Siri Is Shining A Spotlight On Virtual Agents | Forrester Blogs

Siri, Apple’s voice-activated virtual agent (VA), has raised the profile of this technology category. Siri provides the right engagement paradigm: ask a question and get an answer - a right answer. Because of Siri, companies focused on increasing customer satisfaction scores to move the needle on customer loyalty often ask “Why can’t we offer Siri-like experiences on our web or mobile sites to help customers ask questions in their own words?”

Let’s look at the facts: customers today are trained to go online to get answers to their questions by navigating a company’s FAQ list, or by typing in keywords to surface the right piece of content. In fact, 66% of customers use this channel. But at 51%, the satisfaction ratings for this channel are the lowest of all the communication channels that Forrester tracks. It’s because keeping content in line with customer demand and making it easily accessible to customers is very hard to do.

Enter the world of virtual agents. These solutions use natural language processing and artificial intelligence to greet a customer and to serve up the right answer to their question, which is asked using a customer’s natural speech pattern, not just keywords. These answers could be a straightforward response, knowledge base content, data (like “Did my check clear?”), or the result of a transaction (like “Book me on the next flight home out of San Francisco”). With the right tuning and integration to back-end systems, virtual agents are able to personalize and contextualize customer interactions. In fact, Gartner Research predicts that by 2015, 50% of online customer self-service search activities will be done by virtual agents.

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ibmsocialbiz: New  decision management software includes social analytics.  New decision management software from IBM uses “entity analytics” to combine and analyze big data from diverse data sets. Insights from big data can be embedded into every business decision in a matter of seconds, Additionally, the software measures the impact of social networking channels and factors this information into organisational decision making. This social network analytics  takes sentiment analysis a step further by analysing who the influencers are around any given topic, who exactly is listening, and why people should care. This feature makes it possible to factor in how customers behave, what they say, and how big their sphere of influence is in a social network. The ability to incorporate social network analytics into the predictive models used in Analytical Decision Management helps organisations identify social leaders who can influence behaviour. via Biztech2.com  Image source )

ibmsocialbiz:

New  decision management software includes social analytics.  New decision management software from IBM uses “entity analytics” to combine and analyze big data from diverse data sets. Insights from big data can be embedded into every business decision in a matter of seconds, Additionally, the software measures the impact of social networking channels and factors this information into organisational decision making. This social network analytics  takes sentiment analysis a step further by analysing who the influencers are around any given topic, who exactly is listening, and why people should care. This feature makes it possible to factor in how customers behave, what they say, and how big their sphere of influence is in a social network. The ability to incorporate social network analytics into the predictive models used in Analytical Decision Management helps organisations identify social leaders who can influence behaviour. via Biztech2.com  Image source )

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Watson and the Future of Customer Service

Your Call Is Very Important to Us What Watson means for the future of customer service
Source: CRM.com

If you watch the TV quiz show Jeopardy!, you probably saw a computer named Watson go where no machine has gone before: winning a recent match against Jeopardy! champions.

IBM’s Watson is something new: a computing system that analyzes human language and provides specific answers to complex questions at rapid speeds. On Jeopardy!, Watson time and again correctly answered the kind of subtle, difficult questions that the quiz show is famous for. An example, from a Jeopardy! category called Literary Character APB:

Host Alex Trebek: Wanted for a 12-year crime spree of eating King Hrothgar’s warriors; Officer Beowulf has been assigned to the case.

Watson: Who is Grendel? [the correct answer]

Watson represents a tremendous breakthrough in the ability of computers to understand natural language that humans use to capture and communicate knowledge as opposed to specially designed or encoded language just for computers. It can evaluate the equivalent of hundreds of millions of pages of material–books, reports, articles, and so on–in three seconds or less. It is not stymied by intricate wordplay. In the above example, modern crime lingo was used to pose a question about a literary classic (Beowulf) from 1,000 years ago. Watson was unphased.

Think of the potential uses of this amazing technology. Watson could serve as the foundation of a digital medical assistant, helping doctors diagnose diseases and make treatment recommendations in real time. It could give bankers the ability to get answers quickly to incredibly difficult questions about strategic decisions and market changes.

Carolyn Heller Baird (cbaird@us.ibm.com) is the global CRM research leader for IBM’s Institute for Business Value.

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IBM Social Business Jam - Overview Join us February 8-11, 2011 for an important dialog about the growing influence of social technology in business.   Social Business Jam Topics The Social Business Jam will address a core set of topics that organizations are seeking to better understand: Building the Social Business of the Future What new social innovations can we theorize? How can social technologies help to deliver value through core business processes (R&D, HR, Finance etc).? Forum Host: Alistair Rennie, General Manager, IBM Collaboration Solutions Building Participatory Organizations Through Social Adoption How can we align our organizational model, culture, and leadership social business adoption? How do we quantify the value of Social Business for the enterprise? Forum Host: Denis Brousseau, Vice President and Global Leader, Organization and People Using Social to Understand and Engage with Customers How does Social Business impact the future of CRM, marketing or communications What are the implications for the way we manage brands? Forum Host: Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications What Social means for IT How can IT organizations get these social technologies implemented in organizations? What technology options are there available to enable this transformation? Forum Host: Patrick Toole, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of IBM Identifying Risks and Establishing Governance What are the real risks of Social Business for the enterprise? What are the right policies and strategies to manage social interactions internally and externally? Forum Host: Harriet Pearson, Vice President, Security Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer

IBM Social Business Jam - Overview

Join us February 8-11, 2011 for an important dialog about the growing influence of social technology in business.  

Social Business Jam Topics

The Social Business Jam will address a core set of topics that organizations are seeking to better understand:

Building the Social Business of the Future

  • What new social innovations can we theorize?
  • How can social technologies help to deliver value through core business processes (R&D, HR, Finance etc).?
  • Forum Host: Alistair Rennie, General Manager, IBM Collaboration Solutions

Building Participatory Organizations Through Social Adoption

  • How can we align our organizational model, culture, and leadership social business adoption?
  • How do we quantify the value of Social Business for the enterprise?
  • Forum Host: Denis Brousseau, Vice President and Global Leader, Organization and People

Using Social to Understand and Engage with Customers

  • How does Social Business impact the future of CRM, marketing or communications
  • What are the implications for the way we manage brands?
  • Forum Host: Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications

What Social means for IT

  • How can IT organizations get these social technologies implemented in organizations?
  • What technology options are there available to enable this transformation?
  • Forum Host: Patrick Toole, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of IBM

Identifying Risks and Establishing Governance

  • What are the real risks of Social Business for the enterprise?
  • What are the right policies and strategies to manage social interactions internally and externally?
  • Forum Host: Harriet Pearson, Vice President, Security Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer

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Software helps clients analyze information fed from different sources and use what’s learned to improve business performance, according to IBM. New analytics applications are available for financial services, health care, life sciences and the government sector. (via IBM Adds Industry-Specific Business Intelligence Offerings)

Software helps clients analyze information fed from different sources and use what’s learned to improve business performance, according to IBM. New analytics applications are available for financial services, health care, life sciences and the government sector. (via IBM Adds Industry-Specific Business Intelligence Offerings)

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