1. Point of View
IBM Interactive Experience Omni-channel Experience Strategy
How do we empower our agents to deliver a better customer
experience? Today, companies are searching for innovative ways to
quickly deliver the best results with limited resources. Guided flows can
be established to maximize productivity without risking quality. These
pre-determined workflows allow agent representatives to handle each
contact type similarly. It is helpful to visualize the number and order of
steps in a workflow. Process maps support information from previous
steps and document resources required by each step in a business
process. Automation of workflow via guided flows allows for each phase
to be executed sequentially.
Contextual Assistance has the potential to rein-
vent contact center interactions.
However, without the right workflows in place, time during a call is
wasted as an agent searches for information. This reduces the time
invested in customer experience. In an ideal omni-channel experience, a
holistic customer history should be available to provide a seamless
experience for all customers as they traverse across channels. As agents
shepherd customers through this process, there are many instances that
may require the agent to depart from the guided pathway. Customers
today are empowered individuals and are asking for better and faster
results and no two interactions will be the same. Guided flows can
support agents and make sequential decisions for them, but may detract
from the customer experience. Contact center operators want to reuse
existing tasks and task flows but they’re often unable to address all of
the unique issues that may arise in every possible scenario.
Pre-determined guided flows cannot react to the many permutations
that could occur during a call and do not account for individual needs
of the customer nor the individual style of each agent. Guided flows
lock the agent into a pre-determined set of
Contextual Assistance
Empowering omni-channel contact center agents with
enhanced analytics
“Due to a lack of effective
tools, up to 20% of agent
time can be spent looking
for information.”
Aberdeen Group. (May 2011). The Contact Center
in a Profit-Centric Service Organization. Boston,
Massachusetts.
2. Omni-channel Experience Strategy
2
Point of View
IBM Interactive Experience
actions rather than empowering them to take the best action for each
customer. In order to alleviate these challenges inherent in
implementing guided flows, IBM Interactive Experience has married
the concept of guided flows with machine learning, advanced analytics-
powered Next Best Action and Cognitive Computing as well as cutting
edge User Experience Design principles to create a new model for
dynamic and modular workflow guidance called Contextual Assistance.
By definition, Contextual Assistance is sensitive to context and accounts
for the needs of the individual customer as well as the goals of the
company with which he or she is interacting. Based upon customer
intent (insights also provided by Next Best Action analytics) and agent
actions, Next Best Action draws information from across your business,
as well as external sources, analyzes it to determine the steps that will
maximize customer satisfaction and retention, and delivers these
insights to the Contextual Assistance engine where it is translated into
the next action the agent must take in order to rectify the customer’s
issue or make timely, contextually-appropriate, personalized offers.
This information is seamlessly delivered to the agent as a suggested
next step in the guided assistance module located in a visible location
on the agent desktop. Combining the Contextual Assistance back end
with a machine learning and natural language recognition capable
Cognitive Computing solution further empowers the agent to assist the
customer by providing real time feedback, troubleshooting advice, or
answering tough questions.
Contextual Assistance allows a company to provide personalized help to
a consumer based on his or her unique situation. In order to deliver a
seamless experience, Contextual Assistance helps to build continuity
across sales channels, powers co-browsing, leverages social listening,
and can enable continuous improvement. In a world where customers
are bombarded with choices, Contextual Assistance creates a more
targeted buying experience. By understanding the consumer’s context,
customer service managers can access linked pertinent information and
tag product offers to specific steps in the buying process. When
consumers call into a contact center, their information will already be
available to the service agent and that information will become more
refined as the customer journey continues. This means that when a
consumer moves from channel-to –channel the transaction is not
restarted; the agent simply picks up where the consumer left off.
Contextual technologies enable the consumer experience to become
dynamic, transcending functional silos and integrating customer
insight. Analytics can process incoming consumer data to identify
preferences, past relationships and drive out contextual information,
delivered to agents in an easy-to-understand manner that empowers
them to lengthen and strengthen the customer journey. A good agent’s
“iX has married guided
flows with advanced
analytics as well as IBM
Watson and cutting edge
user-centered design to
create a new model:
Contextual Assistance.”
“ IBM Interactive
Experience has married
guided flows with
advanced analytics and
cutting edge User-
Centered Design to
create a new model:
Contextual Assistance.”
