Strategies for using digital agents to delight customers Drive business benefits through a digital agent framework, services and automation

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Demand for online business is growing sharply. Running an efficient call center that can accommodate all channels of communication is more important than ever. Thanks to technology such as chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive services processing, call centers are undergoing a digital revolution. Digital agents, which leverage these and other technologies, can help organizations evolve their customer service delivery model to provide a better online experience for both customers and employees.

In uncertain times, enterprises must provide always-on customer service, immediate answers to customer inquiries and, when required, seamless transfers to human call center agents.

Digital agents enable organizations to realize time and cost savings, as well as deliver integrated and persistent interactions by automating operations such as customer support, sales and other tasks. Digital agents deployed using a well-structured framework can delight customers by resolving issues quickly and efficiently.

Improving customer interactions

Enterprises that engage directly or indirectly with customers through customer service platforms and call centers are struggling to find cost-efficient ways to meet the demand. Organizations need to reduce, or better yet, eliminate interactions that don’t generate revenue. Automating processes with digital agents can help.

Customers expect relevant, accurate and real-time results, including first-contact resolution, and they want a seamless experience. Bots, an essential component of a digital agent platform, facilitate conversations and interactions that resolve customer needs. However, enterprises face many challenges in implementing bots effectively, including:

• Understanding what interactions among the channels of engagement can be handled automatically by a bot

• Knowing how to artificially replicate the patterns of human interactions in machine learning models that can understand human speech or text

• Knowing how to ensure the bot answers customers’ questions accurately on the first try

Complicating the picture is that customers expect to initiate contact from a variety of devices — such as smartphones, tablets or computers — and bots must support all channels. Done correctly, enterprises can use chatbots and digital agents to move interactions from human to digital channels, reduce customer service costs and create a better omnichannel experience.

Crafting a digital agent framework

Given the complexity of deploying digital agents, enterprises need a strategic digital agent framework.

Ideally, the digital agent framework should be deployed on a cloud-based containerized microservices platform that abstracts components, allowing plug and play for different services. The framework shown in Figure 1 comprises a set of components and layers that serve as a customer engagement platform with the goal of improving interaction with customers.

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The digital agent framework should support multiple interaction channels, including chatbots, live chat, text messaging, email, social media and IoT. This omnichannel connector framework also should allow for seamless interactions between bots and personal digital assistants such as Siri and Alexa.

Once the interaction channels are established, the framework should be built to include services such as identity management and security, and it must integrate with core functions such as orchestration. And, of course, the whole effort will have to accommodate data from multiple sources.

Using this framework simplifies the job of embracing advanced technologies such as AI and natural language processing, which are viewed as vital to getting the most out of digital agents. It should be noted that a digital agent platform can provide benefits not just for interactions with customers, but also can be deployed by organizations for employee interactions as well as for intelligent and dynamic enterprise systems management (ESM) purposes.

Deploying a virtual agent service

An essential element of any customer interaction platform is the deployment of a virtual agent service that integrates essential operational components such as enterprise security and reporting, while supporting bot and digital agent activities (see Figure 2).

Keeping in mind that knowledge is key to the success of any cognitive project, the service should be designed to maintain a constant flow of accurate and up-to-date information. The service addresses many of the key themes emphasized in this paper, such as making operations more automated and improving the efficiency of customer interactions.

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Figure 1. Digital agent framework

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These are the four pillars of a virtual agent service:

• Application managed service, ITOM. The virtual agent service needs to fit into the overall framework of IT and operations management (ITOM). At DXC Technology, our digital agent service is often part of an application managed service, and the virtual agents we implement for customers are hosted in the cloud, allowing for greater scalability and extensibility.

• AI and machine learning. The deployment of virtual agents utilizing machine and assisted learning for changing user behavior provides a defined knowledge management strategy to turn information into cognitive solutions.

• Rollout factory. A virtual agent service needs to be tailored to the organization and its needs. DXC applies a framework and methodology that brings such a service into production using a template localized to individual markets.

• Design and build, integration and use cases. Customer interaction data should be collected and used to predict customer expectations. Again, integration is key, as the service should be integrated into existing support processes and infrastructure.

Automating the customer experience interaction

DXC’s approach is to deliver digital agent solutions as a fully automated, end-to-end service powered by machine learning and semantic matching that enables instant responses to customer queries. A smart assistant use case shows the flow from the customer request to the bot response as illustrated in Figure 3.

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Figure 2. Virtual agent service

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The digital agent provides content, FAQs and decision trees (conversation flow) to create customer interactions that are close to what they would get with a human. The solution is augmented with smart self-service capabilities using advanced natural language processing technology that helps analyze and interpret customer queries to enable fast and accurate answers.

Digital agents can provide customers with friendly, accurate and consistent service 24x7 from any channel. Bot technology has powerful natural language processing that predicts the best answers to questions.

Digital agent chat logs move with the customer’s interactions, so conversations started with a digital agent can be continued by live call center agents without the need to repeat information, which means the interaction is seamless. A digital agent assessment framework helps enterprises understand which use cases can be automated and answered by the digital agent.

Because some subjects are too touchy to handle with digital agents, it is critical to be able to quickly transfer the conversation to a live chat, so the solution should be seamlessly integrated with contact center platforms such as Avaya and Genesis and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms such as Salesforce, ServiceNow or Microsoft Dynamics.

Driving business benefits

The smart and strategic deployment of digital agents can provide immense business benefits. Above all, they deliver improved customer interactions, which drives increased customer satisfaction. Other benefits include lower operating costs and reduced headcount through increased automation. The initial implementation of a sophisticated system can be accomplished in as little as 12 weeks.

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Figure 3. Smart assistant FAQ use case using a smart bot (voice)

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Another significant benefit is the mitigation of call center and customer service costs by triaging common requests. Also, running services in the cloud provides the ability to elastically scale for seasonal spikes. Services can be integrated with front-end and back-end systems either in the cloud or on premises and can be securely integrated with social media such as Facebook Messenger and Slack.

Enhancing knowledge management and analytics capabilities is another benefit from the rollout of digital agents. A properly deployed system will allow enterprises to record every customer interaction into a customer service platform to train a machine learning model.

Combining data and services then creates new ways to connect with customers. Thanks to the development of a new generation of cognitive services, organizations can use predictive models and learning capabilities to forecast what customers will do. Enterprises can also understand user preferences and build customer profiles while conversing in multiple languages.

Digital agents in action

At DXC, customers that have deployed bots and digital agents typically deflect 35 percent of human interactions to digital agents at over 95 percent accuracy (meaning only 5 percent must be handed back to humans). Digital agent conversations are seamless, and these deployments have greatly reduced the need for expensive investments in larger customer support teams. Digital agents also provide an omnichannel experience. Customers can start interacting with a digital agent on a mobile device and seamlessly move the interaction over to a tablet or laptop.

One large government agency DXC worked with to deploy digital agents was able to reduce costly voice interactions while providing users with more efficient, seamless and consistent experiences. DXC used a tiered omnichannel approach that included a chatbot solution to respond to customer queries, self-service options, virtual assistants, live chats and callback capabilities. The agency experienced a 60 percent call-deflection rate in the first 6 months and an 80 percent first-contact resolution.

A key to this successful deployment was integration of the digital agent solution with the agency’s existing service request management system, as well as with other systems such as Microsoft Office 365. Digital agents were able to quickly access forms, scripts, FAQ articles, videos and a knowledge base. In addition, DXC provided the client with a hosting infrastructure in a private cloud environment.

Today’s customers expect and appreciate efficient interactions and quick resolutions to their queries. Enterprises can deploy digital agents to automate the customer experience, making for seamless interactions. A properly conceived and deployed platform can reduce waiting time and let enterprises respond to customers instantly. By automating responses to common queries, organizations can focus on value-added and revenue-generating interactions. The bottom line is reduced costs and happier customers.

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About the author

Yves Ruaux is a digital consumer goods and retail strategist at DXC Technology who helps large and midsize customers overcome everyday challenges with smart customer services. He evangelizes data-driven and customer-centric approaches across savvy initiatives to deliver smart solutions to problems. Yves has extensive experience in both strategy and architecture design across multiple industries and technologies.

Learn more at www.dxc.technology

About DXC TechnologyDXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) helps global companies run their mission critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. With decades of driving innovation, the world’s largest companies trust DXC to deploy our enterprise technology stack to deliver new levels of performance, competitiveness and customer experiences. Learn more about the DXC story and our focus on people, customers and operational execution at www.dxc.technology.

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