NICE’s Elizabeth Tobey on AI and Digital Self Service

hi I'm James McGuire and on today's e speaks we're talking about digital self-service Solutions including the role that artificial intelligence plays in these solutions to discuss that I'm joined by an industry expert with me is Elizabeth Toby head of marketing digital solutions for nice Elizabeth thank you for joining us today thanks for having me I'm really excited about this so at digital self-service Solutions there's a lot going on in this area a lot of new developments but before we dive in let's stop and Define the term when you refer to digital self-service what do you mean are we talking about a chat bot we are talking about a chat bot but it's more a yes and situation really what you think about when you think about digital self-services anything where a customer or a consumer is trying to help themselves so for us that's a pretty wide spectrum it can be anything from searching for an answer starting at Google to being on on a website and interfacing so that could be guidance even Knowledge Management and yes chat Bots and ivas and other interactions there but self-service can also flow in and out between bot Le or AI Le interactions or customer Le ones and that human agent interaction and back again so that's another really important angle to think about okay good good to know so uh of course AI is a big part of this I mean AI gets all the headlines these days I what role does artificial intelligence plan in automating customer interactions and providing a personalized experience through self-service Solutions yeah there's a lot of really great ways you can use AI these days to help collaborate with the customer and honestly with agents and employees throughout the company to help make these experiences better so if we think about going to a um a website and trying to ask a question or solve a problem we've historically had issues with Bots not being able to completely understand us or to give a specialized answer that's personalized to the actual question to really get to the heart of what we're asking that intent um with AI now we do have models to understand everyone's utterances and to be able to figure out what the best outcome will be there but also with this unlocking of generative AI technology those responses feel really humanlike and are very personalized specifically to what you're asking so that Paradigm of needing to search multiple times or ask multiple questions with a rigid sort of spectrum of query words or reading multiple knowledge-based FAQs that can go away and now we're going to be able to unlock this much more uh bot Le ail Le conversation that will actually get us the answers that we need interesting so and the other interesting thing about AI of course is it gets better over time so that that that answer in May might be even better when when it when is answered in October or November so it's it's always improving itself yeah and um one of the things we really think is very important about this is one having a unified platform that allows all interactions to feed into one centralized location but also to have knowledge be at the center of this and that means yes all of the data and all of the models that come in from all the historical information that we at nice have been collecting and refining for years and years and years but also the company itself your knowledge base your information what is true in January is going to be different in February March June as products change as needs change as different pieces of your systems change and your catalog evolves and having that change immediately impact the AI and have the AI be able to be utilizing that and immediately impacting the differences and the changes for both employees and for customers it's a huge difference for customer experience and for self-service to always be on point and up to date with that knowledge okay well well let's talk about customer experience I mean how do you ensure your digital self-service Solutions align with the company's overall customer experience strategy objectives yeah so that's a really interesting question and will be different for every company um and our point of view one of the things we like to start with is something that we call enlightened EXO which stands for experience optimization and this is a set of models that can go in and help figure out right from the beginning where there might be gaps in your knowledge gaps in your self-service and which ones you can plug fill add in these flows and are ready ready for automation that can help have the biggest impact to your business and again when I say impact that sounds kind of vague because what that means for every company will be slightly different so these models and this experience optimization can be tuned based on those needs and objectives and then you'll almost have a proof of concept and a proof of value to get started to not only understand where you're going to be able to get the biggest impact but also where there might be gaps that you may not have even realized when you started asking the question that have a more urgent need and that's a way to get started quickly and make sure that you're actually filling the needs of the business based on the value and the customer demand well let's talk about that that impact and how you measure success I mean how should the success and effectiveness of digital self-service Solutions be measured in terms of customer experience Improvement yeah again I don't think there's going to be a single answer there um I would say that it's again one of those yes and situations a lot of companies are struggling with uh hiring and retaining the amount of scale and the pressures there a lot of folks can't keep up so how do we make sure that we can facilitate that and help augment that to release that pain um everyone's trying to figure out how to be the most efficient in terms of cost and also we know that consumers are far more Savvy and have far higher expectations so it's important to not just think about the the nuts and bolts of the hiring and the cost structure but also about that loyalty that retention and so trying to Vector in on all of those pieces is really important but again some folks might be thinking about lowest handle time fastest time to resolution keeping those cost Downs for that customer or retention if you're a subscription business or if you're very very premium so that loyalty high expectations experien is the Paramount piece of your kpis being able to Vector towards that and with Enlighten our solution we can be able to help tailor and tune those different vectors based on what every company needs um based on those demands and individualize it and personalize that experience okay so it's a flexible solution uh how does nice ensure that digital self-service Solutions remain scalable and adaptable as the company grows and evolves yeah that's a great one and again not everyone is starting at the same place and we really think about it from an interactions point of view um yes there is the Paradigm of having seats that is not going to go away but the idea here is really about interactions so let's say that we want to take um 100% of your human Le interactions and some of those are not necessary for the agents to be spending their time on that cognitive load could be used on more impactful more resource heavy more really nuanced interactions so let's say we can deflect some of those and make them into those automated experiences with this AI Le digital self-service that in that way would be taking you know something that might be a couple hundred or couple thousand interactions but as that different workflow scales and catches on and is useful and is impactful and is maybe even preferred by your customers you'll start to see that scale up and it's that kind of flexibility when you think about number of interactions that allows you to start small and go big quickly um or vice versa and it gives you a lot more flexibility and a lot more understanding of where you're going to go when you're even thinking about scale and resourcing and forecasting H interesting well what about what about certain demographics in among the audience I mean how can businesses address the potential challenges of customer resistance to digital self-service especially among the less techsavvy demographics some people would prefer not to deal with with digital self-service yeah I don't think it's going to be an issue of one thing over the other um I think we are moving more and more into a world where choice and personal preference is very important and I think that from an employee and a customer angle that is being embraced more and more by companies everywhere and so this isn't really about forcing folks into something that they may or may not want to interact with but more giving them the options that work with their life and their time and their preferences so the person who wants to call because that is what they like to do or that is what they need to do that's great someone who only has time for emails or prefers to do their own work and their own homework on a website we want to be able to facilitate that same as using whatever Channel you have of choice whether it's business chat whether it's instant messaging on Instagram uh we want to be able to have all of those channels that make sense for every company available for those customers so it's not a holistic or one- siiz fits-all solution it's really about turning on and empowering those different channels and selections that make sense for the customer company Paradigm and relationship to strengthen that Bond um really if you're not being able to build that relationship in the long term you're going to falter and so for us that's really what we're looking for is more of freedom of choice and to serve the way you need and that even does mean that preferences will change based on time of day and even part of life for me sometimes I would rather talk on the phone for other companies and other issues I would rather do it myself or just deal with it on email so again even through one individual person those preferences can change Moment by moment and I would imagine they they would all change over the course of months and quarters I mean who wants to be in the phone and who who doesn't want to be in the phone that percentage could change over the course of the year or over a multi-year clearly exactly and you know trying to delay a delivery that I need or you know deflective subscription or upgrade or downgrade that might be something that I can do more asynchronously and leisurely but if I realize I've messed something up and there's an urgent pressing need yeah maybe I'm going to be grabbing chat or wanting to find a bot that can talk to me immediately or even picking up the phone all of those things we want to be able to facilitate and make sure that that we have those experiences for folks at all times it's really on their demand I think that word asynchronous is a really interesting word what you mean in other words people don't need it in real time I might send if an email because they don't need an answer for a few hours or they need chat immediately so it it needs to happen right now so that that asynchronous seems really really core to this yeah and honestly even with the real time chat that you think about I still think about that in a persistent asynchronous way if you think about talking with friends and family um you don't have that situation where if somebody doesn't respond to you in two minutes you say are you still there I'm sorry I'm logging off this is over and then you have to start from the beginning um if if a meeting happens if a call comes in if your dog needs to go for a quick walk uh we want that interaction to stay persistent and be able to be picked up where you left off because life is life and we want to make sure that doesn't get in the way of great customer experiences I like the way you put that uh that's a lot of good stuff uh where could people go if they want to learn more is there a web page yes so we have it set up um it's nice.com goyen digital so that is where you'll be able to find more information and be able to reach out to us if you have any questions that's great Elizabeth thank you so much for sharing your expertise today and I hope you come back and talk with us again sometime it was a pleasure anytime

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