Aspect’s ACE 2015 event was primarily focussed on showcasing the vast array of solutions for customer engagement
Joe Gagnon, SVP & GM, Cloud, Aspect, began his presentation by saying, “We are making technology more human-like. It is a profound opportunity. We have to do more for our customers, so that they can do more for their customers.” Workforce Optimisation (WFO), aims to provide rich customer experience. Contact centres must enable interactions in a holistic way and not in silos. Omnichannel experience enables a brand to be present across various channels. The idea is to ensure that the consumer does not feel constrained by time or space.
Self Service Solutions
On the topic of self-service solutions, he said, “The move to self-service is very important. We now use different channels for it like text, Twitter, etc. 60-70% of customers prefer to send a text rather than talk to an agent.” He spoke at length about the company’s portfolio for self-service solutions and informed that Aspect CXP is for self-service, Zipwire for agent contact, Aspect Proactive engagement suite for proactive information. These enables interaction mapping process.
“Self-service can come alive with text as it gives actionable insights,” he emphasised. “The company’s technology strategy will keep on converging. There will be portfolio convergence by 2017. 80% of R&D research is working on it. Thus, customers do not have to choose which platform to use. Ultimately, going ahead winners will be who will give one touch generation.”
After giving a brief introduction to the company, Gagnon mentioned that the organisation has 200 channel partners worldwide and 2,300 customers. Eight of the top ten healthcare providers use Aspect solution. All of its internal solutions are cloud-based. In 2014 the company rolled out 30 new products and capabilities. Unified IP implementation and Aspect Workforce Optimisation Suite 8 is available in subscription cloud. The company currently has nine data centres, 1,50,000 ports. NOC in Bangalore, Singapore and Hong Kong. Aspect has announced that Aspect EQ Inform for Apple Watch will enhance agent management.
According to Jim Davies, Gartner, “Aspect has gone from talk to action.” Gagnon explained the three seismic shifts, which are going on presently. Firstly, there is business model disruption, and market is rewarding disruption. For example, LendingClub, Uber, etc. Secondly, public cloud usage has been escalating steadily. Cloud is now part of the core. It has led to IoT becoming all-pervasive. These apps could generate $6.2 trillion per year. In healthcare, IoT will allow 80-100% reduction in counterfeiting drugs. It will have a huge impact on various sectors in BFSI, telecom, BPO, transportation as well. IoT will give a huge surge to building reporting and analytics and enabling visual alerting.
Perfect vision: 2020
The world is made up of stories and the best stories are always written by the customers. What will customer engagement be like in 2020. Perhaps it will be perfect, because 20/20 is a synonym for perfect vision. Gagnon spoke about customer engagement 20/20. According to him, companies must embrace a new model for customer engagement to achieve sustainable growth in ‘flat & frictional world’. The facility of self-service for consumers is a compelling long-term solution.
Aspect’s value proposition 2020 is to increase customer interaction, improve customer satisfaction and decrease costs through self-service. Organisations on their part need to elevate the role of agents. They need to extend interaction model. Sanjay Gupta, MD, South Asia & Middle East spoke about the changing technology landscape in India and Middle East. He said, “With only 18% penetration of internet in India, connectivity has a long way to go in the country. The market scope is unbelievably huge.”
An interesting customer testimonial was given by Deepak Bhosale,Asian Paints, CM-IT. He said, “Asian Paints has primarily grown through acquisitions. Customer centricity models enable the organisation to deliver relevant value through engaging experiences.” Asian Paints has completed the interaction process with Aspect solution. Pilot was conducted on Aspect’s Unified IP 6.6 in 2009. Following the success of the pilot project, a contact centre was set-up in Mumbai, enabling the customer interaction process on mobile platform. It enabled the dealers process as well. Asian Paints also consolidated all auditing. All 35,000 dealers are on Aspect solution. Over 95% of orders are now placed through the contact centre. 95% of calls are picked up within 15 seconds. Calls abandoned by customers gets captured using ETL tool of Informatica.
Currently Asian Paints is trying to adopt real-time analysis to help agents with relevant information during live call. Customer sentiment analysis and omni-channel self-service are also in the pipeline. Aspect’ s integrated voice of the solution is being evaluated for the same.