Digital Experience Transformation Needs AI and Knowledge

AI and Knowledge: Bread and Butter for Digital Experience Transformation

Digital experience equal customer experience, agent experience, and business experience

Digital experiences (DX) apply to customers (CX), customer service agents (AX), and a variety of business audiences (BX)—executives, managers, knowledge authors, and systems administrators, to name a few.

Businesses have to balance AX, BX, and CX in their DX transformation initiative (or, agent experience, business experience, customer experience in their digital experience transformation initiative) to improve its odds of success.

 

In other words, ax+bx+cx=dx™.

We call it the Theory of Experiences™.

 

This may sound orthogonal but AI and knowledge, or simply AI knowledge, is critical to improving all these three elements of experiences.

AI Knowledge and the Digital Customer (CX)

Customers reach out to contact centers to get answers. Yet, that is where businesses are failing them. Consumers mention the lack and inconsistency of knowledge among agents to be their biggest pain point in getting customer service, followed by the inability of websites to deliver answers through digital self-service. No wonder CX is stuck in reverse gear or neutral at best, per Forrester’s CX Index of the last few years—0% of companies offered “excellent service” in 2020, 2019 and 2018 and 2017, down from an astronomical 1% in 2016!

The answer clearly lies in deploying next-generation knowledge that is personalized, proactive, and infused with AI guidance that powers informed customer service through digital and traditional channels.

• Our clients report up to a 60% deflection of phone calls to digital self-service, powered by AI knowledge.

AI Knowledge and the Digital Agent (AX) engagement

There has been a massive generational shift in the contact center workforce with millennials and increasingly Gen Z taking over, especially in the frontline. These next-gen agents live digital, guided lives. They don’t pore over AAA maps or Thomas’ Guides for driving—they are used to getting guided by GPS. They are doing away with human financial advisors, leaving their 401K assets to “robo-advisors.” Moreover, they have low attention spans and hate training, choosing instead to learn or get guided, as they do their jobs.

The result? They struggle to answer customer questions, oftentimes improvising to come up with some answer or the other. In fact, 84% of contact center agents complained that their desktop tools do not help them in resolving customer issues, per Gartner. No wonder agent churn has hovered at 25% to 50%, depending on whom you ask, and agents have an average of ten hostile encounters with customers every day, according to Psychology Today.

Here’s the good news. AI knowledge can guide the agent (and the customer through the agent) in finding answers, resolving problems, and providing advice through best-practice conversations in a consistent way.

• One of our telco clients uses our AI reasoning technology to guide 10,000 contact center agents and associates in 600 retail stores. The consistent use of guidance helped it boost First-Contact Resolution (FCR) by 37% and Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 30%, while doubling agent speed-to-competency, transforming both AX and CX in the process!
• A global banking client was able to ascend from #3 to #1 in NPS, while reducing agent training time by half and reducing agent churn significantly, even while expanding to 11 countries!
• A fast-growing SaaS provider in the HR space improved consistency of answers by a whopping 62% and turbocharged speed-to- answer by 67%.

AI Knowledge and the Digital Business (BX)

Business Experience (BX) is a broad topic and it could span the entire lifecycle of technology consumption: Deployment, adoption and use by various stakeholders, including end-customers, agents, authors, contact center managers, and others, value creation, and value expansion.

We have made it easy for businesses to consume AI knowledge boldly and without risk through a no-charge, no-obligation production pilot called eGain Innovation in 30 Days™.

eGain Innovation in 30 Days

Innovation in 30 Days also comes with best-practice guidance from domain experts, for success. The rich, out-of-the-box capabilities in the solution, developed and refined over 20 years, and our agile services make it easy to create quick value from the solution upon deployment, while our managed services make it easy to use, maintain, analyze, and fine-tune the applications on an ongoing basis, a proven recipe for great BX!

Here are client examples:

• A multinational manufacturer of cleaning systems piloted eGain digital engagement and knowledge solutions as part of eGain Innovation in 30 Days. Happy with the results from the pilot and the hands-on guidance provided by domain experts, they moved forward with the eGain partnership. Next in their plan is to add advanced AI guidance for agents and the next level of real-time digital engagement with cobrowse.
• A toy manufacturing leader, a household name, used eGain Innovation in 30 Days to arm agents with contextual knowledge to serve consumers for its own brands and third-party brands that white-labeled its products. In the latter case, the knowledge had to be compliant with the agreements that the manufacturer had made with those companies. In addition, the company simultaneously tried out eGain Superchat™, the most comprehensive solution for real-time digital collaboration. Happy with the benefits from the production pilot, the manufacturer deployed both solutions to their entire agent pool!
• The value of AI and knowledge goes far beyond traditional contact center metrics in the customer experience domain. A leading multi-play CSP (communications service provider) was not only able to improve FCR but also reduced unwarranted handset exchanges and returns by 38% through knowledge-guided problem resolution on its website and in the contact center!

Conclusion

It is evident that AI knowledge is fundamental to transforming all aspects of DX. Perhaps, they are not just bread and butter to digital experience transformation but also kale and walnuts, for even better health and transformation!

This article was first published in KMWorld Magazine.