Getting Started With AI at Your Business

It seems like artificial intelligence is getting a lot of attention lately. You read articles about it, see presentations that cover AI and you hear about a range of products and services that now have “smart” features. 

For today’s businesses, there are a lot of options for ways AI can be used. If you are looking for the most beneficial applications, AI applied to business intelligence has a lot of potential. Using an AI-powered BI tool, businesses can streamline their analytics operations and get deeper insights.

With AI data analytics having so much to offer businesses of all sizes, more companies are looking to introduce this technology to their teams. However, many people still do now fully understand what AI can do for their data and what they might need to do to start using AI.

What can AI do for analytics?

You probably already know what AI is: it is the science of making smart machines. With powerful AI systems, machines can be taught or programmed to perform complex tasks that used to require the intelligence of a human. Data analysis happens to be one of the tasks that AI performs well at.

With enough data, an AI algorithm can find meaningful patterns and relationships in the data. In many cases, AI systems can even learn as it is exposed to more data. This means that it can get smarter and better at its job the more it works.

As it concerns business applications, you could feed all of your business data to the AI-powered analytics tool. With automated analysis, it can find insights that might benefit a business in a number of ways. It might find waste in your operation, a missed revenue opportunity, a trend in the market, a group of customers that could be valuable or any number of things.

Even beyond insights about the past and present, AI can work well for forecasting. Using predictive analytics, the AI builds models based on historical data. It then runs data about the current condition to predict what may happen in the future. Many of these systems can even run various solutions or actions a business could take to respond to the prediction through the model to help leaders find the right path forward.

In the past, all of these functions required the skills of a data scientist. Not only that, it would often take an analytics team weeks to perform these functions. With AI applied to analytics, it can make data science teams more efficient and it can also offer some of these insights to people who do not have the skills of a data scientist.

The Implementation of AI 

Introducing AI to your business is not as simple as buying an AI analytics platform and feeding it some data. You need to take some time to assess the needs of your business and determine the goals you are trying to achieve.

Depending on the type of business you run and the goals you have, different analytics tools might work better for helping you reach your goals. You will need to find the right analytics tools and determine the types of resources your business will need to support those tools. 

Once you have the tools, it is not as simple as turning them loose on your company and its data. You are going to need to train employees on using the tools and make sure they understand how you expect them to use the tools. Make sure employees have the training they need and brief them on the types of goals you want them to achieve when they use them.

You might also need to spend a little time promoting the use of the tools. Some employees might not take to the tools as quickly as others. Teach employees about the benefits of using analytics tools and the ways AI can help them perform better at their jobs. Employees will be more likely to embrace the use of AI when they understand the benefits and have the training they need.

AI can be a valuable tool when businesses implement it in the right way. Making data-driven decisions can be a way to put your business ahead of the competition, and with features like predictive analytics, your business can be prepared for the future. For many businesses, their ability to adopt AI and integrate it with their operations will be the difference between success and failure.

Make Sure that Customers, Agents and Managers Can Navigate the New Normal… and Beyond

At first, it seemed like a sudden squall, roiling every channel in which companies do business. Customer service leaders hung on to the till for dear life to weather what they thought to be a temporary tempest that would soon take them to calmer waters. As time continues to go by, some elements have stabilized a bit, but it is clear we are dealing with a sea change in the way businesses of all sizes need to deliver a consistently superior customer experience.

While successful organizations will navigate the wave of transformation in the workplace, those that continue to do business as usual will flounder along the way. But what defines the demarcation line between simply treading water and charting an informed course? It involves leveraging strategies and CX solutions that enable their workforce to adapt, their customers to have their needs met, and their businesses to thrive.

It has become more critical than ever to listen more carefully to what customers are saying. Updating the contact center by taking advantage of AI and automation capabilities which provide a powerful resource to uncover insights and opportunities for optimizing customer service. Intelligent use of these technologies enables on-the-fly research to better comprehend changing dynamics and new pain points as well as determine innovative approaches to address them. CX leaders who effectively apply AI and automation will create value for consumers. Companies that can create seamless   interactions between assisted self-service and a hybrid workforce will have a distinct competitive   advantage in an environment where customers often struggle to reach businesses.

A study last year in the Harvard Business Review found that the average American consumer spends 13 hours a year stuck on hold trying to resolve problems. The study also revealed that disgruntled customers who need to make two or more calls to resolve their issue, often simply just give up. More than three-quarters of consumers come away “less than satisfied” with a company’s customer service. In many cases, companies set up their customer service operations to make it more difficult for irate customers to gain satisfaction.

One vital way to diminish growing frustration levels is to ensure that front-line personnel are fully engaged and empowered to effectively answer customer calls. This entails both giving them the right knowledge management tools to do their jobs as well as providing employees and supplemental remote workers the real-time assistance necessary to collaborate with each other from multiple locations.

Maintaining compliance in the face of rapidly changing regulations and diverse team locations is also an important element in staying afloat. But how can managers ensure the proper procedures are being followed in a time when they have far less oversight into the daily activities of their agents?

Improved capabilities to listen to customer conversations via AI and automation…engaging and empowering the workforce to optimize productivity and responsiveness…being vigilant about keeping compliance with a staff situated in diverse locations These are the three cornerstones of navigating the new normal and thriving in the time beyond the pandemic.  Customer engagement and cyber intelligence specialists Verint will present a series of three in-depth webcasts on these crucial areas spaced over a one-month period on CrmXchange.

Entitled “Modern Solutions and Best Practices to Make Life Easier for Agents, Managers, and Customers,” the series will kick off on Tuesday, September 29^th at 1:00 PM ET with a session on “AI Powered Analytics Drive Exceptional CX with Human and Digital Channels” which will examine such vital issues as:

• Determining what types of issues cause the most customer frustration, and how to fix them
• How businesses can see a unified view of their customer service across channels
• How can you understand your customer and user intents to drive a successful self-service strategy?

It will be presented by Daniel Ziv, VP, Speech and Text Analytics – Global Product Strategy, Verint and Tracy Malingo, SVP of Product Strategy, Verint.  Daniel has extensive expertise in helping companies achieve significant ROI by improving performance and quality, while enhancing customer engagement. Tracy has an extensive background in strategic and operational vision on conversational AI, having also served as president of NextAI, where she was instrumental in guiding the technology into the mainstream. Register now

The second presentation, “Empowering the Workforce and Maximizing Productivity” will take place on Tuesday, October 13 at 1:oo PM ET. It will focus on making sure that both remote and in-person representatives have everything they need to fulfill their roles as the face of an organization. Among the topics covered will be

• How to keep employees engaged by giving them the right tools to effectively do their jobs
• Ensuring that employees have the opportunity to collaborate with each other from multiple locations
• Providing real-time assistance to help the growing number of work-from-home agents answer customer calls effectively.

The speakers are consummate professionals: John Chmaj, Sr. Practice Director, Knowledge Management, Verint Global Consulting Services, is a seasoned veteran in the KM field. He has worked in all phases of the customer support process, including telephone and online support, technical writing, applications development, and worldwide knowledge systems design. He will be joined by Jon Allen, VP & GM, Communities & Web Self-Service, Verint. Register now for this session.

The final webcast in the series “Ensuring Compliance in the New Normal” is set for Tuesday, October 27 at 1:00PM ET. It will examine the emerging disciplines involved in effectively maintaining compliance with teams now scattered across diverse locations where it is often more difficult to keep track of what agents are doing on a day-to-day basis. Attendees will learn how to:

• Take a proactive approach by making it easy for a company’s agents to consistently follow the correct processes
• Monitor employees’ activities and productivity even when they are working remotely
• Ensure the company can capture, store, and analyze the interaction data necessary to prove compliance and investigate issues

This important how-to presentation will be delivered by Verint’s Directors of Content Marketing, Kelly Koellicker and Iain Dawes. Kelly’s focus on contact center workforce engagement solutions, coupled with Iain’s extensive expertise on compliance and ability to tell comprehensible, engaging stories covering a wider variety of subject matter will make for an entertaining and informative session. Register now for this session

Register for all three for this transformational webcast series. If you are unable to attend any of the live webcasts, a link to the recording will be posted within 24 hours after the presentation.