Tag Archives: AI

Job Search

Navigating the Job Market in an AI-Dominant World

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We’ve talked about the impact of AI in a couple of different posts already, but one area that we’ve not really explored is how AI can impact a job search. We all know that AI will have an impact on jobs in the near future, but what about right now? Can AI already help with a job search?

In today’s rapidly advancing technological landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) has infiltrated nearly every industry. From healthcare to manufacturing, finance to entertainment, AI tools have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, significantly transforming the global job market. So, how does one adapt to this AI-driven job landscape? Let’s explore some key strategies.

Understand the AI Landscape

First, gain a comprehensive understanding of AI and its impact on the job market. Familiarize yourself with its applications across different industries. AI is not just about data science or coding; it has broad implications in fields like marketing, HR, sales, and customer service. Knowledge about AI and its tools will help you understand where opportunities lie and what skills are in demand.

Continuous Learning and Skill Enhancement

As AI continues to evolve, so should your skills. Make a commitment to lifelong learning. Upskill and reskill as per the industry demands. Online courses, webinars, workshops, and seminars are excellent resources to stay updated. Areas such as data analysis, machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, and AI ethics are particularly relevant. However, remember that soft skills like critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence, which AI cannot replicate, are equally vital.

Leverage AI in Your Job Search

AI has revolutionized the job-hunting process. AI-powered tools like job-matching platforms, resume screeners, and interview bots have become commonplace. Utilize these tools to your advantage. For instance, optimize your resume with keywords relevant to the job description, ensuring it passes through AI-based applicant tracking systems (ATS). Practice mock interviews using AI tools to build confidence and improve your performance.

Networking in the Digital Age

Networking remains a critical component of job searching, and it has taken a digital turn. Platforms like LinkedIn use AI to suggest connections, recommend jobs and even nudge you to reach out to contacts. Use these features to build and maintain professional relationships. Engaging in online forums, communities, and social media groups related to your field can also provide valuable opportunities.

Prepare for AI-Augmented Roles

Rather than replacing humans, AI is more likely to augment human roles. This means tasks will be divided into what AI can do (analytical, repetitive tasks) and what humans can do better (creative, strategic tasks). Be ready to work in tandem with AI tools. This could involve managing or interpreting AI output or even troubleshooting when things go awry.

Showcase Your AI Understanding

Highlight your AI-related skills and understanding in your job applications. Whether it’s a certification in a relevant course, a project that used AI tools, or an understanding of AI’s ethical implications, make sure to emphasize these aspects. This showcases your ability to navigate an AI-dominated workplace.

Stay Informed and Adaptable

The world of AI is dynamic and ever-evolving. Stay informed about the latest developments, trends, and discussions in the field. Be adaptable and willing to pivot as the landscape changes. This flexibility and openness to change are key to staying relevant in the AI-driven job market.

In conclusion, the rise of AI need not be a daunting prospect. With the right skills, understanding, and approach, you can navigate this new landscape successfully. Remember, in a world increasingly run by AI, it’s the human touch that will continue to make a difference. So, embrace the AI revolution, but stay human – that’s the best way to secure your place in the future job market.

Technology

The Unseen Future of CX; Welcome to the World of AI

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Customer service is an integral part of any customer experience but more importantly, it is the determining factor of any organization’s success. With the integration of technology into almost every aspect of a business, business leaders are finding exciting ways to combine digital excellence with customer service and create a new, unimaginable future of customer experience.

AI continues to gain immense popularity rapidly – chatGPT and its cohort of associated tools are taking the world by storm – and it is becoming an essential tool for creating extraordinary customer experience.

With the creation of software like Customer Relationship Management, the landscape of enterprises has evolved completely. The combination of AI and such integral tools is used for gathering and analyzing data and anticipating consumer behaviour more accurately. Therefore, firms are capitalizing on customer experience and are perfecting it from every conceivable dimension.

AI Customer Experience

This concept offers a bird-view of how Artificial Intelligence is incorporated into various aspects of customer experience to leverage technologies like natural language understanding and deep and machine learning. These instruments help automate Customer Service interaction to create a more fulfilling user experience.

Voice assistants like Google Assistant are a prime example of how AI customer support chatbots are functioning and how they are more efficient are resolving complex issues. AI chatbots work their magic digitally by responding to messages on platforms like email, and Facebook Messenger so that your customer feels heard at all times.

This strategy translates into loyal customers and reduced costs, which is a win-win situation for your business!

How Can AI Improve Customer Experience?

AI can improve CX in ways you cannot even imagine; it not only streamlines the planning process but improves the support to such a degree that you can sit back and relax while your customers get served. Here are some of the many reasons to convince you why you must invest in AI CX today:

Personalized Customer Service

AI Chatbots take care of all important touchpoints so that you don’t fall short anywhere. Everybody knows that to get ahead of the competition, you cannot go back to redesigning your product or market offering, rather, you can gain a competitive edge with an exceptional customer experience.

This is where AI sweeps into the picture and offers the personalized touch you want. The perfect example of it would be the personalized search in Netflix that matches you to the top recommendations and helps you find what you want to watch. AI crunches massive amounts of data to present to you, what you want to watch.

Highly Proactive

If you are running a global business, you cannot expect to reply to your client’s query while they question you at 9 in the morning and you are deep in your sleep at 2 in the night. Well, this is where CX offers to help you out. AI Chatbots were designed with the intent to stay a step ahead; they can uproot any potential problems that may come your way and would help you stay ahead of the traffic.

AI tools are so advanced now that they can integrate with every existing system in your business and can also help you anticipate customer needs. By leveraging Big Data, AI technology can identify patterns in customer behaviour and give them the products or services they need before they even ask for them.

Improved Efficiency & Productivity

AI chatbots operate 24/7 and answer multiple customer queries simultaneously through natural language processing (NLP) which helps reduce the workload of the staff while preventing long wait times that customers might experience otherwise.

In addition to this, AI tools use data to generate automated responses, freeing up human agents to deal with more complex tasks – leading to better overall customer service efficiency.

Anticipates and Resolves the Issue Before You Could Even Get a Hint

You can think of AI CX like a superhero flying down and solving your problems before you even learn about what they are. A great example of it could be, an email sent to customers alerting them about a delay in package delivery due to severe weather conditions. Or, like when HP notifies its customers when the printer ink is running low so that they can avoid any future inconvenience.  

AI CX is not just about convenience but also about helping you understand the customer’s needs. AI continually collects and processes data from customers, so that it can get better and more accurate at predicting their preferences. This helps companies offer more personalized services and ensures a higher level of customer satisfaction.

Lead generation

It is important to make the purchasing process entirely pain-free for the customers. AI chatbots serve this duty very well; these technologies often start a conversation with the customer and ask probing questions based on their browser history to learn about what they like or dislike. This allows marketers to design their campaigns accordingly, it also educates sales agents about how to approach a potential client and seal the deal accordingly.

Less Employee Burnout

AI technologies do not give in to human needs and requirements; this means no sleep, no breaks, and now rests. This is an industrialist’s dream! Though it is not an argument condoning employee replacement, but rather an effective way to augment your team! AI makes sure that your employees are not overworked and tired; it shares their load and helps your team focus on tasks that demand human touch and perspective.  

Overall, AI CX is the perfect solution for modern businesses looking for cost-effective and efficient ways to enhance their customer experience. With AI, you can create a strong connection with your customers and build trust over time. It also helps you anticipate their needs and offer them personalized, high-quality services that keep them coming back for more!

Conclusion

AI CX technology has revolutionized the customer service industry by providing an improved level of efficiency, productivity and personalization. A great example of this is Netflix’s personalized search feature which uses data to recommend content that would be most appealing to each user. Similarly, AI chatbots are able to anticipate customer needs through natural language processing (NLP) techniques.

In conclusion, AI technology has become essential in improving customer experience by offering personalization, efficiency, proactive support and anticipating customer needs. With AI-powered chatbots, businesses can now provide 24/7 support while reducing operational costs as well as enhancing the overall quality of service they provide to their customers. By leveraging AI tools for CX, businesses can stay ahead of the competition and create long-lasting relationships with their customers!

AI, Customer Experience

The 7 Benefits of AI in Customer Service

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for a while in the realm of SciFi. However, we are seeing it more and more in the world of business. Shown as a negative in the Terminator franchise, it does also have some very positive connotations.

As we keep adding more and more features to AI technology, its benefits become more visible and spreadable. Customer service is one of the areas that can rely heavily on AI if set up correctly. As customer service feeds into the entire organization, the benefits of AI can quickly be realized by the entire organization.

With businesses moving online to an ever greater degree, customer service plays an even larger role. Currently, due to the impact of COVID-19 around the world, companies are looking for tools that can help them. This could be due to being forced to furlough employees, but also an even greater demand for online infrastructure. Systems and companies that previously required manual intervention, need AI to move forward.

The following benefits are some of the most important for AI in customer service. However, limiting them to just a few of them would not reflect the huge effect that AI is having in this area. In addition, every day, we can see how new ways to use it emerge.

1. Handling Large Volumes of Data

As the interaction with customers grows, so does the generation of data about them. But obtaining such huge amounts of data would be useless without AI. Humans can’t process endless amounts of data. Due to that, AI is an invaluable tool.

By processing data with AI, it is possible to obtain powerful insights and predictions about customers’ behaviors. This allows creating targeted marketing campaigns and solving the most complicated issues about their inquiries and complaints. It is important to have a powerful and robust CRM in your corner for the data that you are gathering as Excel sheets will simply not cut it.

2. Reduce Average Handling Time (AHT)

This is one of the most remarkable benefits of AI in customer service. Such importance comes from the customers themselves who used to complain about the time they had to wait to obtain service and support.

Nowadays, chatbots answer basic inquiries and requests immediately. Customers also get reminders and notifications in advance. They can receive their products in 24 hours or less and can track them easily through delivery systems and programs. Some services and intangibles products are delivered online, and clients can enjoy them almost immediately too.

3. Customize Products Offerings to Drive Up Sales

Customization is the new frontier of customer service. As customers already know they can get it, they demand it more and more.

What looks even more promising is the fact that customization can reach many levels of service. For instance, it may start with personalized emails that consider preferences, tastes, geo-localization, previous purchases, and more. Then, chatbots and customer support agents can use it to improve the interaction with them.

4. Effective Omnichannel Presence

The presence of multiple channels that allow interacting with customers in many ways brought many positive changes. Firstly, customers seem to be always reachable in one way or another. Secondly, most of those channels are friendly networks that encourage customers to keep in touch with many sources.

But multiple channels also brought new challenges as they represent a lot of data and channels to cover. In this sense, AI became the ideal way to handle them all. Firstly, AI can rapidly collect and process data from multiple sources.

Secondly, AI allows centralizing files about each client and their interactions through different channels. With this information, it is possible to provide superb customer service that takes into consideration all the communications from the customer.

By having a single CRM at the backend that can gather all of the information needed, all of your agents will have access. In addition to this, CRMs like Hubspot provide powerful reporting and dashboards. This lets you better manage your customers and their expectations regardless of the channel.

5. Positive and Seamless Experience with a Company

As companies implement AI tools through their operations, customers have the opportunity to improve their interaction. This is to say that when every touchpoint includes an AI, the entire process becomes easier to handle.

For instance, one customer can receive personalized emails with recommendations that target his unique preferences. Then, the customer tracks its reception by using AI platforms that allow him to verify when he will receive the products.

After that, the customer can provide feedback and reach customer support through chatbots. In the end, the customer obtains all the services he needed to buy, receive, and use the products in a very positive and seamless way.

Leading companies like Amazon cover the entire process in this way. And every day, more and more businesses implement more steps to cover the same processes.

6. Optimize Resources

When businesses use AI in customer service areas, their resources automatically reach an optimal balance. Such optimization comes in many ways. For instance, if a company installs chatbots, a customer support agent can be more efficient in handling complicated inquiries, requests, and complaints.

Another example comes from the data that some retailers collect to fulfill their stores. They can select what they predict and base their decisions on the data they collect from customers.

In the customer service sector, there has long been a fear of AI and ML removing jobs. While this is true to some extent, it must be realized that in reality, it’s not about job removal but rather job creation. AI at the current time is not intelligent enough to be left fully unbridled. It will require human intervention. What is much more likely to happen is that AI will replace simple, menial tasks and jobs, letting human operators focus on more complex tasks.

7. 24/7 Availability

Offering 24/7 availability is particularly important for global companies as they have customers from all over the world in different time zones. Moreover, customers have new patterns of behavior because they use different schedules to sleep and work. Consequently, they need different ways to communicate and interact with customer service areas.

AI is the solution because this technology can be connected and interacting 24/7 during the entire year. By allowing AI to respond first either through chatbots or self-directed knowledgebase queries, customers continue to receive service, while staff are offline.

Conclusion

AI is coming. It’s somewhat inevitable. While the impact will be felt in many industries and businesses, from a customer perspective it is almost entirely positive. This technology is included in almost anything we handle now. And customer service is one of the most benefitted. After all, the goal of its development and evolution was to improve people’s life.

If we had to choose the most remarkable benefit we would definitively go for the collection and handle of data. This is definitively making a substantial change in the way we do business. Every other AI development relies in one way or another on the use of the data.

The benefits that we mention here are among the most visible. Certainly, they also affect many other areas too because success in customer service implies benefits for the entire business.

Customer Experience

How Chatbots Improve Customer Experience

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With businesses around the world adjusting their teams and ways of servicing customers, new technologies and tools need to be embraced. Social distancing and isolation are phrases we’d not really heard in our regular parlance. Now they are the only things we hear on a daily basis which can be quite difficult to rationalize. However, while at times it feels like the world is ending individually, there is some comfort in knowing that you are not alone.

For businesses, remote working is something that needs to be embraced & when we eventually come out of this, the way we live and work will change. Technology changes and enhancements are leading the charge here. In fact, as early as ten years ago, this capability would not have existed. One way that businesses can be more efficient now and in the future is through the use of chatbots.

Chatbots are conversational interfaces that are revolutionizing customer service. Little by little, they started to show up through different areas, and customers are successfully engaging with them. But a chatbots’ success also relies on the development of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies.

Although chatbots are still in their infancy, predictions and their effective use are proving they will do nothing but keep growing. In fact, market trends are pointing to a compounded annual growth rate of close to 30%. Currently, big and medium-size enterprises are their main users. Small businesses are going slow but they also are growing due to the sophistication of the technology and the price to implement it.

By checking how businesses are using chatbots, we can see how they are improving the customer experience.

How do Chatbots work?

Chatbots substitute regular communication channels with humans. They do it through computer programs that simulate human conversations. A computer programmer powers them with Artificial Intelligence to collect and interpret human phrases and words to give answers.

Just as human conversations may include any topic, chatbots can include any topic too. Hence, they have multiple uses. They speed up the communication cycle because they can process the information faster than humans. However, as they are machines, they can´t show the same empathy and ability to relate new terms.

Businesses found a way to leverage their use by using them to improve the customer experience. Primarily this is through the alignment of a chatbot to a knowledge base. This helps provide customers with a speedier resolution to their most commonly asked questions. In addition, it removes the onus of monotonous work from technical staff. As computer programmers find better ways to include new functions, their use is also expanding to more CX areas.

One useful way to determine how chatbots improve CX is by taking a look at their different uses as follows.

Customer Support

Currently, this is one of the most popular areas to use CX chatbots. You can find them in chat windows on websites. Sometimes they activate automatically to offer help. Other times they offer the first response when you try to reach a customer support agent. And, the most advanced versions can give you full support to solve inquiries and complaints.

As the problems become more complex in scope they can also help refer the customer to more senior staff. Chatbots are great in this area as they dramatically improve first call resolution (FCR) and help improve customer satisfaction.

LiveChat is a simple and beautifully designed tool for online communication between a company and its customers. Now your clients can contact you faster and easier than ever before.

LiveChat offers a built-in ticketing system, offline messages, canned responses, customer message preview, exportable reports and SSL encryption.

It’s possible to fully customize LiveChat widget with CSS styles. The customization can differ for domains and pages. It comes with many native integrations like WordPress, Shopify, AdWords, Mailchimp or Facebook. It also allows you to build your own integrations, as you get access to powerful API.

LiveChat support is available 24/7 so you can reach them at any time you need to.

Sign up for a free, 14-day trial to test out all the features!

Reminder

People interact with businesses for many reasons. Whilst they have to complete payments, send information, and more. Those activities have to be completed on different days and times, and chatbots can act as very effective reminder services.

Service Provider

Some chatbots can provide a complete set of services. They may offer advice, initial therapy, and more. The limit of the chatbots depends on the amount of information that you can include and the type of service you can provide. Ultimately, customers have the last word to decide if they like it or not. So, we still have a lot more to see and try.

Selling/Buying assistant

When people are trying to decide what to buy, they face many options and try to solve any doubts. In such cases, chatbots prove to be very useful as they can offer information to compare products, prices, and features.

On the other hand, chatbots can provide help to sales agents and the entire sales department to provide information and guide a customer through the sales funnel.

LiveChat is an online customer service tool for ecommerce. It opens up a new sales and support channel that can complement your email and phone use. With features like visitor monitoring, built-in ticketing system and many integrations, you’re ready to serve your customers from one place.

You can use LiveChat from your favorite browser or via desktop apps for OSX and Windows. When you’re on the go, you can simply turn the mobile app on and talk to customer from any place and at any time. You can also place LiveChat on your Facebook page and reply to messages and comments directly from the app.

Ready to go? Sign up for a free 14-day trial to test out all the features!

Specific Improvements from Chatbots

Overall, when chatbots can solve customers’ inquiries and help them to satisfy their needs, we can say they improve the CX. So, this is how chatbots improve CX.

Significant reduction in response times

Whenever some people get in touch with chatbots, they obtain a fast answer or acknowledgment of receipt to their requests. This is the most outstanding feature of chatbots. Even if there are many customers connected at the same time, chatbots can respond simultaneously to many requests at high speed.

This speed comes as a result of using Artificial Intelligence and other last generation technology that speed up all the processes. ChatBot gives you the flexibility you need. Just create a chatbot scenario and let the bot handle customer service 24/7/365.

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Chatbots can be connected 24/7 without human support. Once they get installed, they start working automatically. This availability allows customers to reach the business at any time of the day and get satisfactory answers to their requests.

In these trying times, this is even more important than normal as staff around the world are impacted. While chatbots cannot and will not take the place of humans, they can provide simple solutions quickly and easily.

Knowledge Base Integration

Chatbots have a huge capacity to store knowledge by integrating with other internal systems. This capacity will definitely allow them to provide answers to commonly asked questions and as a result, they can offer more answers to customers.

ChatBot provides the best bot platform for designing, building and deploying conversational chatbots to talk to customers and to provide information to users. With support for one-click integrations with Facebook Messenger and a range of other services, you can run powerful and intelligent bots in no time. ChatBot allows using entities, creating conversational scenarios, and it leverages both Natural Learning Processing and Machine Learning to develop a human-like experience for customers.

Sign up for a free, 14-day trial to test out all the features!

When chatbots work, they can collect all the data from customers and process it to provide useful stats. As they are fast to obtain and process the data, you can obtain benefits from such data in a short time.

Reduction in Costs of Operation

Programing and installment of chatbots require an initial investment. Then, they also need some costs for maintenance. However, it needs less investment than human agents due to the following:

  • They don’t quit or need replacement by other agents.
  • They don’t need time to learn and get training either.
  • Chatbots don’t occupy physical space

ChatBot is a one-in-all solution that lets you create fully operating chatbots. The scenario tree structure and drag and drop interface are very intuitive. Quick Academy lessons can guide you through more complex topics such as capturing user data, using filters and training your bot. You can publish your bot in seconds using one-click integrations with popular messaging apps, and live chat services or just use a Chat Widget.

Sign up for a free, 14-day trial to test out all the features!

Control of Bad mood and Bad temper

Due that chatbots are machines, they neither have emotional reactions nor are affected by emotional bursts. Therefore, your agents are safe and don´t have to handle these types of difficult situations.

When it occurs before getting in touch with a customer agent, they can be prepared by checking the communication history between the chatbot and the user to prevent any issue. This is critical as sadly situations with irate customers are at times bound to happen. If you can get a bit of a heads up, it cannot hurt.

CONCLUSION

Chatbots are gaining relevance due to all the advantages they provide to improve CX. They also add value to businesses by easing many companies´ processes. Although we still have to see more of what they can offer, they already proved many of their benefits.

With time, many more businesses’ lines will be able to implement a chatbot as part of their CX strategies. Therefore, an important part of the future belongs to them.

AI, IT service management

Separating Hype from Reality: Exploring AI in IT Service Management

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IT service teams have been under continuous pressure about two matters for quite some time now. On the one hand, they must to do more with less. On the other, they need to deliver superior customer service and reduce downtime. We have seen that the complexity of these issues has also increased to a significant extent.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are a helpful solution to all these issues. AI offers many opportunities to address these challenges. Besides, it helps improve the overall IT service management. It is worth observing how IT managers and directors can implement AI to improve their operations.

ITSM is improving but still needs work

We are continually witnessing the evolution of IT operations, how they adopt new technologies as they progress. We see organizations using more and more IT management systems and automation. IT management systems help to realize their strategies better. ITSM can not only develop and implement but also, manage and optimize IT domains.

ITSM can help to optimize both IT services and the end-user experience. There is an ever-growing business dependence on IT services. This is a testament to the fact that there is a need for constant improvement and innovation in IT operations. Above all, IT customers have imposed an irresistible necessity in the department.

We believe that the IT team still faces a great deal of pressure from its stakeholders. This is due to the fact that we face “delivering more with less” mentality. This has an underlying implication of the concept of “faster, cheaper, better – pick any two.” Fast-paced improvements in IT services or operations attract users along with greater flexibility.

Again, doing things cheaper is not about reducing operational costs and realizing efficiencies. Instead, it is necessary that we focus on value over cost and add business value wherever possible. The concept of being better can mean many things. It can mean improving IT service quality and including availability. It can also be about meeting the end-users’ high expectations of IT services. At the same time, it also means that we have to have a continuous drive to offer better support and customer service.

As faster, cheaper, and better are all equally important, we recommend a solution for ITSM that doesn’t force organizations to pick two of the three. Lucky for us, AI and automation in the present day make it possible for IT departments to prove all three qualities.

AI and automation will change the game.

When it comes to IT management, AI, machine reasoning, and automation are gaining rapid momentum. It’s not merely hype. We understand that AI’s well-deserved popularity is on the rise for many reasons. AI is already helping different business functions across many industries in several ways. AI can replace or augment existing manual processes. Moreover, automation adds “heavy thinking and lifting” capabilities to various assets.

We have observed a movement toward digital agents that use Natural Language Processing (NLP). They use machine reasoning to add intelligence to IT management tasks. This is possible due to the early application of machine learning, which includes concepts like pattern matching. Automation libraries, adding to this, will provide end-to-end automation. This will help to resolve up to 50 percent of repetitive manual tasks in an instant. Applying these innovations in the correct manner can help us in large ways. They allow IT, service employees, to focus instead on bigger and more important issues.

This will help employees to provide a 24/7 “consumer-like” IT services. This, in turn, helps to increase employee engagement and productivity. AI and automation increase the speed of execution and task or process adaptability. They are useful in reducing costs. AI provides efficient alternatives to human intervention and cuts errors caused by humans. Thus, we can see how AI provides better customer experience to the end-users. This then helps to increase customer satisfaction scores (CSAT).

Examining specific use cases of AI and automation

We have put forward some of the cases that provide demonstrations of how AI and automation will transform the field of ITSM below:

  • A digital agent with auto-resolution. Here, end-users interact with a digital agent through chat and voice conversations. The digital agent understands the intent of the conversation. The agent deciphers what the problem is. The agent, in this way, proceeds to auto-resolve up to 50 percent of end-user requests.
  • Self-serve resolution. It is now possible to put in place an automation solution that increases optimal end-user productivity. Moreover, AI enables us to do this in a cost-efficient way. It enables us to find pertinent information. This supplies the solution to our problems instead of filing tickets. These articles may also be served by digital agents on request.
  • Catch and auto-dispatch. We understand that we lose too much time waiting for the ticket to be assigned to an agent. There is an extra issue of fixing a mischaracterized ticket. AI enables intelligent ticket routing that optimizes ticket assignment. It considers factors like the priority of the request. It also considers the knowledge, availability, and past performance of IT agents. These factors are based on past data and continuous learning.
  • Advanced agent assist. A lot of “tribal knowledge” is generated in the operations team that is not formally captured. A knowledgebase should incorporate tribal customer knowledge. That makes available the right knowledge articles and information about similar past incidents to IT operations staff (L1, L2, L3). This goes a long way to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) while troubleshooting.

The time is now

Finally, it is high time for IT service teams to strive to meet the needs of demanding users on the rise. This is a time of increasing complexity. Fortunately for us, AI and automation are finding their way into the IT department to help save the day. AI is already helping organizations across industries with external customer support. Thus, IT teams should expect to be valuable for both customers and the IT teams themselves. AI will soon become a necessity for IT departments shouldering heavy loads. Organizations that want to stay ahead of the pack should begin their AI journey now.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library, Tools

How AI will Transform IT Service Management

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Remember ‘Jarvis’ from Iron Man or ‘Irona,’ the Robot Maid from Richie Rich? Well, if you do, then you already had a glimpse of the shrewd adroitness of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Artificial Intelligence or, what we call machine intelligence is all set to create an unprecedented phenomenon shortly. The rate of its progression has been swift, dramatic and very real, and as Elon Musk said: “It is capable of vastly more than anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential.” Artificial Intelligence in the realm of IT, has a vast potential in developing and transforming the IT Service Management (ITSM).

How ITSM works

ITSM, in itself, is a broad spectrum connecting the dots between IT services and the end-users. It encompasses all the activities performed by an organization to design, create, implement, deliver, and manage IT services provided to its customers. ITSM employs several frameworks to meet its ends, ITIL being the most popular and preferred. ITIL CSI has come to be mainly in use for improving business. To understand ITIL, let’s look at its definition by Wikipedia.

“ITIL an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of the business.

ITIL describes processes, procedures, tasks, and checklists which are not organization-specific nor technology-specific, but can be applied by an organization for establishing integration with the organization’s strategy, delivering value, and maintaining a minimum level of competency.”

See, easy to define but hard to understand. Not everyone is a Tony Stark after all. So, we have tried putting this into an explanation for the many Steve Rogers, who only understand ‘English.’

Let’s, for example, take a restaurant. If the food and ambiance provided by the restaurant are equivalent to IT services offered by a company and employees catering to the customers are similar to ITSM, ITIL is the approach adopted by the restaurant in situations provoking customer dissatisfaction. To learn more about IT trends click here

Reactive vs. Proactive

The very first book written on ITIL was the service desk, a modified version of the help desk that was created to resolve issues and support its end users. The take was on Incident Management. The initial idea of a help desk or service desk was responding to a call from a customer detailing out the issue, the mere goal being user back up and getting the program somehow running. Moreover, it called for a reactive response, which means that one had to wait until the issues showed up.

As certain issues started appearing over and over again, a proactive response was called for. A dynamic reaction contemplated identifying the problem area and fixing it even before it occurred. Prevention is better than cure after all!

Thus emerged ITIL Problem Management on the screen. With automation and advancements like pattern recognition in technology, problems could be traced and fixed way before they have planned. So, we had technology that could foresee what is coming and report it to the human analyst for preventing it. What we intend on discussing in this article is what if it never had to be reported? What if technology could make it vanish?

Predictive analytics

Have you ever wondered how Amazon, Google, or Facebook know you better than your closest friend? From recalling the person, you stalked last year to remembering your sizes. They come up with word suggestions and content recommendations even before you have typed or searched for the information. 

This Predictive Analytics, in the last few years, has been seen detonating under the name of ‘Big Data.’ Artificial Intelligence had already made its mark in the e-commerce and automobile sectors, much before IT embraced it. Can you imagine its scope in IT?

How AI will transform service management

Not long ago, did we even dream of automated cars, yet today we have them in reality. Artificial Intelligence escalated real quick optimizing itself and empowering others, along with its partners- Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Their efficiency is immeasurable. AI in ITSM will renovate the system in whole. Let’s look at some of the possible fields for its growth.

  • Incident management. A report by Pink Elephant states that 96% of the IT incidents are caused by changes made by IT, which means incidents are inevitable. That calls for rapid human action after every alteration. Lean defines incidents and incident management as ‘waste,’ dissipating time, energy, and resources. Wouldn’t it be great they were resolved automatically? Deploying AI in such locus can save IT employees from such routine tasks, not to mention its efficacy.
  • Problem management. The key to problem management is pattern recognition. Most of the AI systems, depend on sophisticated pattern learning to identify specific issues. With such advanced pattern recognition in ITSM, problems can be fixed by machines themselves way before they even surface.
  • Machine Learning. True Machine Learning, according to George Spalding, the Executive VP at Pink Elephant, is ‘still in its infancy.’ Even True Machine Learning neural network creators aren’t sure how it works, adds Spalding. ML bears the potential to optimize ITSM in unimaginable ways. The future of ITSM is brighter than the sun with its real advent.
  • Intelligent Chatbox for ITSM. “By 2020, the average person will have conversations with bots more frequently than their spouse”, according to Gartner. With Siri and Google Assistant in your hand, you already have a general idea about its capabilities. AI implementation in ITSM chatbots will have more natural automated support provided with a conversational user interface, while natural Language Processing (NLP) assists it to converse in several languages. Machine Learning will enable such bots to deliver real-time answers.
  • Increasing Productivity. A comparatively large number of companies, over the last few years, have adopted ITIL for enhancing their business. ITIL powered by AI will offer self-help as a smart option for its end-users, reducing Incident Management a.k.a. Ticketing, increasing customer satisfaction, accelerating business performance, and adding to the company’s productivity.

The advent of Artificial Intelligence is just about to cause global and phenomenal changes but has also put an end to limitations with the sprouting of vast and imminent possibilities. Not far from where we stand today, we can imagine a future shaped by machines.

Customer Experience, Tools

The Growing Usage of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Service

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The rapid advancement of AI technology has led to benefits in numerous business sectors. We have previously talked about their growing popularity in contact centers, but an even more increasingly popular usage for AI is in customer service. It is no wonder that – within three years – 55% of retailers are planning to employ artificial intelligence to improve customer service, according to the 2018 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey.

To find out why, it is essential to examine how AI works in the field of customer service and the advantages it brings to the table.

What Artificial Intelligence Can Do

Scientists are striving to make consumer-to-producer (C2P) communication AI-based and indistinguishable to manual communication. This is far from perfect, but through using complex learning algorithms and studying consumer behavior, AI technology is advancing to an extent that it can replicate most manual interaction.

Firstly, AI aids in strategic decision-making by tracking trends in consumer behavior through the analysis of readily-available transaction and browsing data. The conduction of this analysis allows digital retailers to refine their product recommendations and personalize their purchase suggestion for each user.

This does not come off as a surprise as we have formerly discussed how using consumer data can significantly improve customer experience. Most, if not all, large-scale digital retailers employ this feature of AI to attract more demand. For instance, Amazon uses AI to detect a pattern in customers’ browsing and transaction history on the website to make purchase suggestions.

 Secondly, an ever-increasing number of digital service providers are using AI augmented messages. This usage may occasionally be difficult as customers often feel frustrated when they are dealing with a pure bot in live chat support. However, this technology has experienced rapid development within these few years to an extent that – as LivePerson claims- “Half of all customer service interactions are currently highly suitable for bots.”

LivePerson is one company which is currently working with IBM Watson to transform customer care through the usage of AI augmented messaging. The same augmentation can be adapted to customer care phone calls. As a matter of fact, IBM claims that “customers make more than 270 billion phone calls to customer support lines each year.” Such a high load cannot be adequately handled by manual customer support workers and AI helps relieve the pressure.

The advancement of voice recognition software and the development of faster self-learning AI will improve the sustainability of using technology to improve customer care. In addition, bots and humans can work hand-in-hand to provide the most sufficient service in customer support. This is possible in both: phone calls and live text support – as seen below.

Thirdly, AI comes in very handy in streamlining responses to email inquiries. This brings forth numerous advantages. Most importantly, using artificial intelligence can reduce the average handling time (AHT) as it is able to classify the inquiries into different categories so they can be deal with faster and easier. Based on that, the AI can either automatically respond to the inquiry if it classified as a FAQ or it can forward it for human assistance.

The reduced AHT lead to increased customer satisfaction while the automation of responses leads to reduced consumption of human resources. As such, the usage of AI technology in handling emails provides a win-win situation and leaves no side at loss.

The Long-term Benefits of AI

AI provides services which are useful for all types of business, so we can see their usage continuing to grow in the future. This trend is reinforced by the self-learning nature of AI. Self-learning, or deep learning, refers to the phenomena where machines can learn by experience and acquire skills without human involvement. This allows them to improve over time and adapt more effortlessly to the market and consumer behavior.

Every single day, 2.6 quintillion bytes of data are generated. That number seems incomprehensible to human beings, but AI actively use the data for their improvement through deep learning. This can be directly observed in AI which is fixated on improving customer experience. Most notably, Netflix uses deep-learning AI to analyze patterns in what users watch and personalize movie recommendations accordingly.

We have spoken earlier about the numerous benefits of Continual Service Improvement (CSI), and the deep-learning aspect of AI provides just that. The implementation of AI in the customer service sector of one’s business will allow it to continually improve in accordance with the ITIL model since the bots will be adopting more over time. Thus, the employment of AI has as many long-term advantages as it has short-term advantages, making it perfect for almost every business model.

The Growing Prevalence of AI

In light of all those benefits, one question arises: Will AI ever completely replace humans in the field of customer service? To date, the answer remains a mystery. However, most people do not think so. It is true that AI is able to outperform humans in numerous areas, but one must consider that they are dependent on the first-hand human experience at the end of the day.

Smart technology such as deep-learning AI LivePerson independently improve but it still lacks many of the qualities which humans uniquely possess, most remarkably human empathy. From the phrasing of sentences to the tone of voice, human empathy plays a crucial role when assisting customers as it paves the road for healthier communication and improved satisfaction. Bots may be able to deal with a situation adequately, but true customer comfort lies in being understood. Such a feeling cannot be replicated by AI, which reinforces the need for a human-bot synergy in customer assistance.

Nonetheless, scientists are working on enriching bots in this sector by adding different voices and styles of writing. This can be observed in the improvement of chatbots. Using deep-learning, chatbots are becoming more emotionally in tune to the extent that they are even able to help humans overcome fears.

It is only a matter of time until we see these features used in customer service, further increasing its popularity. Hence, it is never the wrong choice to look into ways of implementing AI technology to improve customer experience.