FOCUS | CSIA Quarterly | June 2019

June 2019 CSIA Quarterly

SELF-SERVICE STRATEGIES Brian Manusama from Gartner on developing a winning self-service strategy for your customers.

Making AI relatable

2019 ASEAs Finalists

Ben Hanna from Soul Machines™ with the latest on artificial intelligence in customer service.

We announce the finalists for this year's Australian Service Excellence Awards.

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CSIA FOCUS

How technology can really benefit your customers

Sadly, this will be my final issue of FOCUS as I leave CSIA at the end of June.

As the winter chill sets in why not sit back and catch up with the latest customer service news in this bumper issue of FOCUS magazine?

We’re highlighting technology and the exciting developments that can make your customers’ lives easier and help your organisation achieve its customer service goals.

We spoke to CSIA Certified Practitioner Todd Gorsuch about the challenges of implementing new technology and livepro’s Brad Shaw explains how a purposebuilt knowledge management system can deliver the answers your customers need.

Ben Hanna from Soul Machines™ gives us the inside story on AI and leading researcher, Gartner’s Brian Manusama shares with us how to develop a winning selfservice strategy.

And on top of all that we announce the ASEAs finalists and get an inside look at how to prepare for a site visit by one of last year’s winners.

Sadly, this will be my final issue of FOCUS as I leave CSIA at the end of June. After 14 wonderful years in Australia it’s time to head home to the UK. Jeremy Larkins will be taking on the role of Executive Director and I wish him every success.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with CSIA and the organisation has played a significant part of my life in Australia. I remain passionate about customer service as a profession and strongly believe in the importance of the Institute in representing the customer service community in Australia.

I’ll miss the wonderful people I’ve met in the industry here but I feel confident I leave the CSIA in very capable hands.

Anouche Newman CEO

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"When organisations empower their CX professionals to select a knowledge management system, it results in a far greater customer satisfaction improvement than if the decision was made elsewhere."

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Contents

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News in Brief

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Customers want answers not information

livepro's Brad Shaw, on why you need a knowledge management system.

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2019 Australian Service Excellence Awards Finalists

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Interview with Milan Mili

We look at how to prepare for a site visit from the winner of the 2018 Extraordinary Service Award.

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Take a broader view of what you’re trying to achieve with technology

Technology must benefit your customers, explains Todd Gorsuch, everything else flows from that.

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Making AI more relatable to humans

An interview with Ben Hanna, the Director of Business Development at Soul Machines™ about the latest on artificial intelligence.

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How to develop a winning self-service strategy for your customers

Brian Manusama from Gartner, on self-service.

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CSIA FOCUS

News in Brief We learnt from the 'Best of the Best’ In May, CSIA members were able to hear about the many benefits of our Australian Service Excellence Awards program at an informal networking event in Sydney.

This panel discussion was hosted by advisor and consultant to CSIA, the internationally recognised, Antoine Casgrain and ASEAs Lead Judge, Danielle Larkins.

Customer service night of nights: Tickets are on sale now!

Tickets are now on sale for the 2019 Australian Service Excellence Awards, a night to celebrate and recognise Australia’s most outstanding customer servicedriven organisations and individuals. Join us at the gala awards dinner at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) on Thursday, 24 October.

CSIA congratulates all the entrants on their hard work and commitment to keeping the customer front of mind. Finalists have now been notified and winners will be announced on the night. See the full list of finalists on page 10-11.

The Australian Service Excellence Awards are Australia’s premier customer service awards event, with more than 500 attendees coming together each year to recognise best practice and innovation in customer service within the industry.

Book now

They were joined by representatives of previous winning organisations American Express Australia Limited, HCF: The Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australian and Stryker South Pacific.

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Newly certified companies Congratulations to Transdev QLD, Maxxia/ Remserv, Transit Systems and Transdev Sydney Ferries for maintaining their status as Certified Customer Service Organisations through recertification to the International Customer Service Standard (ICSS: 2015-2020).

We’d also like to recognise the City of Melville for its recent certification to CSIA’s Complaint Handling Framework (CSIA-CHF 2015).

CCSL Public Training Program Melbourne 2019 Join us for our Certified Customer Service Leader (CCSL) program in Melbourne on Tuesday, 6 August.

The program is all about equipping customer service leaders with practical tools and techniques to motivate their teams to deliver great customer experiences.

This is great opportunity to become a certified customer service leader so secure your place now.

Find out more

Leveraging Customer Insights Workshop Sydney 2019 Customer experience and operations leaders will benefit from this workshop, which will challenge their reliance on customer surveys.

This practical workshop will help you examine untapped customer information and unveil opportunities to design processes and products that take advantage of how your customers are actually interacting with your organisation. Join us in Sydney on Tuesday, 24 September.

Contact us

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CSIA FOCUS

News in Brief Knowledge management systems for customer experience 28 May 2019 In May, CSIA and livepro proudly cohosted a breakfast networking event where livepro’s CEO, Brad Shaw and Luke Jamieson from First State Super shared some practical examples from the industry.

CCSE Program 28 February 2019 Our Certified Customer Service Excellence (CCSE) program held in February has created some new customer service champions ready to take the industry by storm.

Attendees came away understanding how a purpose-built customer experience knowledge management system can help you take your customer experience to the next level.

Some of the key topics covered were: Customer Service versus Customer Experience, Communication Skills for Service Excellence, Managing Challenging Conversations with Internal and External Customers and Maintaining Customer Focus – Motivating Yourself and Others.

CSIA is committed to helping our members build cognitive and effective empathy skills and techniques that will enable them to provide exceptional customer service and support.

If your organisation is interested in understanding how our programs can benefit your team, call CSIA on 1300 912 700 or email us at info@csia.com.au

Some ‘friendly persuasion’ the key to crafting engaging customer messages 30 May 2019 The mysteries of writing persuasive customer communications were revealed to attendees at our Certified Written Service Excellence (CWSE) workshop delivered in partnership with Friendly Persuasion in May.

Approaching messaging from the customer’s perspective and writing in a clear and concise manner were some of the takeaways for members who attended in Sydney.

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It has been a busy time across our CSIA community over recent months.

Practical tips around employee experience 9 May 2019

Our workshop in May, facilitated

by Christopher Littlefield from AcknowledgementWorks and CSIA’s Amanda Moroney, was a very worthwhile day for the wonderful, engaged group of participants.

Christopher explains that people brought and contributed their expertise to outline the employee experience in a very detailed way.

We heard everything from zombie attacks to great questions to ask when hiring your people.

We had participants from across sectors, divisions and all levels in their organisations, all contributing their reflections on the employee experience in their own organisations and what they have seen in other organisations.

This enabled us to map out an employee experience with over 60 practical ideas that they can apply to take their employee and customer experience to the next level.

ICSS Self-Assessment Workshop 26 March 2019 The International Customer Service Standard (ICSS-2015-2020) is a practical framework that helps organisation understand whether they are keeping internal and external customers at the heart of all they do.

Participants in the recent ICSS SelfAssessment Workshop faciliated

by Steven Brett (pictured) learnt how the Standard measures an organisation’s strategy across the key perspectives.

Customers want answers not information

Brad Shaw, the managing director of livepro on why you need a purpose-built management system.

Have you ever found yourself scrolling back and forth through a wiki or YouTube video looking for an answer to a question? Has a Google search ever led you to a dense PDF when all you wanted was a simple answer? We all know how frustrating this can be.

These scenarios are all too common, and all too irritating – especially when it comes to customer service. Nobody wants to spend their time sifting through lengthy help pages or waiting for a customer service representative to look up and interpret information. But that is often what customers are forced to do.

Imagine asking Siri or Alexa a question and being told: “I have just sent you a link to an article where you should be able to find the answer”? This doesn’t happen because the designers of these services know that when ask a question, you don’t want a lot of detail – you just want an answer.

While organisations are slowly realising that people want answers not information, many are unsure of how to tackle the problem.

That is why purpose-built customer service knowledge management systems deliver answers – not knowledge articles – to clients through websites, chatbots and agents.

By integrating livepro, a ‘single source of truth’ knowledge management system, you will be able to provide your clients with the same, consistent answer no matter the location or agent.

This reduces hold time and gets your customer where they need to be - fast! You keep your client happy and give them genuine answers, not useless information.

This is how a proper knowledge management system can solve your issues.

Make it easy for customers to self-serve A survey conducted by DMG Consulting LLC in February 2017 showed that 60% of the time, people will try to serve themselves at least twice before calling customer service.

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With this in mind, the challenge for organisations is delivering straightforward answers that are consistent across all customer service channels. If someone decides to self-serve, it should be just as easy for them to find an answer as it would be for an agent.

This is why companies are looking to refocus their digital channels – switching from articles to answers – and ensuring that those answers are all delivered through the same knowledge management system.

Most try and self-serve 3-4 times 5.7%

1-2 times 60%

5 times or more 0.4%

I call first 34%

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"96% of knowledge management initiatives driven by customer service teams have resulted in enhanced customer satisfaction."

When customer service channels are not fully aligned, it can have a very negative impact on the customer journey. At best, it results in an inconsistent tone, personality and connection with the client. At worst, it can lead to customers receiving different or conflicting answers across channels. These issues leave your customers frustrated and dissatisfied, and ultimately one step closer to leaving.

It is impossible to maintain consistency across service platforms without either a single, unified customer service knowledge management system, or an answer management system with well-defined style guidelines which include templates managed by people experienced in answering customer questions.

Leverage your experts Break down the silos One of the main obstacles to an answer-centric customer service strategy is having too many silos managing communication to a single customer.

Customer service professionals are the ideal people to take on this new challenge. They’ve been refining their skills in this area throughout their careers, and it’s time CEOs and general management listened to them.

When organisations empower their CX professionals to select a knowledge management system, it results in a far greater customer satisfaction improvement than if the decision was made elsewhere. A survey about to be published by Ecosystm, shows 96% of knowledge management initiatives driven by customer service teams have resulted in enhanced customer satisfaction, versus less than 80% for initiatives headed up by other teams.

Interestingly, Ecosystm’s research also shows that when knowledge management platforms were chosen by customer service professionals, the decision resulted in improved employee engagement 88% of the time.

In cases where the platform was chosen by other teams, the figure dropped to just 61%.

Customer service professionals know that clients want answers and resolutions. They know what tools they need to meet those expectations. Management can maximise an organisation’s digital customer satisfaction by using this existing expertise. And just as importantly, customer service professionals need to speak up and remind the C-suite that they are an important part of the solution.

Brad Shaw Managing Director livepro

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CSIA FOCUS

Organisations Customer Service Project of the Year

2019 Australian Service Excellence Awards Finalists We are excited to announce the finalists for this year's Australian Service Excellence Awards. We look forward to seeing everyone at the awards gala dinner in Melbourne on Thursday, 24 October.

Tickets are now on sale.

See page 4 of this issue for more information.

Individuals

Customer Impact

Service Innovation

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• Aussie Broadband – MyAussie • HP Australia – HP PPS Australia Customer Support Team – Customer Excellence Innovation Project • Intuit Australia Pty Ltd – Augmenting Customer Success Expertise • Optus Pty Ltd – Optus Wholesale & Satellite – Fixed Residential Digital Transformation • V/Line Corporation – Virtual Tours

City of Casey – Customer Experience Team – Customer First Sydney Airport – Aira Navigation Service Transdev Sydney Ferries Pty Ltd – Delivering Exceptional Ferry Services for the Invictus Games Sydney 2018

Continuous Improvement •

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AMP Capital – AMP Capital Office & Industrial – Connection Collective Stryker South Pacific – Schedule to Next Location V/Line Corporation – Extreme Heat Timetables Wyndham Destinations Asia Pacific – Wyndham Vacation Clubs Asia Pacific – Project School

Customer Integration • Assetlink Services – AMP Transition • SNP Security Aviation – Customer Integrated Billing • Stryker Trauma, Prostart Team – Western Sydney Hospital ProStart Implementation • Wilson Security – Dexus Customer Service Excellence Program

Service Transformation •

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Department of Transport and Main Roads – Customer Experience Transformation Program MAX Solutions – Project Connection Newcrest Mining Limited – Our Culture and Agility Optus Pty Ltd – Optus Wholesale & Satellite – Fixed Residential Innovation & Digital Sunsuper – Digital Services

Transformation as part of FS2020 program

Customer Service Executive of the Year

Customer Service Manager of the Year

• Sharnie Barabas – Australian Catholic Superannuation • Chris Goodall – Wilson Security • Tony Pescott – Customer Pulse • Donna Price – Melbourne Cricket Club

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Bianca Bowron-Cuthill – Intuit Australia Pty Ltd Ramadan Ibrahim – Woolworths Group Jonny Morris – Comminsure Sabeena Parween – Vicinity Centres

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Customer Service Team of the Year

Customer Service Organisation of the Year

Service Excellence in a Contact Centre

Large Team

Large Business (More than 500 employees)

Large Contact Centre (100+ FTEs)

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AMP Capital Shopping Centres Pty Ltd - Pacific Fair Shopping Centre MATE Communicate Pty Ltd – MATE Customer Service Team Yarra Valley Water – Retail Services Division – Customer Care

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HCF: The Hospital Contributions Fund of Australia MAX Solutions Melbourne Cricket Club Wilson Security

Medium Team

Medium Business (90-500 employees)

• News Xtend (News Corp Australia) – Campaign Management • Smartsalary Pty Ltd – Smartsalary General Salary Packaging – Sandstorm • V/Line Corporation – Avalon Airshow Team • Vocus Communications Pty Ltd – Customer Service & Delivery Operations • Wyndham Destinations Asia Pacific – Wyndham Vacation Clubs Asia Pacific

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Small Team •

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Brisbane City Council – Customer Experience Team Edwards Lifesciences Pty Ltd – Customer Service Team Nationwide Corporate Services – Melbourne City Mission Transdev NSW – Customer Experience Team (The CX Team) V/Line Corporation – Southern Cross Station Customer Experience Improvements Team

Aussie Broadband Intuit Australia Pty Ltd Law In Order Stryker South Pacific Volkswagen Group Australia

Small Business (less than 90 employees) • • • • •

Centorrino Technologies ISN Software Australia Pty Limited OVO Rackspace Solv Solutions

Government / Not-for-Profit • • •

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Australian Red Cross Blood Service Lotterywest Department of Transport and Main Roads Yarra Valley Water

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American Express Australia Limited – Customer Engagement Network Department of Transport and Main Roads – Customer Service Direct HCF: The Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia Sunsuper – Sunsuper Contact Centre

Medium Contact Centre (20-100 FTEs) •

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Australian Catholic Superannuation – Member Services MAX Solutions – CST Volkswagen Group Australia – Customer Experience Contact Centre WEX Australia – Client Services Team

Small Contact Centre (less than 20 FTEs) •

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Centorrino Technologies – CT Service Desk CMC Markets – Sales Trading Townsville City Council – IT Service Desk Uniting NSW ACT – Uniting 1800 Customer Service Centre Vocus Communications Pty Ltd – Customer Care Team

Customer Service Leader of the Year

Customer Service Professional of the Year

Customer Service Advocate of the Year

• San Ali – Smartsalary Pty Ltd • Chris Burman – Australian Catholic Superannuation • Danielle Evans – American Express Australia Limited • Aneta Field – Comminsure • Ellen Kunovsky – Edwards Lifesciences Pty Ltd

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Andrea Ciuffreda – Partnerize Puraskrit Dhakal – American Express Australia Limited Vanessa Milosz – Australian Red Cross Blood Service Neha Mittal – Comminsure Daniel Wood – American Express Australia Limited

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Rebecca Allan – Comminsure Chris Grima – Intuit Australia Pty Ltd Yu-hsien Kuo – American Express Australia Limited Sarah Megara – Vocus

Communications Pty Ltd Carolyn Parkes – Wilson Security

INTERVIEW

Milan Mili In the last issue of FOCUS magazine, ASEAs Lead Judge Danielle Larkins gave ASEAs entrants some tips for site visits.

This issue we look at preparing for a site visit from a successful host’s perspective.

What advice would you give to ASEAs finalists who are about to host a site visit by judges?

Here are three tips for preparing for your site visit: 1. Be confident and transparent Demonstrate to the judges just how good you are. You know you are doing a great job, so you don’t have to pretend – just be yourself.

Don’t be nervous about meeting the judges – they’re very friendly and are looking forward to the visit and meeting your team.

Do your best to answer any questions they might have, and if you’re unsure of the answer, find out and get back to them either during the visit, or immediately afterwards.

2. Know who’s coming and what you will say to them Before our site visit, I did some ‘stalking’ on LinkedIn and familiarised myself with the judges’ profiles so I would recognise them when they arrived. I must admit, they were a little surprised when I greeted them by name, but I think it demonstrated that we were interested in them and cared about their visit, and that we wanted to win!

Our presentation to the judges was well organised and we had thought about it beforehand using the CSIA standards – in it we explained how we deliver exceptional customer

Concierge University of South Australia Business School 2018 Extraordinary Service Award Winner

service and what we believed were the best aspects of our customer service philosophy.

We also shared our thoughts on the areas where we felt we could improve.

At all times we had clear, concise messages and we had data to back up our key points.

3. Prepare well and have fun!

Make sure you’ve covered off on every detail and that you have a Plan B. Don’t leave anything to chance. It poured with rain at the end of our visit, so I booked an Uber to collect the judges and escorted them to the car under an umbrella, which I could tell was much appreciated. There will always be something that doesn’t go to plan, so know how to respond – just like you do for customers.

And of course, have fun! If you have prepared well, you can enjoy the experience – remember you have been shortlisted and therefore are already one of the best customer service organisations in Australia.

The judges’ visit is cause for celebration, so enjoy the moment.

If you are enjoying the experience, the judges will too. Don’t forget – this is one of many site visits they will conduct, so be sure to leave a positive and unique impression. Most importantly – enjoy this special time.

What do you think impressed the judges most in your visit?

I believe it was our VIP treatment.

My philosophy is to treat everyone who comes through our doors like a VIP. Whether they are royalty, senior politicians, staff members or students – they all receive the same warm and courteous welcome.

Every single student who comes here is a VIP to me.

How did you engage colleagues?

As part of my pre-planning I communicated with every staff member to make sure they knew we were hosting this important site visit and that we had been shortlisted for an ASEA. I discussed the visit faceto-face and asked supervisors to mention it in their team briefings.

At our monthly meeting I took 10 minutes out to explain why we had been shortlisted and how important it was for the university. I even emailed photos of the judges to the staff so they could recognise them and introduce themselves if they saw them on campus.

The secret of good service is to make people feel welcome, you should treat them with genuine courtesy and respect – people know if you’re faking it.

Of course, my manager, Katrina Quinn, was passionate about this award, she made me passionate and I made the rest of the staff passionate. It’s contagious. I certainly couldn’t have done this without her support.

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"My philosophy is to treat everyone who comes through our doors like a VIP." "Whether they are royalty, senior politicians, staff members or students – they all receive the same warm and courteous welcome."

– Milan Mili

What are the little things that make the difference?

We ordered a floral arrangement to place at the entrance of the building, this became a talking point as people arrived for the day and gave me an opportunity to remind them that this was a big day for us – we were celebrating our shortlisting and the judges site visit.

The university’s cleaning team made an extra cleaning effort so that the premises looked immaculate with every corner dusted.

We had food available for the judges – top quality catering and a barista to serve coffee and every dietary requirement catered for so I didn’t have to bother the judges asking if they had special diets. As it turned

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out they had already eaten, but I think providing food showed our hospitality and willingness for them to stay for as long as they wished after the formalities were over.

The food didn’t go to waste though – we enjoyed it as part of our post-site visit staff celebration!

My lasting memory I have of the experience was a comment made some time later by a new staff member who, after witnessing the enthusiasm and teamwork that went into the awards process, said to me: ‘This is the kind of workplace I want to work in”.

Comments like that demonstrate how the ASEAs experience has had a huge impact on our organisation, benefitting our culture and providing a wonderful bonding experience.

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CSIA FOCUS

Take a broader view of what you’re trying to achieve with technology

Todd Gorsuch the CEO and Founder of Customer Science, explains the challenges organisations face with technology and how we can use it effectively to engage stakeholders.

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What challenges do organisations face when it comes to technology?

How do you engage all your stakeholders?

Customer focus Often technology has been implemented for some other purpose and it doesn’t really provide the benefit you might want for customers. Any technology should be focused on business objectives and be built or implemented using human-centred design – you’ll get a far better result this way.

When we’re working with a client, we like to get them together in a room and drill down to uncover their business objectives and vision and work out how that translates into technology.

Strong vision Sometimes we find that technology is being deployed for a specific organisation purpose and there is no other, or little choice.

It’s important that technology aligns to the business and customer vision to derive benefits for customers.

Restricted budgets Forecasting for ROI is quite scientific now.

We know, for example, that with robotics applied on the right business processes we can typically save 20-30% of the transaction time. If you know what a transaction looks like and how long, it takes you can mathematically deduce how much time you will save and the benefit you will get in return.

What are the common mistakes made?

Often there are several stakeholders with different points of view as to what the solution will look like. Once they put their heads together, have a practical conversation with a whiteboard it doesn’t usually take that much to get to an agreed solution. We always remind organisations that the customer is their most important stakeholder and if we can involve them in the conversation, we do.

We act as facilitators to bring people together to a common solution and we then explore the implication to service based on the solution. This test validates the solution is the right one for the organisation and its customers.

Often, we’ve engaged with an existing solution in mind. Using benchmarking and experience we can explore its value rapidly and correct any issues particularly with deployment.

Not configuring the technology correctly so it will not be optimised to deliver your vision. Not enabling staff. Not ensuring your employees are trained and coached to apply the technology as designed and effectively deliver customer satisfaction and productivity.

What things are non-negotiable when implementing technology?

Many organisations don’t take a holistic, practical approach to embed technology into a customer service operation. If you take a broader view of what you’re trying to achieve for your customers and get the technology configured right the first time, you’ll reap the benefits.

If you can’t articulate how the technology will benefit your customer, then you should rethink. In certain circumstances you can work around some of these issues.

Failing to implement strong change management processes – it’s important to spend time making sure you have everyone on the same page, and they are all working towards a common customer service goal.

Chasing the ‘shiny thing’ – it does happen that people chase the ‘shiny thing’ for no good business reason. If an organisation has had a few experiences of technology being implemented that has no business benefit, management will quickly lose interest in future technology.

1. It must benefit the customer 2. It must benefit the business objectives 3. It must give a Return on Investment (ROI) 4. It must be sustainable

For example, ROI is sometimes decided against based on the risk to the business if it doesn’t proceed with new technology being bigger than the ROI, although this is rare!

To learn more about how AI is being used in customer service read the article on page 16 of this issue.

Todd Gorsuch CEO and Founder Customer Science

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"If you can’t articulate how the technology will benefit your customer, then you should rethink."

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CSIA FOCUS

Making AI more relatable to humans We interviewed Ben Hanna, Director of Business Development at Soul Machines™ to get the latest on artificial intelligence (AI) and what it means for the future of customer service.

Some people find AI a little scary, how can it benefit society?

AI can do a lot for humanity, especially where there are unmet needs in areas such as education and healthcare, as demand and cost rises.

AI represents an amazing opportunity to democratise the delivery of personalised healthcare and education and deliver more of these services for less cost, including to communities that don’t have access to what most of us think of as basic human services. Hollywood and science fiction writers have long made their careers by creating a dystopian view of the future.

At Soul Machines™, we’re much more positive about the future of AI and how it can benefit us. As our cofounder Greg Cross says, “Imagine what we can achieve in the future if we really harness the power of human and machine cooperation.”

How can AI improve customer service delivery?

AI and Digital Humans specifically offer an opportunity to simultaneously increase employee and customer experience.

Soul Machines™’ hyper realistic Digital Humans make existing channels more effective and remove bias and judgement from the conversation.

We’ve seen one of our customers reduce their help desk calls by 70% while increasing their customer satisfaction by 27%. Most executives would be happy with a 2 or 3% increase in customer satisfaction.

Achieving 10 times this and reducing costs is an unbeatable combination

What would you say to people who are sceptical about AI in a customer service setting?

When it comes to customer service, people often say they want the “human touch”. Many of the current wave of AI and digital experiences are mechanical and transactional.

Think back to the last digital interaction that you had – how did you feel at the end of the transaction? Many digital interactions are commoditised and certainly not memorable, and those with badly animated characters don’t feel relatable.

Now think back to the best customer interaction that you have had – I bet that you’re thinking about an experience that involved a human.

This is what we do. We have created a platform that makes it easier for humans to interact with AI and to make the machines powered by AI more relatable to humans – it’s a HumanOS™ for AI.

Ava for Autodesk

"We’ve seen one of our customers reduce their help desk calls by 70% while increasing their customer satisfaction by 27%."

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Is this technology just for big players or is it accessible for smaller organisations?

Successful companies all have one thing in common, a strong mandate from senior executives to focus on customer experience. We now live in an experience economy. The ability to deliver human experiences to engage our customers is essential.

The Soul Machines™ co-founder and CEO Dr Mark Sagar and his team were responsible for delivering breakthrough animation in the movie Avatar. These and other digital characters are created, in the most part, using recorded content that only Hollywood Studios and the Games Industry can afford.

The breakthroughs in Autonomous Animation that we’ve achieved at Soul Machines™ are based on a further seven years of research.

Our HumanOS™ for AI delivers several key breakthroughs, including the world’s first Digital Brain, that enables hyper real Digital Humans

to be brought to life in a very cost effective way – and it doesn’t matter whether they are interacting with 10, 100 or 1000s of people.

Every person that engages with our Digital Humans gets their own unique experience without any further hand tooling, making this an incredibly cost effective way to engage with customers.

Will the cost of AI reduce over time to make it affordable for even the smallest businesses?

One of our key breakthroughs is Digital DNA™, a platform that gives our team the ability to create unique synthesised Digital Humans in a matter of minutes.

Over the next six months we will be delivering tools that give this ability to our partners so that they will be able to create their own digital beings and bring them to life at the push of a button.

Every business, no matter the size, will likely employ a Digital Human in their workforce in the coming few years.

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What is the most interesting place that is using AI outside of the customer service industry?

Digital fan engagement is showing a lot of promise. Imagine having a two way conversation with your favourite sportsperson or musician – the possibilities are endless.

What are the first steps our community members can take towards this new future of ‘human and machine cooperation’?

Build a team that understands the problem you want to solve, get an executive sponsor on board, and be prepared to learn. The best digital experiences are delivered iteratively, and Digital Humans are no exception.

Ben Hanna Director of Business Development Soul Machines™

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CSIA FOCUS

How to develop a winning self-service strategy Are organisations meeting customer demands quickly enough? Brian Manusama from Gartner writes on developing the right strategy for your customers.

Customer self-service is a great concept, but many organisations struggle to implement it beyond the initial efficiencies of reducing their agents’ workload.

Clearly, too much self-service is a bad thing. How often has self-service turned customers into amateur,

inadequate travel planners or investors? There’s still the need for human expertise and for consulting to consumers.

Over time, bots (or robots) will capture what it means to be an expert. But for now, getting the right blend of human versus bot service is important.

Often, the goal of simply mandating that all interactions with an organisation should be self-service is the wrong one.

A self-service option should be provided to consumers when they have both the expertise and the desire to use it. When they have neither, it is your role and that of the community you’ve built, to support them.

In many cases, self-service can be the best kind of service. When it’s well implemented, it provides excellent opportunities for revenue growth and service cost reduction, while increasing customer satisfaction and the overall customer experience.

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“Self-service is still service, however, so make sure you keep focused on the service and not the self."

2. Discover and enrich your customers’ journeys Customer journey mapping is a proven approach in bringing to life the sum of a customer’s experiences, rather than seeing it through an inside-out view. The challenge for most enterprises is making it actionable and impactful.

Be pragmatic about self-service.

Identify and focus on the journeys that are of high value and high volume to your business and customers.

3. Select customer engagement channels

Five steps to developing a winning strategy 1. Define your strategy and tactics Focus on the key aspects of the customer experience that would benefit most from customer engagement with a human, self-service or both. Survey your customers and internal stakeholders to understand where having a human customer support representative can mean the difference between a sale or no sale; acceptance of an offer or its rejection; or a quality customer experience.

Balance strategy and tactics between the customer experience and your organisational objectives, such as financial revenue.

Self-service is an active area of technology innovation. Technologies such as natural-language search, automated email response systems, knowledge management and speech recognition in the call centre are replacing labour intensive interactions.

There are so many channels to choose from such as sensors, virtual customer assistants, advanced search, kiosks and in-line video chat.

It’s important to match a product or service with a particular channel, as well as with the correct point of interaction. Understand when it’s appropriate to use self-service and when it isn’t.

It requires the alignment of organisational processes with customer intent to orchestrate a cross-channel, cross-departmental customer experience where selfservice plays a critical part.

Incorporating self-service into the CEH isn’t easy. However, by partnering with your enterprise architecture and technology innovation peers, you can work on creating self-service strategic deliverables. This can then help stakeholders across the organisation to understand both the strategy and its implications.

5. Measure self-service engagements Make sure key metrics and performance indicators are part of your strategy and tactics. You can measure business impacts to find out whether you’re creating the right outcomes and meeting or exceeding the expectations of your customers and the organisation.

Incorporate self-service into your customer analytics roadmap, to help with continuously identifying metrics that align with business outcomes.

Brian Manusama Research Director Gartner

4. Incorporate self-service into the customer engagement hub A customer engagement hub (CEH) is a framework that enables organisations to “act as one” and to smoothly engage with customers.

Brian's research focuses on customer strategies and technologies, particularly customer experience, customer self-service and the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

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