Communication services have evolved from vanilla voice services to modern, quality sensitive applications, high quality video calling and on demand service modifications. This has made it necessary for communications service providers (CSPS) to re-innovate how they engage with customers.
Systems and applications are becoming more agile, while intent-based networking (IBN) is adding more flexibility to delivering on-demand capabilities by removing the manual labor burden of traditional network management components such as routers and individual switches.., Any progression with customer engagement therefore cannot happen without CSPs taking radical innovative initiatives that make the engagement process extremely agile and competitive.
Why intent oriented customer engagement (IoCE)?
CSPs have been investing heavily in process automation, robotics operations and intuitive self-service technology to cut costs, service customers better and solve operational riddles. But, customers are still waiting from 24- 240 hours for a satisfactory closure of their issue. No matter the CSPs’ abundant technology, the customer is still going away with a potentially bad and prolonged experience for services that are more agile in nature..
Most emerging/future services, such as virtual reality/augmented reality services and innovative cross-industry solutions, need immediate CSP attention in terms of customer support. Consumers will make decision faster and faster in terms of choosing and changing what future services they want to use, and customer will not have the patience to go through the interactive voice response (IVR) menu or wait for customer support agents to understand the problem. This is where IoCE becomes a necessity. IoCE focuses on the customer’s intent in terms of the services they’re using/want to use. IoCE uses technology and cognitive design to build a customer engagement ecosystem that is focused on addressing core issues in an efficient way to reduce time, cost and effort.
What is IoCE
IoCE is a methodology for CSPs to engage with customers through real-time decisions instead of following present day methodology where customer requests and queries go through a fixed process flow involving systems, people and departments, taking considerable time and effort.
The basic principle of IoCE is to understand the core customer problem, in the customer’s language (clear, concise, and jargon free) and build underlying solutions to translate that problem into a technical workflow that works out a solution for the customer and initiates corrective actions in real-time. IoCE is driven by the intent of the customer to get a resolution, and not by past drivers such as cutting call lengths and costs. IoCE is based on following building blocks
End to end customer engagement
Application of AI and machine learning (ML)
Automation
Identity and role-based decision making
Security
Policy
Open API driven integration and data exchange
Natural language processing and analytics
The CSP is responsible for coming up with a response to the customer’s purpose for getting in contact by using the IoCE building blocks above.
Advantages of IoCE
IoCE essentially defuses any customer engagement issues practices at the root. Benefits include:
Rapid reduction in operational costs - Conventional methods of capturing customer service requests and then floating them from department to department is a highly bureaucratic, people dependant process involving multiple iterations of data analysis. With IoCE focusing on building and executing a workflow based on the customer’s intent, as well as analysing the underlying conditions of the operational ecosystem, operational costs are significantly lessened by reducing interactions, system access, data analysis and iterations.
Real time solutions - IoCE is designed on the principle of providing immediate customer resolutions, and thus addresses most customer requirements immediately.
Confident customer – The customer is confident in expressing themselves to the IoCE solution without worrying about technical language. They also don’t need to go through long IVR menus or suffer through irritating robotic responses.
Necessity for future services - The future of communications services involves rich media, time/error sensitive data flow, reliable service delivery and privacy. CSPs can’t afford to waste customers’ time with IVR, call wait time, or an agent that is trying to understand what’s going on.
Accuracy in functions - CSP customer service agents may often fail to understand their customers’ true purpose for engaging. IoCE is based on a principle of understanding the customer’s intent with accuracy with the resulting workflow finding the best possible response.
Always best action - IoCE takes the best action by considering all possibilities, therefore, it is s not based on option of next best action but on always best action.
How IoCE Works
IoCE involves taking the steps demonstrated in the figure below:
The customer can express themselves through voice, video, text or symbols (such as emoticons or linguistic symbols) . IoCE is required to understand all stated and unstated expression in the customer’s language and interpret it with accuracy. The resulting interpreted messages are then translated into messages that are specific to the mode of communications (be it online, email, chatbot, video etc) for the relevant scenario analysis to occur.
Processes and workflows are adjusted to pick appropriate process steps, datasets and underlying algorithm to address the issue. Workflow execution is driven by customer insights and augmented by ready to use deep learning interpretation as well as real-time machine learning capabilities.
Once the CSP has found its final response to the customer’s intent, this response is translated back in the natural language of the customer and expressed in a way that customer can understand appropriately.
Instead of looking at mere ratings on satisfaction scores, sentiment is measured through customer reactions towards the company response/resolution. If the sentiment score is low, then a conventional agent driven process can be triggered and automated feedback can be provided for self-learning and improvement.
The whole IoCE approach is automated, agent free, operating in real-time and avoids making customers wait through IVRs, or to face lengthy chatbot conversations by getting to the heart of what the customer needs.
IoCE is an evolutionary journey and as technology around edge computing, natural language interpretation, holographic communication, haptic communication and sentiment analysis improves, it will continue to provide effective evolutionary results.
We welcome your feedback on ‘Intent oriented customer engagement’ and the principles outlined in this article and therefore please let us know your thoughts by emailing editor@tmforum.org.
Dharmendra Misra, Wipro
