delivers Integral Energy Compliance Standards

Regulations and labor agreements add specific parameters to our energy client’s pursuit of nearshore and offshore customer service locations. Rigorous regulation and security requirements contributed to the energy provider’s diligence in selecting the best-fit BPO candidate with the capabilities needed to deliver the support they need.

Safety-First Processes Build Customer Trust With Every Interaction

iQor prioritizes safety in every interaction for the energy provider. Understanding the inherent risks within the energy sector, our comprehensive training equips agents to identify and address potential safety concerns. This includes recognizing signs of gas leaks, electrical hazards, and other urgent risks observed from customer descriptions.  

Furthermore, time-sensitive protocols are in place to ensure prompt response during power outages or emergencies. Clear communication and thorough skills assessment are high priorities in our training and compliance standards to ensure the well-being of both customers and employees throughout every service interaction.

Connecting Energy Customers to Assistance Programs That Alleviate Hardship

iQor also partners with the energy provider to connect customers facing financial hardship with vital assistance programs, a key requirement for energy customer service compliance.  

Experienced iQor agents help customers navigate the assistance qualification process with empathy and efficiency. By asking clear, supportive questions and considering their feedback, our agents can identify programs that alleviate financial burden and ensure customers stay on track with their energy bills.  

iQor’s commitment to compliance is underscored by our zero trust cybersecurity approach that ensures world-class protection of sensitive energy customer information. Our protocols ensure every user and device requesting access to privileged information undergoes thorough authentication and authorization checks, protecting our client’s reputation and the data privacy of their end customers.

Solution

The energy company partnered with iQor to craft a strategy that would produce exceptional employee and customer experiences along with significant financial savings. The teams worked closely to transition much of the energy company’s support to nearshore and offshore locations that met their support criteria.  

The energy provider is committed to deploying an agent workforce with a high degree of employee satisfaction in a supportive work environment. iQor’s comprehensive active-learning training and development frameworks position us as the ideal outsourcing partner to support our client’s initiative for achieving highly engaged, high-performing teams. 

Our client entrusted iQor’s CX experts to elevate employee satisfaction, automate workflows, and comprehensively optimize their CX operation. Our new program implementation and operations teams collaborated to:

  1. Accelerate speed to proficiency.
  2. Optimize employee satisfaction. 
  3. Identify automation opportunities.
  4. Deliver multilingual customer service.
  5. Optimize communication channels across all sites.

Here’s how we achieved the energy provider’s goals:

1. Award-Winning Active Learning Training Boosts Speed to Proficiency for Energy Customer Service Agents 

iQor’s award-winning training programs utilize active learning techniques to accelerate speed to proficiency, ensuring agents are fully equipped to handle the energy industry’s specific requirements.  

iQor’s iLead Next Level Career Coaching program has been recognized with the Bronze Stevie® Award for 2024 and 2023. This highlights iQor’s dedication to a workplace culture that thrives on active engagement, effective support and coaching methods, and high employee satisfaction.

2. Machine Learning-Powered Coaching and Development for Improved Employee Retention

iQor prioritizes agent well-being and career growth opportunities. We leverage multiple channels to gauge employee satisfaction, including regular surveys and a proprietary check-in process. By analyzing feedback and exit interviews, we’ve streamlined our ESAT tools to capture valuable insights to inform retention strategies.   

iQor’s data scientists harness the power of machine learning, building an AI large language model (LLM) that can accurately predict when agents are at risk of attrition. By analyzing historical data on multiple data points including performance, work characteristics, and employee satisfaction, the model identifies agents at risk of leaving. This allows for targeted interventions like coaching, career development, or workload adjustments. This model is continuously refined with fresh data, ensuring its effectiveness in optimizing agent retention and reducing turnover. 

Our holistic approach to employee satisfaction informs targeted coaching and development opportunities. Additionally, we track coaching interventions to ensure they’re having a positive impact. This proactive approach empowers us to identify potential risks of attrition and implement retention strategies, fostering a loyal and engaged workforce.

Streamlined Recruitment and Onboarding Harnesses AI to Maximize Contact Center Employee Experience

Meeting the client’s high volume seasonal ramp demands for skilled agents requires a strategic approach. That’s why we leverage iQor’s Symphony [AI]TM ecosystem to identify and attract top talent with the specific skills needed. We then streamline the recruitment and onboarding process to excel in the energy sector’s customer service environment.

3. Intelligent Workflow Automation Strategies Amplify Specialized Energy Customer Interactions

iQor identified an opportunity to streamline call center processes in the back office by automating certain manual tasks such as acknowledgements, data entry, and status updates, reducing the average handle time and improving resolution rates. 

iQor proactively identifies opportunities for our client to leverage smart automation across their CX operation. This empowers efficient management of repetitive tasks and provides real-time guidance to customer service agents. Our strategic recommendations enable agents to focus their talents on resolving complex customer interactions and building stronger relationships.

4. Effective Multilingual Customer Service Delivery Fosters Cultural Affinity With Diverse US Customer Base

iQor’s strategic placement in nearshore and offshore locations empowers the energy provider to deliver exceptional multilingual customer service across the U.S. This geographically diverse workforce allows them to tap into a talent pool with native fluency in languages spoken by a significant portion of the American population.  

By strategically matching agents with customers based on language and cultural background, iQor fosters a sense of cultural affinity during interactions. This ensures clear communication while building trust and rapport with customers, leading to a more positive customer experience. This personalized approach strengthens the connection between the energy provider and its diverse customer base.

5. BPO Leadership Consolidates Energy Provider’s Global Contact Center Communication Channels

iQor’s senior leadership delivered a seamless transition for the energy provider by establishing a single point of contact for global operations. Consolidating the communication channels ensured full transparency, keeping our client informed and engaged about the program’s progress across all locations every step of the way. 

By streamlining communication, iQor’s team highlighted our commitment to ease-of-doing-business, a hallmark of the iQor experience. Our approach exceeded the energy provider’s expectations for a first-time outsourcing experience nearshore and offshore, creating smiles for their large base of satisfied customers.  

The program continues to evolve, with iQor and the client working collaboratively to develop agile, proactive CX solutions that ensure long term success. This dedication to continuous improvement—one of our iQorian Values—is key to sustaining the client’s trust in iQor’s outsourced services and paves the way for an even stronger partnership in the future.

Results

Achieved agent attrition in the 3% range across all locations.

Achieved 70% employee net promoter scores (eNPS).

Optimized the employee experience for higher satisfaction and tenure.

Introduced new AI, automation, and analytics tools that streamline processes.

Managed 100% of the client’s inbound email with excellent outcomes.

Set and achieved aggressive timeline for achieving ramps and speed to proficiency.

Met or exceeded critical key performance indicator (KPI) targets since program launch with year-over-year (YoY) improvements:

a. 93% customer satisfaction (CSAT), a +5.5% year over year increase.

b. 92% first call resolution (FCR), a +7% year over year increase. 

c. +4% quality assurance (QA) year over year. 

d. +20.3% improved average handle time (AHT) for voice. 

e. +6.5% improved average handle time (AHT) for email. 

f. +3.2% gain in client utility & transaction satisfaction. 

Sustained cost savings, including $14 million in Year One.

A Strong Foundation for Future Energy Success Through CX Operational Excellence

iQor’s 15+ year relationship with the energy provider positioned us as a trusted advisor, leading to a strategic transformation of their customer experience model that has resulted in unwavering achievements for nearly three years. In the dynamic energy sector, our agility ensures we adapt to our client’s evolving business needs with a CX framework customized to the needs of the business and the industry.  

iQor’s partnership approach transcends traditional outsourcing. We empower our energy partners for success by delivering proactive advice and recommendations, setting ourselves apart as a full-service provider of CX business solutions. The result is best-in-class operational excellence, continuously optimized to fuel ongoing growth.

The Benefits of RPA: How BPOs Help Organizations Save Time and Money With CX Automation

Posted on by Joe Przybylowski

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Providers Add Strategic RPA Business Benefits to Projects 

As brands continually look to boost efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness in the marketplace, business process outsourcing (BPO) providers with digital transformation expertise offer unique insights and strategic value. This includes helping brands refine processes to achieve more loyalty throughout the customer journey. 

In recent decades, brands and analysts have come to recognize that BPOs understand how to navigate the options and opportunities created by business process optimization technologies. 

In recent decades, brands and analysts have come to recognize that BPOs understand how to navigate the options and opportunities created by business process optimization technologies.

One such technology—robotic process automation (RPA)—offers myriad business benefits, especially when deployed through a BPO with strategic digital transformation experience. 

Recognizing the Unique Business Benefits BPOs Add to Digital Transformation

In an August 2022 article, Gartner highlighted two unique benefits of partnering with a BPO for digital transformation.  

  1. Because BPOs consistently add technology to their tech stack, it’s easy for them to demonstrate how a given digital solution can help solve a client’s operational challenges. 
  1. By taking on vendor administration responsibilities for you, a BPO can remove two apparent needs: a) to hire more full-time employees and b) to give your IT staff additional work. 

Beyond these two benefits, BPOs bring a third benefit: objectivity. As third parties, BPOs can focus solely on the client’s objectives: to solve operational challenges, boost productivity, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness while maintaining excellent customer and vendor relationships.  

As BPOs have demonstrated, these benefits apply to automation projects as well.

BPOs and Automation

Many BPOs that excel at digital transformation have also become experts in business process automation (BPA), an umbrella term that covers any type of automation used to streamline business processes and workflows, including robotic process automation.  

Like digital transformation, BPA is an increasingly popular and effective way to make business processes more efficient, workers more productive, and brands more competitive.

Rapid Expansion of RPA

From 2020-2026, global use of business process automation (BPA) is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.2%, from $9.8 billion to $19.6 billion. 

The robotic process automation market is consistently the fastest-growing of all types of BPA. Forrester Research expects RPA deployment and support services to reach $12 billion in 2023. 

Forrester Research expects RPA deployment and support services to reach $12 billion in 2023.

Brands prefer robotic process automation to other forms of automation because it: 

1. Requires little support from IT, leaving them to perform their duties uninterrupted.  

2. Has proved its value across industries by automating a wide array of functions with accuracy, including: 

  • Manipulating and migrating files and data between different applications.
  • Entering and validating massive quantities of data (big data) from multiple systems.
  • Reconciling accounts.
  • Processing credit cards, mortgages, invoices, and insurance claims.
  • Detecting potential threats of bank fraud.
  • Planning resource needs and managing inventory.
  • Onboarding new employees.

RPA at a Glance 

RPA is a collaborative function of business stakeholders, users, RPA designers, and developers who automate processes on an RPA software platform.  

With RPA, software records a human’s clicks and keystrokes as they perform a high-volume, tedious, and repetitive process—such as data entry—on a digital interface. A virtual robot (bot) then mimics the human’s clicks and keystrokes, but much faster and with no errors.  

Like a human operator, an RPA robot can perform data entry tasks, open and close different applications, and use optical character recognition (OCR) software to digitalize data found on hard copy assets—such as printouts of Excel spreadsheets—and then use that data in the process. 

Today, RPA and digital transformation are often used on the same projects, so a thorough discussion of RPA must include digital transformation. 

In this blog post we’ll cover: 

  • Top Benefits of RPA for BPO clients. 
  • The RPA-digital transformation connection. 
  • Why a BPO with a proven digital transformation track record can multiply the benefits of robotic process automation. 
  • Experience the best in RPA 

Top Benefits of RPA for BPO Clients 

When asked, BPO clients cite the following benefits of robotic process automation. 

Boost Efficiency and Reduce Costs 

RPA saves time by assigning repetitive tasks to bots, which allows humans to focus on tasks that require critical thinking. Reducing the human time spent on repetitive processes also reduces the cost to complete each process. Efficiency savings of 25%-50% are common. 

Improve Customer Satisfaction 

Contact centers help brands build relationships with customers, earn high customer satisfaction ratings with excellent personalized service, and help retain customers. To personalize customer service, an agent must access the customer’s history of interactions with the brand in every channel they’ve ever used—including in-store, e-commerce, chatbot, voice, social media, and more.  

Pulling all that information together can take the agents several minutes. In today’s real-time world, several minutes can be enough to make customers wonder what’s taking so long. RPA can pull all the customer information together from every channel in seconds. That makes it easier for the agent to focus on the customer and provide excellent, personalized customer service that makes the customer smile. Heart

Accelerate Productivity 

Many frontline workers perform repetitive tasks that take time away from the more valuable work they joined the brand to do. RPA removes the need to perform repetitive tasks and allows them to focus on knowledge and skills-based responsibilities. The result is a win-win for both the employees and the brand. It lowers costs for the brand and boosts workers’ morale by making them feel more valuable. 

Increase Accuracy 

When humans perform the same monotonous tasks repeatedly, they make mistakes. A 2% error rate may not seem like much, but over 10,000 repetitions, that’s 200 errors. Fixing those errors takes time, which costs money, and means valuable workers are doing something other than their primary tasks. When RPA bots take over those monotonous tasks, they make no mistakes. RPAs are robots that do a handful of things consistently well.  

Tighten Data Security 

Brands prioritize the security of business data and personally identifiable data. By specifying strict parameters in the RPA security rules, brands can limit the number of people who see confidential data and make it difficult for bad actors to copy or share it. Tightening data security with RPA helps brands comply with government and industry-specific privacy regulations. 

Scale on Demand 

Many business activities change seasonally, and seasonal change often requires temporarily ramping up headcount, onboarding, and training. When RPA handles the repetitive processes, bots do all required work without impacting headcount to meet changes in demand. 

Generate Valuable Data 

An RPA gives brands the opportunity to digitally track processing efficiency. This is especially important when humans and bots work together, with the bot handling the parts of the process that can be automated and the person handling the rest. The RPA can track the time it takes to complete the process from beginning to end, including the part performed by the worker.  

When some instances take longer than normal, these outliers may be signs that the process could benefit from analysis and modifications that will allow the human and robot team to consistently complete the process in the same amount of time. This data enables organizations to fine-tune their RPA and generate additional efficiencies. 

Function Consistently 

People find their own ways to perform processes, even when they are repetitive.  

When the person who usually handles a process is unavailable, someone else must perform the task. The replacement brings their own touch to the task, so you can’t expect them to complete it in the same amount of time or with the same level of accuracy. RPA works the same way every time, as long as the rules and the systems remain the same. 

Extend the Life Cycle of Legacy Systems  

When workers are required to execute repetitive processes that move data from one application to another, it’s usually because a legacy system that doesn’t accommodate API connectivity is involved. Brands can improve efficiency by using an alternative way of connecting the applications. RPA is that alternative.  

RPA bots do everything workers do when transferring data between systems—but in a small fraction of the time and with 100% accuracy. Bridging connectivity gaps is how brands employ RPA in digital transformation projects. 

Each of these benefits of RPA generates significant value for brands that do RPA right. The next two sections clarify the RPA-digital transformation connection and the role business process outsourcing providers play. 

The RPA-Digital Transformation Connection 

In a perfect world, digital transformation would be a straightforward process, with new software replacing old software and data digitalization making all data shareable and actionable across lines of business.  

In reality, there are times when old software can’t be replaced because the hardware that hosts it doesn’t meet the technical requirements of the new software. That’s usually because the hardware was created for an outdated—or legacy—operating system. When that’s the case, there are two options: 

  1. Replace the old hardware with new hardware at considerable cost and time-consuming operational disruption. 
  1. Find a way to connect the new software in the modern digital system to the old software in the legacy system.  

This is where RPA comes in. Instead of spending a fortune on new hardware and disrupting operations until it performs all functions properly, RPA can bridge the gap between the new hardware and the old by mimicking all the steps required to connect the two applications. 

The need to solve connectivity gaps is a common need in digital transformation projects, and a major reason RPA has become an invaluable component of digital transformation. By incorporating RPA to bridge digital transformation gaps—at a much lower cost than that of buying and installing new hardware—brands can stage their digital transformation strategy over time. 

Why a BPO With a Proven Digital Transformation Track Record Can Help Multiply the Benefits of Robotic Process Automation 

We’ve touched on three unique RPA business benefits that BPOs bring to projects: 

1. Conduct affordable pilot programs to prove the RPA concept.
If your brand wants to see what RPA can do before investing in a large project, a BPO with RPA expertise can run a small pilot project. 

You could run the test yourself, but the BPO’s technical knowledge and RPA expertise allow your brand to focus on your business without having to become RPA experts while the BPO runs the pilot. 

2. Save the brand from having to hire full-time employees.
Creating a successful RPA requires: 

  • Project leaders.
  • Ongoing communication with all stakeholders.
  • Expert RPA developers.
  • Post-launch follow-up communication.
  • Ongoing maintenance and fine-tuning as systems and rules changes dictate.
  • Vendor management.

A BPO with its own center of excellence has the experienced staff and leadership in place for your first project and all ensuing RPA projects, so increasing your headcount won’t be necessary. 

3. Instill confidence that all recommendations have the brand in mind.
Many decisions are made when creating an RPA. When you partner with a BPO that provides objective advice based solely on the goals and needs of your brand, you can feel confident in both the process and your decisions. 

But the most significant benefit a BPO can provide a brand is its unique ability to take a holistic approach to business process optimization. 

When objectively evaluating an organization’s potential RPA projects, a BPO with digital transformation expertise can employ a strategic perspective of the involved system(s) that includes: 

  • Brand objectives. 
  • IT modernization plans. 
  • Hardware lifecycle stages. 
  • Pending operating system and application updates. 

All this information must be considered holistically to properly answer these four fundamental questions: 

  1. Which form of optimization is the correct choice of optimization for a given process? RPA? Another type of automation? Digital transformation?
  2. What resources are required to complete each task? 
  3. What steps for preparing the system for optimization should come first? 
  4. In what order, and over what time span, should the creation and implementation of business process solutions be staged to generate a return in the least amount of time while minimizing operational disruption?

Getting these answers right the first time can multiply the value of the top RPA business benefits listed earlier. 

The right BPO—one with a track record of success in both RPA and digital transformation—can provide these services without pushing one solution over another for self-serving reasons.

The right BPO—one with a track record of success in both RPA and digital transformation—can provide these services without pushing one solution over another for self-serving reasons.    

Even if it means recommending an alternative solution to RPA, the BPO’s mission is to help the client achieve its goals to refine processes and improve the customer experience. 

Experience the Best in RPA 

iQor is a business process outsourcing company (BPO) ideally suited to help brands optimize their business processes through RPA and digital transformation. Our intelligent automation delivers better customer experiences and helps employees perform at their best.  

iQor’s cognitive RPA software solutions are customized to client needs. We use AI and machine learning to handle high-volume, repetitive, or slow, time-consuming tasks. With streamlined workflows using RPAs, our team completes tasks faster and more accurately to provide amazing customer experiences. 

Moreover, our experience designing, developing, and implementing successful RPA projects for many different businesses enables iQor to identify and recommend the solutions that will deliver to each client their highest return. 

If you’re ready to start a conversation with an RPA expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles. 

Joe Przybylowski is vice president of digital solutions and optimization at iQor. 

Ada Smith is vice president of research and analytics at iQor.

How Chatbots Can Transform the Customer Experience

Posted on by Nicole Gobbo

Using Chatbots to Improve Customer Support for the Modern Consumer

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way into customer support delivery in many shapes and forms. Conversational AI can handle a variety of menial tasks, from visual search to automated messages in the modern customer experience. 

One of these AI-powered technologies in the customer service space is chatbots. The objective of chatbots is to help ease customer service pressures by offloading mundane, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. 

With intelligent automation, chatbots are able to complete these routine tasks effectively by using algorithms driven by machine learning. This article discusses the scope of a customer service chatbot and how it can use AI to improve customer satisfaction as part of a digital transformation strategy. 

Benefits of Chatbots for Customer Support Delivery

Chatbots are particularly beneficial in customer service because they can handle high volumes of standard technical queries quickly and efficiently. They create more satisfied customers with consistent outcomes and reduced handle time. Likewise, chatbots help reduce or eliminate mundane tasks so customer service agents can focus on addressing more complex customer service needs and deliver more rewarding customer experiences. 

Through chatbot conversation automation, information can easily be collated into valuable reports for better analysis and decision-making. Ultimately, chatbots can help eliminate human error, reduce unnecessary spend, and increase productivity.

Why Are Chatbots Necessary for Customer Service?

BPOs like iQor that deliver customized solutions can deploy automation where it matters most for creating happy customers. Solutions that include chatbots can help do the following: 

  • Offer 24/7 customer service. If customers don’t get an instant response to their questions, they may take their business elsewhere. Chatbots allow customers to access support whenever they want, irrespective of their time zone or geographical location. 
  • Speed up problem resolution. Chatbots offer an instant personalized experience, responding to customers faster than human agents can. They can access databases and existing knowledge bases and provide quick answers to all sorts of questions. 
  • Provide multi-language support. Providing live customer support in different languages can increase costs. Chatbots can offer multi-language support and resolve customer queries in the customer’s language of choice, serving a broader customer base while reducing spend. 
  • Remain accurate and consistent. A sudden influx in customer support requests has the potential to increase average handle time (AHT) and leave room for human error. On the other hand, an AI-powered customer service chatbot ensures prompt responses with a high level of accuracy and consistency. 
  • Gather data. Human agents may find it challenging to recall all details shared in a conversation and satisfy the customers’ expectations. Chatbots, however, collect analytics on the fly and remember them forever. This helps them provide accurate data to customers. Chatbots remember what customers like and dislike and act accordingly when they get relevant requests. 
  • Offer better self-service. Chatbots can help direct customers to self-service options, such as web pages and documents, that customers can use to solve their problems themselves. Along with reducing the number of support tickets, this also maintains high customer satisfaction. 
  • Reduce channel sprawl. Customers often switch between different channels to get the information they want. For example, a connected omnichannel experience enables customers to start with a live chat option and, after some time, drop it for email support if they don’t get satisfactory answers. With chatbots, customers can use the same channel for the majority of their support needs. 
  • Lower interactive voice response (IVR) frustrations. The IVR devices used in customer service can sometimes be challenging for certain customers, especially if they don’t get a personalized response. BPO solutions that include chatbots can replace this technology and send customers to the appropriate response team without the need for a human agent. 

How Chatbots Can Empower a Customer Support Team

Research shows that 67% of global consumers have interacted with a chatbot in the past year. This means that more and more companies are using customer support chatbots to improve their customer service in remote work and in-office operations. 

Chatbots can provide 24/7/365 support and don’t need sick days or vacations. In this way, customers can reach support agents anytime and anywhere through messaging apps and mobile devices. 

According to Drift’s 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report, chatbot use has grown by 92% since 2019. The global chatbot market is expected to reach a value of $10.5 billion by 2026. 

It’s easy to see that conversational marketing and AI-based customer support optimize your customer experience and foster stronger and more satisfying interactions with your brand. 

How Do Chatbots Assist the Customer Support Team?

BPOs like iQor can develop custom CX solutions that include an AI chatbot to empower customer service teams resulting in less time spent on repetitive tasks. For example, a chatbot can help teams sort through and respond to customer requests. 

Here are some other ways in which an AI chatbot empowers customer support representatives to create meaningful experiences. 

  • Improving accuracy. Chatbots can send tickets to the right person in seconds while filtering out duplicates and irrelevant messages. They can also flag conversations that need more attention from human agents. This means that live agents can answer tickets more accurately, resulting in better service for customers. 
  • Speeding up customer service. AI chatbots can help customer service teams process many more requests simultaneously by automatically routing tickets to the right person and helping agents prioritize conversation threads based on their contents. This reduces wait times for customers, which can help boost their satisfaction and brand loyalty. 
  • Upselling and cross-selling. Even though chatbots can’t replace human beings, they can upsell and cross-sell customers by answering questions and suggesting related products or services. Chatbots can help sell everything from merchandise to travel packages to keep customer service agents focused on more complicated requests, such as refunding a purchase or offering technical support.
  • Self-service solutions. Although some customers prefer talking to customer support representatives, 70% of them would rather use a self-service document or site. Chatbots can help steer customers to self-service resources. This is a win-win with customers receiving support in their preferred channel and customer support agents spending their time working on more complex service requests. 

Additionally, chatbots can understand different languages because they run on natural language processing (NLP).  NLP is a group of technologies that enables computers to understand the tone and context of human language and interact naturally, making it easier (and faster) for humans to interact with them. 

Moreover, according to Intercom, 29% of businesses report having lost customers due to a lack of multilingual support. Being able to provide support in as many as 20 languages is a huge selling point for chatbots without the need to hire multilingual agents. Although there may still be a need for multilingual agents, multilingual chatbots can reduce the number of agents needed. This need is also influenced by the dominance of customers requiring multilingual support. For example, programs that support companies based in Europe may need to staff customer service agents in multiple languages.

How Much Time Does a Customer Service Chatbot Save?

A custom solution with a conversational bot like the ones offered at iQor can reduce the average handle time for customer service interactions. This key performance indicator (KPI) measures the average amount of time it takes to resolve a support or service request. Improving AHT metrics by fulfilling customer needs with less time spent on hold, delays, or follow-up actions results in a better overall customer experience.

Suppose a CX program receives 30,000 calls per year. If the human agent spends an average of five minutes on each customer call, this equates to 2,500 hours on the phone every year. While some of these calls require human assistance, many contain questions that a bot can answer easily, reducing average handle time, which is a measurable saving. 

Indeed, a custom solution that includes a customer support chatbot can save agents hundreds of hours and enable them to focus on other more high-value tasks.

How Customers View Customer Support Chatbots

Research shows that customers are on board with digital transformation across their business. Customers actually like using chatbots due to how quickly they can get answers to their questions. 

Customer support chatbots are particularly useful for quick customer service and answering repetitive queries. 

According to Tidio, about 48.78% of female customers like chatbots and use them for communication when making online purchases. Meanwhile, 47.92% of men use chatbots if they can’t find answers to simple questions.

What Reasons Do Customers Give for Using Customer Service Chatbots?

Customers like using chatbots for the following reasons: 

  • Instant response. Customers can reach a customer service agent immediately and 24/7. 
  • Availability of information. Chatbots can provide detailed information right away. For instance, if a customer wants to know about a new product, they can get the information immediately instead of waiting for the agent’s response. 
  • Intuitive interface. Customers are very familiar with using messaging apps on mobile devices. They’re used to typing in questions and receiving immediate responses. 
  • Fast checkout processes. Customers appreciate that chatbots can conduct transactions faster than agents. 

Considering customers’ interest in using chatbots, businesses can use them to address many customer engagement opportunities. 

Best Practices for Deploying Customer Service Chatbots

When developing a chatbot as part of a digital transformation journey, iQor follows multiple best practices in forming its custom solution. 

Define Objectives

Determine the objectives for a chatbot to provide an interface for customers to make customer service requests. 

Will the chatbot resolve customer issues faster or gather more information about the problem? Will it be used for lead generation? Will it help customers find products? BPOs like iQor will make sure there’s a clear role for the chatbot from the beginning. 

Give It a Personality

Even when talking to a chatbot, people want some degree of human touch. The chatbot is an extension of the client’s brand and should have a personality so customers don’t feel like they’re talking to a machine. Meaningful chatbot experiences reinforce the brand and show empathy toward customers. 

Chatbot stats show that customers prefer interacting with bots with a persona and personality.  This enables chatbots to have more humanlike conversations, ultimately providing better customer care. 

Chatbot interactions should be evaluated with the same level of importance as interactions with human agents.

Have an Option for Directing to a Human Agent

Chatbots should be part of a seamless omnichannel experience with an option to switch to a human agent at any time if customers need more assistance. This enables customers to benefit from a consistent customer experience through the channel of their choice, while also ensuring they conveniently receive help from a human agent when needed.

Use Fallbacks

In some cases, a chatbot won’t be able to come up with a response to the customer query because it’s not programmed for that. Maybe the customer typed in a query that doesn’t match the chatbot’s purpose. 

For instance, when Siri or Alexa don’t understand what you’re saying, they respond with something to the effect of, “I’m not sure I understand.” All chatbots should have a fallback option for such cases. 

A fallback option such as asking the customer to clarify their query helps counter this issue to meet the customers’ needs. The iQor advantage takes this a step further to ensure customer needs are met by enabling live agents to jump in when the chatbot is unable to sufficiently address the issue. This creates an excellent customer experience without frustration.

Use Analytics to Improve the Chatbot

Solutions that include chatbots will also track the chatbot’s performance through analytics and use this data to make improvements. 

Analytics is a way of measuring the progress and performance of the chatbot through key metrics such as chat volume, number of conversations, and average message length. 

Just like any other form of software, chatbots need regular maintenance and updates. BPO’s like iQor will use data to make ongoing adjustments to ensure chatbots meet the individual needs of clients and their customers.

How Does Measuring Chatbot Performance Improve the Customer Experience?

Ongoing measurements of a chatbot’s performance are essential for ensuring the chatbot provides the best possible experience for customers. 

For example, if a customer support chatbot has an average response time of seven minutes, analytics can identify when there are peaks in conversation. The project team can plan accordingly to ensure sufficient resources are in place to reduce wait times and provide prompt service that improves customer loyalty. 

Final Words

All in all, a solution that includes a customer support chatbot can help automate mundane aspects of the customer journey while still providing an amazing digital customer service experience and freeing up agents’ time to work on creating more meaningful experiences. They also provide a collection of data on customer interactions to help inform and improve customer service.

Experience the iQor Difference

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

  • A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
  • A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
  • A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
  • The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
  • Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
  • The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
  • A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

How RPA Solutions Improve Productivity and Enhance Customer Service

Posted on by Ada Smith

RPA Creates More Rewarding Customer Service Experiences and Helps Employees Perform at Their Best 

Customer service is of the utmost importance in helping businesses strengthen their brand, stand out from their competition, and ensure customer loyalty. However, it can sometimes be hard to keep up with the large number of customer support tasks. That’s where robotic process automation (RPA) can help.

Solutions based on the strategic and effective use of custom-written RPA technology help businesses improve their workflows and achieve outstanding results, ultimately supporting better customer service. Through custom RPA solutions, employees can go beyond meeting their productivity goals and customer-facing employees can focus on creating more rewarding customer experiences.

Below, we discuss RPA solutions and their importance in ensuring a rewarding customer experience as part of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy that enhances the customer journey. 

What Is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic process automation is a technology that allows computer systems to perform tasks typically handled by humans. It helps companies boost their productivity, decrease costs, and be more competitive by automating menial and repetitive tasks, all while maintaining accuracy and high levels of customer service. 

RPA uses intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) to handle an organization’s most basic and time-consuming activities. These include tasks such as collecting data from different sources, updating spreadsheets and databases, and filling out forms.

In customer service, solutions that utilize RPA technology can simplify processes like responding to commonly asked questions and directing customers toward self-service pages as part of a seamless omnichannel experience.

While traditional automation uses application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate systems, robotic process automation makes use of software bots to understand the actions of users at the user interface level. An RPA developer must be thoroughly familiar with the target system.

The Goal of RPA 

The goal of RPA is to eliminate low-value tasks and free employees to spend more time on work with greater impact—like interacting with customers—to achieve better business results.

Intelligent automation can significantly advance customer experiences with your brand given that Americans are willing to pay 17% more to do business with companies with excellent reputations in customer service. Indeed, 90% of Americans consider customer service an important factor in determining whether or not they want to be associated with a company at all.

RPA bots offload the weight of inefficient processes across any business vertical or industry so employees can focus on what matters most. Tasks that check the following boxes can be optimized by RPA software to support your business: 

  • Time-sensitive 
  • Labor-intensive or high-volume 
  • Repetitive 
  • Rule-based 
  • Highly structured 
  • Prone to human error 

Understanding RPA is imperative for today’s businesses. Solutions that use RPA enable efficient automation of routine tasks in customer service, such as: 

  • Loading and changing data. 
  • Filling out forms. 
  • Streamlining information on different systems. 
  • Screening application forms and documents. 
  • Managing people requests. 

How RPA Solutions Help Improve the Customer Service Experience

Solutions that employ RPA software improve the customer service experience in multiple ways.

For one, it speeds up processes and reduces repetition, which enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty. Intelligent automation creates positive outcomes and improves customer service by providing quick and consistent support with reduced handle time for customer service agents.

Second, it helps create happier, more focused employees. On average, 40% of employees’ time is wasted on repetitive manual tasks, according to an Automation Anywhere study—and 75% of employees believe spending time on tasks that can easily be automated is a poor use of their skills.  By using automated processes to reduce or eliminate mundane tasks, employees can spend more time creating more meaningful customer experiences.

Third, RPA solutions increase productivity and accuracy. Through streamlined workflows, customer service teams can complete tasks faster and more accurately. UiPath’s 2021 Office Worker Survey found that 67% of global workers feel crushed by repetitive tasks. Intelligent automation of repetitive tasks can help people find fulfillment and attain higher productivity at work. 

Automated processes, such as conversational artificial intelligence (AI), have a lower margin of error which helps businesses meet customer expectations. RPA solutions eliminate potential human errors entering customer data, providing streamlined service and saving companies time and money.

Additionally, RPA solutions reduce costs and increase revenue. They provide early visibility into trends, creating opportunities to eliminate human error, reduce unnecessary spend, and improve productivity.

Finally, RPA solutions help maintain best practices by providing consistency in service delivery throughout the contact center. They also ensure that all employees use customer information effectively and efficiently. 

Ultimately, RPA solutions allow for better tracking of tasks, knowledge sharing, and consistent service delivery, thus helping employees provide better customer service through the contact center. They can generate remarkable benefits for multi-national corporations as well as local small businesses by offering significant time-savings for completing repetitive tasks and better utilizing employees’ skills on more meaningful work.

How to Measure and Optimize Customer Support Effectiveness With RPA Solutions

As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor creates RPA solutions for our clients. After implementing process automation in customer service, BPOs like iQor can measure its effectiveness for their clients in the following ways. 

  • Increased revenue: How much money are you saving or making thanks to BPO solutions with intelligent virtual assistants? Your business may open up a new revenue stream by reassigning teams and workflows or adding new projects to expand operations. With higher customer satisfaction, you’re also bound to get new customers through word of mouth, ultimately increasing profits.
  • Velocity: Velocity is the time it takes for an automated process to complete a task. BPOs can save their clients time and increase velocity by removing manual processes through RPA solutions. 

BPOs like iQor can use these aforementioned metrics to identify opportunities to deploy RPA solutions to further enhance customer support strategies for their clients. Additionally, they can use intelligent automation to inform social media monitoring and respond to customer reviews and feedback to better meet customer needs.

How Can You Make the Best Use of RPA Solutions in Customer Support? 

Here are some ways to get the most out of RPA solutions: 

  • Start by automating simple tasks. 
  • Upskill customer support agents as RPA deployments mature. 
  • Automate customer service across all touchpoints and omnichannel platforms for a connected experience. 
  • Focus on specific metrics and determine how well RPA is doing in those aspects. 

It’s also imperative that the solution implemented by your BPO provides RPA security so automation and convenience align with cybersecurity protocols. In addition to a CX private cloud, here are four ways to accomplish this: 

  • Implement change control and review for RPA technology scripts. 
  • Ensure the RPA bot has audit capabilities. 
  • Avoid fraud and abuse by enabling privileged session management. 
  • Rotate bot credentials frequently to ensure accountability for the actions of the RPA solution. 

Typical Use Cases for RPA

Research indicates that 20% of organizations have adopted robotic process automation as of 2021, a noteworthy jump from just 13% in 2020.

At iQor, our cognitive RPA custom solutions have yielded outstanding results for clients. iQor developed an RPA bot that simplified the voucher program for a major airline carrier, saving time and significantly improving productivity. The airline program saved 1,965 hours per year by reducing handle time by two minutes per voucher request. They saw a 29% reduction in overall handle time and were able to process 36,400 transactions per year.

iQor’s RPA solution has generated improved outcomes across other business processes as well. It has been used to simplify processes for a global HR team, automating HR-based workflow requests. In checking for accuracy, providing real-time visibility into staffing metrics, and offering other payroll and benefits improvements it has saved 650 hours per employee each year. With 100% process automation it completes 75 complex HR transactions per hour, supercharging the HR workforce.

Some additional use cases for RPA technology solutions in customer support to improve contact center analytics include: 

Update CRM Data 

RPA solutions can cull customer data from a CRM solution and update it with the latest information. In this way, it frees up the customer support team to focus on helping customers instead of updating common data, such as cold calls, interactions with customer support employees, reports, documents, and emails. 

Root Cause Analysis 

When an incident occurs, the RPA solution can be used to gather data automatically so that your team can quickly identify the root cause. Once they know why an incident occurred, they can more easily solve the problem. 

Assist Customer Support Agents 

According to Salesforce, 63% of customers expect customer service agents to be familiar with their expectations and unique needs.  

An RPA solution can fetch customer data, such as purchases, previous complaints, demographics, and tickets, for the customer service rep to help them better deal with customer inquiries. 

Instant Response 

RPA solutions can be used to automate simple customer service functions, such as sending customers on hold new information about their order or shipping status. RPA is also great for generating responses to common requests or questions from customers, saving time and helping to provide better service.   

Final Words 

In sum, custom RPA solutions offered by BPOs like iQor can be immensely helpful in enhancing customer service and the customer experience for clients of all sizes. Whether large or small, companies can benefit from the enhanced productivity, cost savings, and improved customer service that RPA solutions provide.

Experience the iQor Difference 

iQor’s intelligent automation delivers better customer experiences and helps employees perform at their best. Our cognitive RPA software solutions are customized to client needs. We use AI and machine learning to handle high-volume, repetitive, or slow, time-consuming tasks. With streamlined workflows using RPAs, our team completes tasks faster and more accurately to provide amazing customer experiences.

If you’re considering outsourcing customer support, explore partnering with iQor. We are an award-winning global BPO, purpose-built to deliver omnichannel customer service through our work-at-home and in-office agents spread across more than 50 locations worldwide.

We know how to maximize RPA for superior customer service, efficiency, and cost-saving. To learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals, listen to our podcasts or contact us here.

Ada Smith is director of analytics at iQor.

How to Optimize Your Digital Customer Experience Through Digital Transformation

Posted on by Nicole Gobbo

Designing the Digital Customer Experience Within Your Digital Transformation Strategy

Digital transformation is the purposeful integration of technology into all areas of your business. The digital customer experience (DCX) is one element of this transformation that generates a big impact on your business. Indeed, with clear leadership and consistent vision, digital transformation can improve efficiencies and experiences with your brand in today’s digital economy. The digital customer experience is foundational to digital transformation strategies with these common elements: 

  1. Customer experience.
  2. Operational agility.
  3. Culture and leadership. 
  4. Workforce enablement.
  5. Digital technology integration.

In this post, we focus on the digital customer experience component of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy. Digital CX is the sum total of all online interactions a customer has with your brand and how those interactions make them feel about your brand. It could be exclusive to your company website, but often the experience also includes mobile apps, chatbots, social media, email, and any other digital customer touchpoints you employ. All of these elements work in unison to create the overall experience customers have with your brand.  

That experience is valuable to you. It defines how likely customers are to turn to you when they need a product or service like yours, if they will tell others about you, and if they will leave a positive online review. Your business is made up of a multitude of elements that together influence your customers’ experiences one way or the other: website, product and service offerings, pricing model, marketing campaigns, customer support, billing, collection and more are all vital parts of the customer experience. 

As your business continues to evolve and incorporate new technologies, implementing the right digital customer experience strategy for your brand will grow more important. In fact, Gartner predicts that 70% of customer interactions will involve emerging technologies this year. Digital technology can improve your brand’s ability to understand and serve its customers, but the customer experience is a human experience and the essence of human connectivity should remain at the heart of every customer interaction. 

Why Is the Digital Customer Experience So Important?

With CX driving over two-thirds of customer loyalty (more than brand and price combined), it has an enormous impact on the growth potential of your business. In the digital age, more and more customers expect to access your customer support services across a variety of digital platforms. The digital customer experience is about creating smiles through frictionless virtual interactions at each step of the journey. 

Digital CX is the greatest opportunity for engagement, advocacy, acquisition, and retention. It is increasingly important in the midst of changing preferences and expectations due to COVD-19. In fact, the top 5% of brands that scored the highest across industries on Forrester’s U.S. 2021 Customer Experience Index adjusted their DCX strategy during the pandemic to meet core customer needs. They outperformed other brands in effectiveness and ease to create enjoyable customer experiences that generated more goodwill towards their brands.   

With so many touchpoints through which you can offer your product or service, it’s crucial that you strategize early on about how best to execute a CX strategy that integrates them all effectively. But what exactly does it mean for brands today to have an effective digital CX strategy? 

In practice, digital customer experience strategies are both data- and people-driven. The whole point of digital CX is to provide customers with more choice, greater convenience, and speed while maintaining the human touch so customers feel appreciated. Data helps you do that by providing insight into how customers are interacting with your brand as well as why they aren’t choosing to do so at certain times or in certain ways. 

When the data shows unwelcome trends cropping up in the customer journey, you can use it to develop strategies for optimizing the digital touchpoints that contribute to the gap. Data helps you prioritize mission-critical tasks and leave less important optimizations for later. It can also help you identify and modify or eliminate digital optimizations that don’t produce positive outcomes for the customer. Ensuring these positive outcomes is essential to prevent customer churn. According to customer experience research by PwC, even when customers in the U.S. have positive impressions of a company or product, 59% will walk away after several bad experiences and 17% will leave after one bad experience. 

Digital Customer Experiences Improve Your Relationships With Customers

Digital transformation means modernizing every aspect of your business, starting with customer interactions. You can accomplish this by providing new digital customer service options that better connect you with customers and improve their overall experience while maintaining a consistent and clear brand voice across channels. 

Chatbots and other artificial intelligence-powered technologies (AI) can play a key role in the digital customer experience. The point is not to remove the human customer service agent from the customer journey entirely. Rather, AI offers an opportunity to empower agents to focus their attention on higher-value tasks—not frequently asked questions that can be adequately handled by digital customer service solutions that extend beyond your company’s knowledge base. Hybrid human and AI-enabled contact centers, for example, can greatly improve the speed, efficiency, and satisfaction of customer interactions. To this end, Juniper research forecasts that this year chatbots will provide an annual savings of more than $8 billion across industries. 

In the retail industry alone, brands are harnessing the competitive advantages of AI to automate time-consuming, routine tasks and increase operational efficiencies. The adaptive and time-saving features of chatbots have led about 80% of brands globally to use chatbots or plan to use them in the future. Their uses extend beyond answering customer questions to engage consumers and provide personalized service as well. Retailers are innovating the use of AI to improve customer experiences in a multitude of ways, from customized recommendations and personalized digital product displays to auto-generated shopping lists and digital support to answer customer questions while in the store. 

At iQor, we create personalized experiences like these through a combination of digital technology solutions and contact center agents. We foster amazing human-centered digital customer experiences around the globe to provide a faster and more efficient service across multiple digital channels on behalf of our clients spanning industries such as healthcare, telecom, retail, insurance, energy, banking, and others. Our contact center agents are efficient and happy because our digital transformation model integrates internal or third-party data sources along with an AI infrastructure to rapidly feed information to our human agents on the frontline of customer support. With this model, easy, frequent tasks are resolved faster, while more complicated problems are handled by human agents. The result is a more cost-effective customer experience model with happy agents and most importantly, satisfied customers.  

Digital Customer Experiences Improve Efficiencies 

Today’s consumer wants to access your customer service options through the digital channel of their choice, and they will do so at all hours of the day. Many companies have a global customer base, which makes it necessary to serve customers across all time zones at scale. 

Digital transformation is your commitment to revolutionize the digital customer experience allowing you to fulfill customer expectations at every stage of the customer journey, resulting in enhanced brand loyalty and immense productivity benefits. At a high level, your digital transformation strategy needs these four basic elements for an optimized DCX:  

  • Understand the evolving needs of your customers. 
  • Enable customers to engage with you easily on digital channels of their choice. 
  • Respond to and resolve customer inquiries quickly. 
  • Integrate human-centric support with digital support. 

It’s essential that your digital customer experience is as frictionless as possible. Done right, your digital transformation strategy empowers you to deliver greater speed and convenience to your customers. You can also scale it as you grow, which is your reward for providing an outstanding customer journey. For example, a retail client is able to scale their customer service during peak seasons by 750%. 

Digital transformation will make your organization more productive and help drive customer loyalty. Many customer inquiries can be resolved through digital technologies such as interactive voice response (IVR) that can provide quick and convenient answers to simple questions like “what is the status of my order?” A digital customer experience lets customers self-serve issues on their own with ease. Once they receive an answer to their question or complete their transaction, they’re more likely to be a satisfied customer, increasing their loyalty and your ability to sell more or earn a referral.  

The Benefits of Integrating Data Into the Digital Customer Experience 

The two cornerstones of data integration in the digital customer experience are analytics and insights. While analytics lets you identify patterns in need of optimization, insights point to actual customer behaviors and trends in real-time. As a result, you’ll be better prepared to make decisions about how to optimize your customer experience.  

Data integration, analytics, and insights help you quickly identify trends and obstacles in your customer experience journey. Once you’ve identified them, you can decide how best to prioritize areas of improvement to maximize their impact on customer satisfaction. iQor, for example, utilizes a unified workforce management (WFM) solution to reduce labor waste through intelligent forecasting and scheduling while eliminating mundane tasks and enabling agents to focus on value-added tasks for meaningful customer engagements with more timely results.  

Data integration into the digital customer experience allows you to:  

  • Deliver targeted and relevant content to customers at just the right moment. 
  • Create a continuous customer experience across all media channels and touchpoints. 
  • Keep an up-to-date profile for each customer, so that you know their history and can predict their future needs. 
  • Resolve questions and complaints faster while enhancing customer satisfaction.  

Why a Digital Customer Experience Is Imperative

From requesting a quote or paying a bill to signing up for a service, we live in an increasingly digital world; offering your customers speed and convenience through multiple channels will advance your brand’s reputation. Now more than ever, companies must optimize the digital customer experience to meet and exceed customer expectations.  

The Digital Customer Experience Improves Outcomes 

The pillars of digital customer experience management are intelligent automation, digitization of CX infrastructure, and improved customer service agent interactions. An effective digital transformation strategy simplifies the customer experience at every turn. For example, call deflection using intelligent chatbots can save time and money while providing a great customer experience at virtually any time of day, for any time zone.  

The digital customer experience is all about streamlining processes to create a smooth and convenient journey for customers. They must be able to find what they need, when they need it, without having to jump through unnecessary hoops. Thanks to business intelligence powered by data, you’re able to predict customer needs and wants better than ever before and use that data to optimize results.  

This streamlined approach is not just a matter of convenience. By providing omnichannel marketing and digital interaction, brands can attract new customers while keeping current ones. If consumers engage with a brand’s marketing through their preferred channel, they should also be able to interact with the brand through their chosen channel for customer service. Ultimately, the path to satisfied customers (and more business) centers on making the journey as efficient as possible—digital customer experience management provides the means to do just that.  

Digital Solutions to Streamline Customer Experiences

The digital customer experience paradigm requires businesses to step up their game to deliver an empowered customer journey across all digital channels relevant to their customer base. One of the best ways to impact the customer experience is by closely monitoring and proactively responding to what customers say about your brand or products across social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. 

How exactly do you do this?  

It’s no secret that consumers are active on social media. Customer care agents can monitor a diverse range of digital channels to derive insight into customer needs and expectations. Your agents can answer questions, respond to complaints, and redirect customer comments to the relevant support channels.  

Social media monitoring can improve customer satisfaction and elevate the reputation of your brand. For example, a telecom provider ramped up their social media support by 400%, jumping from 10 to 40 specialized agents to support new promotional programs. iQor trained experienced agents to maximize their impact on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram while utilizing digital social media monitoring solutions to streamline their responses at scale. Agents outperformed their 6-minute response time SLA, averaging 5.3 minutes per response, while also nearly doubling net promoter scores (NPS). Instead of focusing on concurrence (measuring how many conversations an agent can handle at once), overall customer experience and satisfaction served as the primary metric because of the increased exposure social media affords.

But social media monitoring is just one possibility. You can also use automation to send out personalized thank you messages to your customers or in some cases use face-to-face teleconferencing to interact with a customer directly. Contemporary customer communications technology enables you to engage your customers and enhance their experiences in as many ways as you can imagine.  

Choosing among various digital solutions that could improve the customer experience depends largely on your industry. The key is to use data to determine the best ways of connecting with customers on their terms.  

How to Optimize Digital Solutions for the Best Customer Experience 

Optimizing the digital customer experience is an ongoing and ever-evolving endeavor. There will always be opportunities to ensure your omnichannel customer experience options are available in an intuitive, hassle-free interface that’s fast and easy to use. Just because your customer services are accessible during normal operating hours doesn’t mean they’ll work the same way outside of business hours. In fact, sudden surges of customer interest have the potential to overwhelm any of your digital channels if their infrastructure isn’t optimized.  

In particular, data can help you identify areas for improvement in your digital customer experience offerings. Every digital marketing experience you create can provoke a customer response, be it impressions, clicks, or conversions. As customers interact with your brand, their encounters will be logged in your system as customer data, allowing you to build up a repository of information and insights about customer support questions and resolutions. This provides an excellent source of data that you can mine for long-term business advantages. Assessing value-added service offerings to determine where else you can provide efficiencies, increase customer satisfaction, or improve employee retention and engagement facilitates the continuous improvement of customer experiences. 

Some of the key standards to use when measuring the effectiveness of digital solutions for customer experience management are:  

  • Convenience
  • Customizability
  • Performance
  • Omnichannel availability

At iQor, we deploy digitally-enabled intelligent technology that meets these standards and empowers agents to elevate customer experiences. Our unified omnichannel CRM provides a 360-degree view of the customer and their interactions, allowing agents to deliver highly personalized, seamless, and efficient resolutions to create a consistent brand experience.

iQor’s Unified Desktop technology bundles multiple applications, tools, and screens into one simple user interface regardless of the media type. Seeing only the necessary scripts and customer interaction history, agents can more easily provide fast, efficient, and exceptional service.

We also use real-time AI that mimics human perception to detect speech patterns, tone, dead air, and word choices. It provides agents with immediate digital alerts or recommendations so they can respond to customers with a higher degree of empathy. Without engaging a live supervisor, AI coaching provides emotional intelligence to take CX to the next level.

In sum, proper DCX needs to meet customers where they are, at any time of day. You’ll need to analyze which digital channels are most effective for your business, such as your website, social media platforms, mobile apps, etc., and adapt your customer experience options accordingly. Maintaining up-to-date CX technology infrastructure that operates at high availability in response to customer requests is necessary for an optimized digital customer experience.  

How to Keep Data Secure Off-Site and in the Office 

The shift to digital channels has made customer experiences more convenient while simultaneously leading companies to take a more comprehensive approach to cybersecurity. With global malware attacks on the rise, remote workers logging in from more endpoints, and customers buying and interacting in new ways, businesses must extend their endpoint protections to reduce risk. John O’Malley, senior vice president of platforms and desktops at iQor, recently wrote about the importance of a comprehensive work-at-home endpoint security ecosystem for globally distributed access points. This is one of the multiple layers we employ to provide world-class security for our clients.

Investing in and maintaining cybersecurity infrastructure promotes better customer experiences, improved trust and loyalty, and protects your brand reputation. One way of accomplishing this in today’s landscape is through software specialized for remote work environments that enables BPOs to secure agents’ company-issued thin clients, PCs, or personal machines, at scale. iQor uses Secure Remote Worker (SRW) software to temporarily lock access to personal programs on work-at-home agents’ personal devices while providing access to the same secure cloud environment they use when onsite in support of the client’s customer experience program.

The Bottom Line

The digital customer experience is here to stay. Even if your business has a significant offline component, it is evident that digital customer interactions are rapidly outpacing offline ones in many industries. A total digital transformation of your customer experience is essential to help you keep pace as new technologies continue to evolve. 

A successful digital CX strategy is one that accounts for all the customer experience variables relevant to your brand. These are not the same for every business, and you don’t have to do everything at once. Rather, examine your current customer experience options and look for touchpoints that can be optimized for digital, provided they improve the customer experience. With customer data and predictive analytics, you can refine your customer service options and provide a better experience for each customer while also creating a supportive environment for employees on the frontline serving your customers. 

If you’re ready to take your digital customer experience to the next level, partner with iQor. We’re purpose-built to deliver the world’s most sought-after customer service. Learn more by listening to our podcasts. Schedule a call with a customer experience expert today to explore how we can help you create more smiles. Contact us here.

How Self-Service Support Can Improve Customer Interactions and Build Brand Loyalty

Posted on by Nicole Gobbo

Self-Service Support Solutions for Superior Customer Service

In today’s digital world, a key component of customer engagement hinges on fast, accurate, and readily available solutions for customers. According to Salesforce Research, 63% of consumers expect companies to know their unique expectations and needs. Our digital age necessitates instant access to information, meaning customers increasingly want digital-first conveniences for more personalized and empathetic experiences immediately without wait times or obstacles in their way. These expectations from today’s consumers require companies to innovate and provide quick, accurate responses across channels to sustain a competitive edge, maintain customer satisfaction, and improve brand loyalty. This need for instant 24/7/365 support has the potential to overwhelm employees and lead to decreased employee engagement but can also serve as an opportunity for companies to adapt and better meet the needs of their customers and staff. Self-service support solutions offer convenience—giving consumers access to rewarding customer experiences while on the go and freeing up agents to address more complex inquiries.

As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, iQor creates self-service support capabilities on behalf of our clients. In this post, we share our expertise and best practices for incorporating customer self-service options as one element of a comprehensive digital customer experience journey companies can employ as they evolve to meet and exceed customer expectations of today and into the future.

BPOs like iQor employ experts to design self-service solutions that preserve your most precious relationships with customers. Self-service capabilities facilitate online support without ongoing assistance from customer service agents to enable consumers to connect with your brand on their terms. Examples of these self-service options include digital frequently asked questions (FAQs), knowledge bases, online discussion forums, how-to tutorials, and flexible automation features such as intelligent IVRs, chatbots, and access to seamless omnichannel support so customers can escalate their issue with ease if more support is needed. Self-service features enable your customers to work on their own behalf to obtain quick and accurate answers while also allowing frontline employees to focus more time on high-value customer support engagement.

Read on to learn more about the benefits of various types of self-service customer support options iQor can personalize for your brand to create the best customer experiences your industry has to offer.

What Is Self-Service Customer Support?

Self-service customer support represents any activity in which the customer proactively acts on their own behalf without the assistance of a customer service representative. It has become a baseline customer service solution expected by most customers as their first course of action when seeking solutions to questions or concerns. It empowers customers to find answers to their questions through tutorials, FAQs, videos, knowledge bases, conversational AI and other support platforms without the need for a live support agent. These digital transformation self-service solutions typically combine automation of basic tasks like informing a customer of the status of an order, with more advanced answers that customers can access through knowledge bases, forums, videos, and the like. As part of an integrated solution to customer support, self-service options must be optimized for easy access both online and through mobile devices. Businesses don’t have to go it alone. BPOs like iQor provide integrated solutions based on experience and data to offer the most effective and comprehensive self-service approach for your brand.

The Benefits of Self-Service Customer Support

Customer self-service offers a wide range of benefits for customers, companies, and employees alike. They can be scaled and integrated into your omnichannel experience to ensure self-service options align with customers’ needs while delivering seamless interactions across channels to deliver efficient solutions so customers stay connected and engaged.

Optimized customer experience

According to Microsoft, a whopping 90% of Americans consider customer service an important factor when choosing a brand. Customers often prefer feeling empowered to answer their own questions on demand without contacting support. Self-service customer support puts them in control from anywhere, any time of day or night and doesn’t require wait times to speak to an agent.

Increased sales

Self-service solutions may also boost your sales since customers can resolve their own issues 24/7/365, making them less likely to abandon a transaction if they can quickly answer their own question. This positive experience with your brand can improve response rates to your sales offers and may prompt a positive review or recommendation. Data-driven self-service engagement builds brand loyalty through improved customer experiences that create more satisfied customers through consistent outcomes and reduced handle time, increasing Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

On the other hand, when customers only have the option to contact live agents for most inquiries, they can encounter high call wait times, particularly at peak times. This can lead to customer dissatisfaction and increase a company’s call abandonment rate.

Lower operating costs

Self-service options not only provide what customers want, but they enable you to do so for large numbers of customers at a fraction of the cost for live support. Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) can offer additional solutions when needed while live representatives enjoy more time to focus on assisting customers with complex issues, reducing unnecessary spend. These channel optimization strategies make the customer journey a win-win for your bottom line.

Improved employee morale and productivity

Self-service solutions can also help make your customer service representatives happier and more productive. Research has shown that live agents find as much as 40% of support tickets to be repetitive and mind-numbing. Implementing self-service support options and automated processes helps reduce the repetitive tasks and mundane questions human agents encounter and gives them more time to handle complex situations that require human expertise and compassion. Incorporate self-service options to deliver amazing customer experiences that make frontline employees and customers smile.

Competitive advantage

Finally, self-service solutions can help your brand remain competitive. Statista finds that 88% of consumers in the U.S. and around the world expect an organization to offer online self-service support. 

Additionally, Gartner predicts that automated personal technologies will be the default user experience delivery method by 2030. By then, Generation Z—those born between 1995 and 2009—will make up the largest portion of the customer base. More than previous generations, Generation Z digital natives have embraced the flexibility technology offers, choosing what to consume, when, and through what platform. By knowing their customer base and gathering data across channels to use automation where it matters most, brands can design better experiences to promote meaningful customer interactions.

Self-Service Platforms That Work

As one of the world’s largest business process outsourcing companies, iQor specializes in helping businesses assess data-based metrics to better understand customer preferences and needs and develop the most effective self-service options for their brand. The best self-service support strategies often include the following offerings, while also providing integrated resources backed by human support for customers to access with ease if needed. Self-service options that reduce effort and promote positive and accurate results with fast response times make for happy, satisfied customers.

1. Automated chat and messaging support

Intelligent automation customer experience solutions are an essential component of comprehensive self-service support offerings. In fact, 69% of consumers prefer to use chatbots because they deliver quick answers to simple questions. Moreover, utilizing live agents to respond to each individual customer’s digital messages is costly, inefficient, and unrealistic.

To boost your return on investment (ROI), iQor has extensive experience designing, implementing, and managing intelligent automation customer experience solutions that provide cost-effective, efficient means of helping customers self-serve to resolve their own issues. Robotic process automation (RPA) software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to handle high-volume, repetitive, or slow time-consuming tasks reduces human error and enables customer-facing employees to focus on building more rewarding customer experiences. These cost-effective virtual agents that form an integral part of your customer retention strategy include simple and smart chatbots. Although both are able to complete similar tasks, smart IVA chatbots do so with finesse and personalization. Their differences become clearer when we compare how they complete tasks.

  • Simple chatbots handle basic, routine queries. They are available through live messaging tools and can be trained to follow a script to give fast answers to FAQs. Chatbots can simulate a conversational experience to a certain extent but are ultimately constrained by having to work from a limited script—lacking the ability to make contextual adaptations and learn over time.

Examples of support a simple chatbot can provide:

    • Generic product recommendations and availability.
    • Status of returns and exchanges based on inputs from the customer.
    • How can I reset my password? Provide basic instructions.
  • Smart chatbots or Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) are more advanced AI-powered chat assistants that communicate with customers through their preferred communication channels via text or text-to-speech. Equipped with natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, IVAs are able to understand and retain context to have more productive conversations. By combining cognitive computing and analytics, they give customers personalized responses through friendly and humanlike dialogues that align with your brand. Although they can’t resolve complex tasks, they can gather information to refer to later, help human agents interface with customers, and answer simple questions.

Examples of topics an IVA chatbot can assist with:

    • Personalized product recommendations and availability.
    • When will my order arrive? What is the tracking number for this order?
    • Reset passwords—can complete the task for the customer.

Utilizing conversational AI in these ways enables your company to proactively interact with customers through their preferred channels and receive immediate responses at their convenience to drive operational efficiency at scale.

2. Email support

Asking frontline employees to reply to every email can be a taxing and error-prone process. Many emails can easily get lost, particularly after weekends, holidays, and peak seasons. 

Integrating automated help desks and ticketing solutions into your workflow can help human agents gather, organize, and track support tickets through a dashboard. Adding rule-based routing to the inquiries can automatically generate a new ticket when a customer’s self-service attempts go unfilled, seamlessly escalating the request to prompt human engagement. The ticket will contain background information with the customer’s name, email address, and the history of their self-service attempt to ensure an integrated and satisfying experience when the customer speaks to a live agent.

3. Online knowledge base

Besides directly interacting with your site through a chatbot or IVA or sending an email, customers often use your website to find answers to their questions. A strong self-service strategy incorporates a well-organized and user-friendly knowledge base to help customers educate themselves on how to use your website, app, or product.

Your knowledge base can include:

  • How-to guides.
  • FAQs.
  • Video tutorials.
  • Pre-recorded classes and webinars.
  • Free product trainings.
  • Step-by-step instructions.
  • Glossaries.
  • Troubleshooting instructions.

The knowledge base should be clearly organized and accessible. It should include:

  • Categories such as “Account Settings” and “How to Use Our App” to facilitate easy navigation to desired content.
  • A search bar to help customers locate answers instantly, even when they don’t know the overarching category.
  • Different media such as text, video, audio, and annotated images to accommodate customers’ different learning styles.
  • Good SEO to make content easily accessible through search engine queries while also boosting your site’s ranking and attracting new customers.

4. Social media support

Although social media moderation is managed by human agents, it enables customers to access your brand’s support on their terms. It equips you to resolve customer concerns quickly and engage with your followers more effectively than would be possible otherwise. With social media moderation like iQor’s, you can maintain accurate information on your social channels for customers to self-serve for essentials like hours of operation, contact information, menus, service descriptions, pictures, and so much more. It facilitates a seamless, branded customer experience through social media channels at scale.

5. Interactive and community-based discussion forums

Another self-service option is an online community or public discussion forum where customers can interact and help each other. Empowering customers who are experts on your products to answer questions in a digital community is a powerful self-service model that builds brand loyalty. These online communities can be hosted on your website or through third-party platforms.

It’s important to monitor and reinforce the discussion forum with a support team or moderators to help guide customers who may not find answers to their questions or who need assistance navigating the community. Like the other self-service solutions on this list, interactive communities and forums should offer a clear option to contact live agents when the self-service tool does not offer solutions to a customer’s particular need.

Requirements for Self-Service Customer Support

An effective self-service customer support strategy gives customers control. It offers fast access to the information they need through intuitive and accessible platforms with clear paths to a live representative or omnichannel support if needed. iQor can help you develop a strategic self-service customer support solution based on your brand, budget, and customer needs.

When developing a personalized self-service approach for your brand we assess a variety of metrics to partner with you to create a solution that brings smiles to you and your customers. If you are going to strengthen your customer support through self-service options, these are some questions to consider.

1. What resources are necessary to implement self-service customer support?

Adding self-service customer support to your business model may necessitate the addition of new resources, some of which include:

  • Utilizing customer support chatbots and IVAs.
  • Creating a knowledge base and online community of resources.
  • Producing videos and blog posts for your knowledge base.
  • Employing subject matter experts to moderate online communities and help customers help themselves.

After listing the resources needed to implement self-service, consider the impact on your budget. You may find that outsourcing self-service customer support to iQor makes the customer journey a win-win for your bottom line.

2. How many of your consumers currently use customer support channels?

If you have the budget and your customers already use multiple self-service support channels (e.g., email, online chat, existing knowledge base articles, etc.), you are ready to consider implementing self-service options. Seize the opportunity to stand out from your competitors. Provide memorable and optimized customer experiences through unique self-service channels personalized for your brand.

3. How will self-service support impact live customer service representatives?

The primary goal of self-service support is to meet the demands of the modern customer who expects to have access to support through digital methods 24/7/365. iQor can help you meet these expectations while realizing the benefits of providing the quality experiences customers seek and reducing your costs for customer care. It’s our business to set up and manage integrated customer support experiences so you don’t have to create new processes, utilize new resources or train frontline staff.

Experience the iQor Difference

This post provides insights into self-service customer support and its role in providing a great customer experience. Many customers’ first course of action is to turn to a digital tool to search for their own solution before reaching out to a live agent. Brands must meet customers on their digital platforms of choice with the information they seek. With the expanding role of digital in the customer experience regardless of age, this model of support is going to prove invaluable in the years to come.

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences through these and other support options. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

  • A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
  • A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
  • A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
  • The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
  • Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
  • The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers. 

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us directly to learn more about how we can help you create more smiles.

Agents Need Virtual Assistants Too

Posted on by Blake Graves

Virtually Perfect

Customer support teams at iQor have a new colleague that seems like a perfect fit—friendly, helpful, eager to improve and get this: available to everyone, at the same time, 24/7.

That’s better than perfect. It’s virtually perfect. The new hire is a chatbot, powered by a knowledge base of answers to typical customer questions. The data was compiled by experts at iQor and two client companies.

Businesses have deployed chatbots and other self-service tools with varying degrees of success. However, a virtual assistant/coach for customer care and product support professionals is something new.

It’s also something badly needed. Customers accustomed to instant responses from Alexa and Siri expect a fast fix to even a complex service issue. Agents need precisely targeted information at their fingertips so they can craft creative solutions quickly—before the customer hangs up and switches to another brand.

Born to Deliver Speedy Service

iQor’s virtual assistant, dubbed Q-Bot, was born in late September 2017, a brainchild of iQor’s Experience Innovation Lab. “We wanted to develop digital innovation that would automate shared knowledge and bring it up close to users quickly,” says Lukasz Lubas, a key member of the Bot development team based in Bydgoszcz, Poland. “It’s unique—artificial intelligence they can talk to.”

To use Q-Bot, agents type in keywords as they speak with the customer on the line. In seconds, Q-Bot can zip through thousands of pages of information, follow algorithms to find a solution and text it back to the agent.

How does a company go about creating a crackerjack silent partner for customer-facing support pros? Lukasz Lubas and his team learned some important lessons during Q-Bot’s beta testing.

Give Your Bot a Friendly Personality

Q-Bot is brainy, but it’s no smart mouth. Its responses are friendly and respectful. “There are some very nasty bots in the movies, but we built ours with a nice personality,” says Lubas with a laugh. “Our content philosophy is that everything Q-Bot says should feel like it comes from a friendly supervisor or helpful colleague.”

Choose the Content Team Carefully

That means the bot must use language and phrases that sound natural, not canned or mechanical. The problem is, bots aren’t born knowing how to speak human. They can only process information and apply algorithms. So a content team that understands technical knowledge and can also write conversationally is essential to transform what the bot “knows” into crisp, concise, actionable answers.

“Agents and techs are using this on the fly,” explains Lubas. “They have to be able to grasp the meaning of the words immediately, almost without thinking, and use the information to craft a solution for the customer.”

Teach Users How to Teach the Bot

Inevitably, and sometimes comically, bots will misfire the wrong answer. iQor’s Q-Bot has self-correcting tools to help. Every time it serves up an answer it asks for feedback: “Was that helpful?” Through the feedback Q-Bot “learns” which answers are right, growing its knowledge base/brain. When answers are labeled unhelpful, the content team works to improve Q-Bot’s knowledge, prioritizing the most frequently asked questions.

Keep Building a Bigger Brain

There are lots of plans for Q-Bot. “Eventually we could connect the bot to every knowledge base,” says Lubas. “We could eliminate a lot of information gaps, not only for agents and technicians but for all our iQorians. Engineers could search through countless internal and external databases using only one search engine. Anyone in any department could get data on demand.”

Keep the Path Open to Machine Learning

Q-Bot has many ways to grow. It could eventually be deployed externally as well as internally, and it could use voice as well as text. Lubas says, “At some point soon, we will augment basic process knowledge we have uploaded to its memory with Machine Learning techniques so Q-Bot can learn on its own. But first we want to show it how we want it to behave, apply rules and algorithms, and check if it is making an impact in iQor’s business.”

Virtually Endless Possibilities

Bots can be brilliant additions to customer and product support, but Artificial Intelligence can never replace human empathy and problem-solving skills. Learn how the entry of chatbots is changing the world of customer care, and how to integrate human and digital ecosystems for the best, most customer-centric solutions. Check out this related blog post, How Chatbots Can Transform the Customer Experience.