Building a Virtual Customer Service Representative

Overview:

This Technology Guide examines the Virtual Customer Service Representative (vCSR), a new kind of customer-centric software platform that automates a selected set of customer service and sales functions for both the customer and the customer service representative. The vCSR platform integrates new technologies such as speech recognition, natural language understanding, business rules engines, and new abilities to link multiple channels together--such as a wireless gateway that can be linked to electronic mail as well as to a web or voice server or Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology.

The Guide discusses how vCSR software segments the functionality necessary to integrate different media and systems into an e-commerce application that replicates the manifold layers of skill sets and subsets, based on specialized vertical knowledge required of service and sales agents. The end product arms the customer service representative with a new suite of multi-channel customer support and marketing tools that make the company capable of automatically responding to customer service mandates and proactively promoting new business, thereby transforming customer service into a competitive advantage for the company adopting the platform.

Several vCSR applications are described, which include customer self-service, automated email response, personalization assistant, voice self-service, web navigation, chat monitor and respondent, and customer survey agent. These applications are used in industries such as banking, insurance, financial services, retail, delivery services, academia, human resources, healthcare, and home services vCSR applications.

A well-developed vCSR application strategy should effectively integrate all Customer Service Representatives (CSR) elements into a consistent, pre-integrated architecture that understands customer behavior across all contact channels, using the customer as the starting point. Accordingly, the white paper discusses vCSR architecture, which is designed around open standards-based computing and provides the scalability, manageability, security, and reliability necessary for large-scale deployment. The paper concludes with an explanation of the benefits provided by a vCSR solution, as well as a summary of R.O.I. factors.

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