Tag: High Complexity Customer Interactions

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. 

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.

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.