Seems fitting, being in New York the city that never sleeps, talking about Intelligent Assistants, the channel that never sleeps. Customer interaction never felt so meta.
This week Aspect attended the Intelligent Assistants Conference in New York City, put on by OPUS Research. The conference brought the best-of-breed providers of intelligent assistance technology, and some of the best thinkers on the topic in the industry. The day and a half conference was small but filled with great examples of companies who are using text-based intelligent, automated assistants to service customers who are more and more, desiring self-service and text based interactions.
Dan Miller, Lead Analyst and Founder at OPUS was the event emcee and really, there couldn’t have anyone better.
We had some great conversations with real customers who are seeing both the business and customer value of intelligent, self-service customer engagement. This is our own Tobias Goebel talking to a representative from Toyota. The big guy in the back is Pete Headrick from OPUS. He kept the show on track and showed me some pictures of a nasty fish called an Eelpout but that’s a story for another day.
A big part of our conversation at the show was that as much as self-service and automated assistance is wanted by consumers, it can’t be done in a vacuum. Most consumers prefer self-service interaction. They want the ability to solve basic and moderately complex problems on their own. But they don’t want to do it in isolation, they want to be able to call an agent if they need to and be able to pick up where they left off, not have to search for an 800 number, make a call and talk to an agent who has no idea about the interaction they were just having.
This was the sign at our booth. Kinda gets to the point which is almost counter intuitive to customer service: We want to talk to you about helping your customers not talk to you. It’s more intelligent than you think.
