Customers have always been vocal about the service they receive. They are usually most vocal when complaining about a lack of service, their frustration at not having their issue resolved, not being heard, or being unable to contact anyone for help.  Contact centre agents are often faced with frustrated and angry customers who expect immediacy of resolution. The human agent, if not provided with the right tools, systems, and processes to do their job effectively, is set up to fail, no matter how capable and customer-centric they may be.  Conversational AI solutions, virtual agents, deployed within the contact centre environment

Our reliance on telecommunications to feed our digital habits has placed even greater emphasis on the standards of customer service these organisations deliver. When it comes to customer service, telecommunications companies around the world come in for a fair bit of criticism.  Whether it be a mobile, broadband/internet, telephone, satellite or cable services provider, customers are constantly venting their frustration at poor customer service. The lack of communication ability is ironic given ‘communication’ is so prominent in the industry name. Of course, the issue of poor customer service is not unique to the telecommunications industry. There are many other industries

We all love a good conversation. Whether it be an in-person real-person conversation or an online conversation with a “virtually created person”, we want the conversation to be engaging and flowing. Thankfully, the first generation “person-bots” (chat and voice bots), that were often robotic, stilted exchanges and only able to answer a set of prepared questions are no longer. Today, the virtual conversations we have with AI powered voice and chatbots are near to indistinguishable from any similar interaction with a real human. At least they should be.  Just like with a “good” human to human conversation we expect our

There’s lots of talk about the future of search. However, bringing AI capability to an organisation’s ‘search’ functionality, either on their website or internally, to better serve customers and employees doesn’t have to be the ‘future’. Today, organisations can use AI to power search and do so in a way that meets the risk, compliance and governance protocols and policies of that organisation. Often, users are faced with a long list of links, that may or may not meet the specificity of their search, the use of AI can fine tune and significantly improve the quality of links presented to

We’re living in the fast lane. No time to type. Say it and it must automatically be. Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant. We speak and our wish is (hopefully) granted. Quicker than writing. More natural to us than typing. We are all loving voice.  And when there’s talk there is (hopefully) listening. Today there are half a billion (2024) podcast listeners, up from 275 million just five years ago (2019), and they have over 4 million podcasts to choose from.  Everyone wants to talk but who is going to listen, and also answer. Voicebots that’s who. Today’s voicebot, powered by all

Relationships on a human level Nurturing relationships is critical to the survivability and sustainability of businesses. Connecting with customers on a human level, enables brands to create meaningful relationships and build loyalty, trust and advocacy.  No longer are customers willing to be treated as a transaction. They expect brand interactions and communication to be fully on their terms: immediate, personalised, and at a time that suits them.  Chatbots are a brilliant digital tool that enable brands to engage with customers 24×7, providing them with the immediacy and convenience they want. Technological advancements in AI have elevated chatbots to greater levels

It’s 2024. During the past decade, a staggering amount of data has been created every day and is continuing to increase at a year-on-year rate of about 22%. This year the volume of global data is predicted to reach 147 zettabytes according to IDC.  The world is information rich. People are time poor.  The number of people around the world who conduct a large part of their daily life on a device is growing daily, as is the breadth of activities that are now done online. Juniper research estimates that by 2026, in just two years’ time, 53% of the

Over the past 12 months there has been a shift in focus back to customer experience after a long period of AI being the main talk of the town. Customer experience is once again the topic dominating the beginning, middle and end of conversations we are having with businesses from all industries. That’s not to say it ever went away, but there was a tendency by organisations to lead conversations with AI, and customer or employee experience would follow.  This change has come about now that AI is a part of our everyday language, its capabilities and constraints well documented,

In my part of the world, the first flowers are out, telling me that soon it shall be spring. In the AI world, it seems to be late autumn and some frosty winds talking of winter. I say this because at the moment we have gotten ourselves into what seems to be a state of confusion and fear whenever AI doesn’t do want we think it should. This has led to many overreactions to AI fails, completely disproportionate to the supposed “offence” committed by it. When parcel delivery firm DPD’s chatbot when ‘off-script’ and wrote a poem about their bad

“Wharf Life newspaper was founded by Archant, a publishing company, to serve the area around Canary Wharf,” states ChatGPT 3.5, confidently, when asked who created this paper. It sounds plausible, going on to say: “Archant is a well-established media company with a history of creating local newspapers and publications”.   This demonstrates one of the issues inherent with AI large language models. They are prone to making things up. Wharf Life was founded by Massey Maddison Ltd in 2019 and has no connection to Archant – a business that used to run the East London And Docklands Advertiser before it

There are so many organisations having their say on ChatGPT, but not everything that is being said should be taken at face value. Companies wondering how they will be able to best leverage large language models (LLMs) – whether that be GPT, LaMDA, Galactica, Megatron-Turing or any other model – need to ensure they separate fact, fiction and fantasy. We’ve been innovating in the conversational AI space for nearly two decades and as technology continues to advance, we are constantly asking ourselves serious questions about how it may, or is, disrupting the value we can add. This drives us to

CCW is the “international conference and trade show for innovative customer dialogue”, which is a bit bulky a title, but much better than the original ”CallCenterWorld” which is no longer a good fit. Unfortunately, this is now easily confused with ContactCenterWorld, also called CCW. But I managed to get to the right event to support our German partner SOGEDES in matters related to Conversational AI. One very non-technical but nonetheless important takeaway from CCW is that Real life ain’t dead. CCW sported a hybrid concept, with all talks and product presentations available through live streams (and recordings after the event).  And still, many

I was born in 1966. That means I’m usually sorted into Generation X. But these days, looking back at the past 57 years, I think we should really rename it to Generation AI. It has been my generation having witnessed AI from its infancy to the breakthroughs we’ve seen in the past few years. And with a bit of luck most of us will witness how AI will be reshaping our societies – for good or bad – in the next 20 years. So let me give a recount of my encounters with AI throughout the decades. There’s no way