Improving customer experience - Virtual Agents
"I do not have the time to call the customer service center in case I do not find the right product. I will switch to some other vendor"
Now all these things point to coming era of good customer service or customer self service.
According to Consumer Technographics, 57% of US online consumers report that they are very likely to abandon an online purchase if they cannot find quick answers to their questions.
For leading companies, Customer self service has become the mantra of success in terms of good customer service. Companies are providing this service through the virtual agents a.k.a smart agents a.k.a Intelligent agents. Customers directly interact with these agents and get their problem solved in lesser time.
Virtual agents are programs that work as real customer service agents solving the problem of the customers in real time. For example, IKEA is using the virtual agent to help customers locate the right set of products.
Leading Web companies are already using virtual agents. SFR, a division of the mobile communications giant Vodafone, employs a virtual agent to answer customer questions about their accounts and the company's services. Online auctioneer eBay is facilitating customer conversations with virtual agents across six countries. Apple recently bought virtual agent company Siri. IBM will soon release an artificially intelligent agent named Watson.
Virtual agents impact the companies and it's customer in variety of ways. Virtual agents as a change initiative can help increase sales by improving customer experience, low abandonment rate and high cross sells. It also helps reduce the live help costs.
It would be interesting to see how virtual agent can really help the customers in providing accurate services similar to the real people. Do you have some more thoughts on what it should do? Please do share it across.
