conversational intelligence and better customer conversations

CONVERSATIONAL INTELLIGENCEEnabling better customer conversations and outcomes

Neil MovoldFounder & CEO

InsightNG

The challenge: lack of insight

A COGNITIVE BUSINESS IS A THINKING BUSINESS

Increasing lack of actionable insights!

35% of the top 5,000 global companiesregularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets (source: Gartner)

65% executives agree increasingly

complex business environment has made it more difficult to base decisions on purely “functional” factors such as cost, quality or efficiency (source: gyro/FORTUNE

Knowledge Group)

61% executives agree when making decisions, human insights must precede hard analytics (source: gyro/FORTUNE

Knowledge Group)


Customer value is built on conversations

These conversations holdinvaluable insights that traditional approaches to managing corporate memory cannot deal with and surface.

Conversations build the relationships that drivecustomer value and experience.

Conversations are increasingly taking on digital forms, such as emails, documents, social media, voice or video – adding moreunstructured dark data to the growing corporate memory.


Identifying emerging issues before they escalate

Companies need to leverage all their internal, external and publicly available conversational data to identify issues as quickly as possible toget ahead of and avoid

o negative press,

o huge penalties by industry regulators; and most importantly,

o to protect the safety of their customers.

Identifying emerging issues occurring withinconversations before they escalate helps protect

o reputations,

o customer loyalty and

o revenue.


The digital revolution continues globally – phone traffic drops 12%

Source: dimension data

Telephone

IVR

Automated Services

Email

Web Chat

Social Media – FB etc.

Smartphone App

SMS Text

Video Chat

Service Kiosk support

Website (peer-to-peer systems)

Customer engagement is shifting across available channels as new technology adoption increases and expectations evolve.

Developing models that can reveal different and often hiddenaspects of an individual creates insights that can be used to

o deepen relationships,

o shape initiatives; and

o drive innovation.


Corporate memory is increasingly made up of conversational dark data!

BUSINESS CRITICAL DATA

15%

REDUNDANT, OBSOLETE AND TRIVIAL, OR ROT DATA

DARK DATA, LURKING FAR BENEATH THE LINE OF SIGHT

AND INCREASING 52%

48%

?

?

?

?

? ??

??

?

BUSINESS CRITICAL DATA15%

REDUNDANT, OBSOLETE AND TRIVIAL, OR ROT DATA

DARK DATA - LURKING FAR BENEATH THE LINE OF SIGHT AND INCREASING! 52%

48%

Veritas: The Databerg Report 2016

seeing ALL data as a strategic asset

?

??


Corporate memory and blind spots are affecting decision making

What are your key business metrics and where are

blind spots in making decisions

that can be better informed through insight derived from your organisation’s

previously untapped sources of

unstructured conversational dark data

and dark knowledge (i.e. tacit knowledge)?


Corporate amnesia is an increasing problem to conversational intelligence

Corporate amnesia is the loss ofaccumulated corporate knowledge due to:

o employee departures

o changing workforce demands(i.e. distributed workforce across the business including freelance and remote work)

o a fragmented IT landscape


Findability and access to all conversational knowledge is paramount!

Source: Jive Software global survey March 2017

Only 20% to 30% of all corporate memorycreated is every used, creating huge riskover time as stakeholder disconnects across silos undermine the data’s value


Humans excel at

reasoning, deep thinking, solving complex problems

BUT…

the human ability to read, analyze, and process huge volumes of data, both structured and unstructured is quite poor

and…

humans are time constrained, subject

to personal limits and limited by unconscious biases that influence the decisions we make


Why is processing human data different?

Human data is growing 10x faster than traditional business data.

It is mostly unstructured dark data andknowledge made up of ideas, is diverse and has context:

Ideas don’t exactly match like structured data does as they generally have distance

Human information is not static – it’s dynamicand lives everywhere

Traditional approaches (e.g. BI, analytics) fail to process this valuable data.

cognitive approaches are needed!

A new approach: using cognitive computing


Enriching years of customer interaction and domain experience

Cognitive computing technology can be used to create a customerknowledge layer that enriches datacollected over years of customer interaction and domain experience.

The platform combines data (e.g. CRM, care or account management systems)with files from various internal and external sources.


Continuously enriching and dynamically adding value

Once the information has been enriched, the cognitive technology continuously applies

o data enrichments,

o predictive recommendation algorithms

o unsupervised semantic learning

The process is both continuous and dynamic.


Every interaction educates and increases effectiveness

Unlike other predictive analytics that are rules-based and static, cognitive technology is

o self-learning,

o real-time and

o contextual.

Every interaction and result educates the platform, helping it become even moreeffective over time.


Impacting the business within weeks

Since the technology is lightweightand quick to deploy, cognitive computing can impact business revenues within weeks.

This is achieved using a compressedplatform-based methodology.


Ways people think and demonstrate their cognitive abilities

The scope of cognitive computing consists of

o engagement,

o decision-making,

o and discovery.

These 3 capabilities are related to the ways people think and demonstrate their cognitiveabilities in everyday life.

source: IBM


Extending the boundaries of human cognition rather than replace

Cognitive systems are powerful for augmentinghuman intelligence by creating a new partnershipbetween people and intelligent computers that

o enhances,

o scales and

o accelerates

human expertise and conversational understanding.

The true value of cognitive systems is how they augment and amplify human abilities.

Helping us think and perform our jobs better, faster, not do it for us.

source: IBM


Cognitive systems:

1) look like a tool but acts like an Assistant

Bringing the ability to mimic the human brain, to learn, to understand in context

2) engage in a conversation: “Have you considered this?”

Historical systems were designed to answer a simple question that we posed directly

3) uncover relationships across all datasources

Understanding and filtering by context to find patterns in the data that you didn’t know existed, new perspectives - the surprises!

4) constantly learns

From new information and new interactions – as you use the system, it gets better

Source: Augmenting Human Intelligence, Dr. John Kelly

In summary: helping us think and perform better, faster!

Creating value: the cognitive business journey


Cognitive decision makers worldwide say outcomes from cognitive initiatives exceed their expectations

62%GROW

KNOWLEDGEFROM DATA

ENHANCE EXPERTISE

LEARN AND ADAPT

Cognitive Business = Digital Business + Digital Intelligence

A cognitive business is an organization that harness cognitive computing to create knowledgefrom data to expand virtuallyeveryone’s expertise, continuallylearning and adapting to outthinkthe needs of the market.

A cognitive business is a business that thinks

source: IBM


Find and understand

your structured and

unstructured data

wherever it resides

Cost

Simultaneously lower

costs, mitigate risks and

support compliance

Risk

Maximize data value

and drive better

business outcomes

Value

The cognitive business value proposition

Cognitive solutions fit best when they align with and equally enable loweringcosts, lowering risk and increasing value.


Engaging higher in the business value pyramid

A cognitive business creates new and greater value based on four business patterns where infused cognitive services, at key moments of processes and decisions, can improve business outcomes:

1) improve interactions

2) better engagement

3) better advice

4) react faster

BusinessOutcomes

DataAnalytics

CognitiveContent Search

Corpus of Records

Unstructured

Info Mgt &DataGov

Systems of Records

Structured

CollectiveIntelligence

CognitiveEngagement

DATA CONTENT


Scaling expertise has the biggest return on improving the customer experience.

It’s not just about automation for the simple stuff - expertise is hard to develop and retain.

Why? Expertise-driven work is usually judgment-oriented - it involves dealing with ambiguity, which requires humans and software to work together.

Smarter process infused withcognitive is the most effectiveway to scale expertise and conversational intelligence.

Clerical

20-30%▪ Payroll

▪ Simple procurement

▪ Billing & Collections

Transactional

40-50%Focus on productivity

▪ Order to cash

▪ Procurement Claims

processing

▪ Supply Chain

▪ Account Opening

Expertise-driven10-30%Focus on Decision Support▪ Sales & Customer Service▪ Marketing & Promotions▪ Investigations ▪ Financial Trading ▪ Recruiting

Business Operations by Work Type

Impa

ct o

n Cu

stom

er E

xper

ienc

e

Improving customer experience with smarter process + cognitive

source: IBM


Cognitive Computing

(e.g. Conversational Intelligence)

Capa

bilit

ies

Explore Analyze InterpretBe

nefit

s Reveal new opportunities

Analytics Based on Unstructured Content

Expose actionable insights from content

Productivity

Reve

nue

Improve outcomes across business functions

Reduce time spent looking for info – improved productivity

Scale expertise

General “Findability” and Unified Views

Cognitive maturity model – benefits and capabilities for businesses

What is it?: Conversational intelligence


Key points of value include:

1) Focuses on simultaneously lowering cost, lowering risk &increasing customer value

i. Personalizes from interactions: leverages natural language & personality insightsii. Learns and adapts with every interaction, continually building a “relationship

memory” for each customer, creating a highly personalized relationship

2) Proactive first and reactive where appropriate

i. Identifying issues and potential future issues as they are unfoldingii. Lower reaction based negative customer experiences and brand damageiii. Facilitate more efficient business processes more individualized customer

experiences

3) Non-intrusive to the current business workflow / process

i. Infused inline to current workflow and use pre-built where applicableii. No need to build a net-new application to benefit from pragmatic CI

4) Implementation can take a staged approach to maximize ROI andreduce time-to-value – tech is lightweight and quick to deploy

ConversationalIntelligence

Convergence of Key Enablers

The key enablers and value proposition for Conversational Intelligence


Listening, learning and acting when necessary

CustomerClient Executive

Conversational Intelligence Engine

TranscriptsTranscripts

Systems of Record

Conversation flow (email, voice, video)

ConversationalIntelligence Tone Analyzer

Natural Language Classifier

Natural Language Understanding

Conversational Intelligence augments existing business processes and workflow.

It just listens, learns, understands and acts when necessary as any experienced human would do if they overheard something that would undervalue a customer experience.


Trained with many skills

A Conversational Intelligence solution can be trained to :

o Listen to both sides of a conversation

o Understand when the tone of the words used indicate problems in the conversation

o Listen out for key words that indicate problems arising from either side of the conversation

o Be aware of time-critical components of a conversation

o Highlight to an individual in a position of authority / responsibility when issues arise

o Listen to thousands of conversations while onlyescalating the ones that need attention

o Be discrete – not disrupting engaged conversations or require any special attention from the active parties participating


Use case: Insurance industry email based renewal process

Insurance companies increasingly use emails to notify customers of upcoming insurance renewals, often leading to a threaded conversation between client rep and customer.

Insurance is competitive and churn is a known issue related to human constraints influencing the renewal process.

In this scenario, the enablers focus and provide:

o Timeline – monitoring activities and indicators to ensure time dependent outcomes are achieved as expected

o Relationships – monitoring and analyzing all contextually related email conversations, individualsand relationships involved

o Cognitive – watching for changes in the nature of the conversation, such as an individual’s tone, that could impact achieving a successful outcome


Expiry

Customer (action with Company)

Company (waiting on Customer)

Key enabler – active timeline management

Initial renewal email sent to

customer

2 week non-response

notification

1 week until cover lapses

Policy expired!

Unhappy customer!

Easy to use interactivevisual timeline of an ongoing conversation provides immediatenotification of issues and the ability to drilldown into the details.


Key enabler – cognitive assessment of natural language tone

Drilling down through the “Unhappy customer” notification on the interactive timeline shows why the critical alert was raised.

Through automated real-timenatural language toneanalysis, it is clear that the customer is unhappy that he finds himself currently uninsured.


Key enabler – relationships of key stakeholders

Conversations identify thepeople who are an organisation’s ultimate asset.

Also, as some customers have multiple interactions with your organisation, it is invaluable to understandthese relationships to leverage their collective value.

An interactive visual map can be explored to understand how customers interact with your organisation.

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]


Use case summary: Insurance industry email based renewal process

By deploying a conversational intelligence solution into the email based renewal process, the following outcomes can be achieved:

o Common factors behind client churn become visible, leading to remedies and improvements

o Distressed renewals are identified early and corrective actions are applied

o Time to cash is improved

o Identifying new opportunities for personalizedservice

o Relationships between the organisation and customer improve as a result of having the proper amount, consistency and quality of conversations


Conversational Intelligence built on cognitive technologies can lower costs, lower risk and increase value by:

1) Enhancing engagement through personalized understanding2) Scaling and elevating human expertise3) Infusing products and services with intelligence4) Enabling automated, intelligent business processes5) Powering disruptive data discovery and exploration methods

Neil [email protected]+64 21 749898

Get in touch to learn more about how Conversational Intelligence can enable better customer conversations and outcomes

ConversationalIntelligence

Thanks goes to Certus Solutions Limited for collaborating on this solution approach

http://www.certussolutions.com/

http://www.certussolutions.com/