Convergys, a global leader in customer management, recently completed a pilot implementation of a conversational virtual assistant solution at one of North America’s largest financial services companies. This solution resulted in an annual cost savings of $8.5 million, achieved by increasing the number of calls managed by the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system by more than two million, decreasing misrouted calls by 67 percent, and creating a seamless conversational experience for self-service across all channels.
The digital revolution has forever changed consumer expectations. Customers are no longer willing to navigate complex touch-tone menus in an attempt to resolve their issues. They want personalized, instant service across every channel of interaction. As a result, many industries are moving quickly to adopt virtual assistant platforms (automated self-service resources that respond consistently to conversation, giving the experience of communicating with a person). In fact, an Opus Research Report (February 2017) predicts the intelligent solutions industry to grow exponentially over the next several years, predicting a global annual spend of $4.5 billion by 2021. This technology uses artificial intelligence to enable a natural human-like dialogue between a consumer and a computer-generated voice or digital chat bot, beginning with an open-ended question: “How may I help you?”
“Convergys continues to invest in digital and insight-driven solutions and technologies to help our clients meet the digital needs of their customers,” says Allyson Boudousquie, Vice President, Product Strategy at Convergys. “Now, our clients can say goodbye to complex IVR menu trees and deploy chat bots on any digital channel—all from the same application.”
According to Convergys Digital Attitudes and Behavior Research (2017), the average consumer spends seven hours per day digitally connected, and the average household has 4.5 Internet-enabled devices. Digital self-service is especially popular with banking customers, with 72 percent of consumers surveyed saying their most recent self-service interaction was banking-related.
Convergys continues to expand and drive the adoption of Virtual Assistants through both internal development and partnerships in which Convergys will be responsible for the consulting, deployment and optimization of these solutions for its clients.