Today their role hasn’t necessarily changed. However, the value organisations place on them certainly has. The focus is shifting from fitting customers around business processes to reshaping contact centres around customers’ needs.

For years, the role of contact centres was limited – often confined by traditional 9-5 working hours. It was predominantly aimed at driving down costs and improving efficiencies.

This was reflected by the way companies measured their success. They had KPIs ranging from targets for call volumes to queue times and abandonment rates. These inward-focussed efficiency metrics have, however, consistently failed to put the customer at the centre of the service.

In today’s increasingly digitalised environment, this is no longer sustainable. Nothing is more valuable than customer experience and customer outcome. Organisations are fast adapting to the idea that great customer experiences convert into customer loyalty and new customers. People increasingly sharing their positive and negative experiences online. As a result, financial institutions can no longer afford to underestimate their services.

Contact centres are transforming. From unempathetic, 9-5 services reliant on a standard agent script, to becoming a customer experience centre. They don’t just focus on a service but the total customer experience across an organisation.

This presents a new opportunity for financial services companies to become fully connected organisations driven by technology. Embrace solutions that connect and unify all their channels – from digital to physical and mobile. As a result, they can create seamless, connected customer experiences that distinguish them from their competitors.

Understanding the needs of financial services customers

To better equip contact centres to service customers, we first need to look at how the needs of these customers have changed over time.

The past few years have seen the customer landscape evolve and diversify significantly. Alongside more traditional customers, organisations are increasingly welcoming a new generation of tech-savvy, socially connected customers. They come with a fresh new range of expectations.

Empathy, passion and hyper-personal connections are key drivers behind their demands. They centre around being understood and supported throughout their customer journey. Failure to do so can have catastrophic effects for organisations. Not only will it risk customers leaving their service but also expressing their frustration online.

This means one thing:

The more you know your customer, the more you can tailor your service to them.

A customer who’s been with your organisation for decades will be likely to seek support through traditional landlines or your website. On the other hand, the younger, digitally savvy customers will want mobile and self-service options, pursuing a more digital experience.

So how can organisations make sure that all these needs and preferences are satisfied? Put simply, the more diversified the audience, the more diversified the services.

Breaking down silos in contact centres

To really drive customer satisfaction across your evolving customer base, you need to invest in omnichannel engagement. Encompassing anything from social media to instant messaging, webchats and physical customer support, customers choose their channel of preference.

But this hasn’t always been the case for organisations in the financial services industry. Organisations may have invested in technologies to support a growing number and type of customer-facing channels. However, these are often used in silos and operated by different vendors.

This leaves customer data confined. Additionally, it prevents agents from surfacing customers across multiple systems. Most importantly, it prevents organisations from leveraging customer insights and using them to better orchestrate the customer journey.

Organisations who adapt and unify these siloes will be more likely to succeed at improving the customer journey. Doing so will empower employees to be more collaborative and productive. It will also reduce time to serve customers and provide an overall higher quality of service.

But it’s not enough to change the internal ways of working. Organisations must improve the way they build relationships with their customers. Looking ahead, they need to improve their ability to capture interactions in the moments that matter. They must continuously adapt and improve using this new-found knowledge.

To do this, they need an infrastructure and technology foundation. One that can empower them to capture these moments, understand their context and orchestrate the best, most optimal route across any function. All to deliver fast, impactful and personalised services that convert prospects into long-lasting advocates.

The rise in automated self-service technology

In a world that increasingly relies on digital innovation and newly found tech capabilities, automation can play a key role in improving customer services and contact centres.

Until recently, these have had virtually no front-door filter standing between customers and operators. Self-service has only just started to become a reality, leaving agents to deal with more complex cases.

This is where automation comes in. As data-based insights and capabilities become the norm, organisations have the opportunity to identify the simpler customer queries. They can then direct them to self-service areas, virtual assistants and AI-powered services.

Conversational virtual assistants are a powerful tool. Especially when it comes to harnessing data to gain insights on the customer. This data can be used to understand customer demands, their purchase history and previous complaints and other crucial information that can help them address their query entirely autonomously.

If the customer wants to transfer to a human, all that data can be carried across. Using AI, potential knowledge articles and recommendations, agents can successfully solve a customer’s request.

AI can also assist with more complex tasks such as pre-authenticating customers before speaking to an agent. This time-saving feature benefits both the customer experience and a contact centre’s inward metrics. With the addition of voice-biometric technology, a virtual agent could also help detect and prevent fraud by comparing a customer’s voice against their customer profile. A more cost-effective solution to training agents on fraud prevention and extra reassurance to customers that their money is secure.

These kinds of innovations aren’t there to make calling a contact centre redundant. There will always be a need to speak to agents to help manage banking relationships or advise on future monetary decisions. But for simpler, everyday tasks, financial organisations can empower customers to self-service rather than waiting to speak to an adviser.

Challenger banks have been particularly good at pushing innovations in this way and raising the customer service bar. Many of them are truly revolutionising retail banking by reducing typical applications processes from a week to minutes. By promoting a digitally-native experience, more traditional banks are forced to reconsider their own customer experience.

Keeping customer data secure in the cloud

Data breaches happen far too frequently today. And as financial institutions can hold an entire customer’s wealth – from mortgages to loans to bank balances – there’s an enormous responsibility to ensure that data is kept safe and secure.

This presents an immediate challenge to spend millions innovating on an existing IT infrastructure. This may require a huge amount of capital investment and resources to maintain. We’re seeing many leading insurance companies and banks choosing to migrate their contact centre operations from on-premise servers to the cloud.

If you consider Azure for example, Microsoft has already spent billions creating a secure cloud solution and helped protect leading organisations from cyber-attacks, fraud and Denial-of-Service on an intraday basis. This reassurance makes migrating to the cloud not just a business decision for better data security, but also for greater cost efficiency by eliminating the many overheads that physical servers require.

The cloud also offers advantages when it comes to complying to financial regulations such as how organisations handle data, offer services and prevent financial crime. By working with a trusted cloud provider like Microsoft, a lot of this responsibly can be shared and evidence can be provided to show that data is being kept securely and systems are operating within regulations.

An all-in-one solution for financial services contact centres

Financial organisations are changing. Their reputation and global presence is increasingly tied to customer experience, online reviews and the quality of their services. As a result, they must reimagine their services with a new, more demanding and diversified customer base in mind.

At the same time, switching banks or insurers has never been simpler. Therefore, it crucial for organisations to innovate their contact centre and make the end-to-end experience as efficient and helpful as possible.

The key is to not consider every channel as a separate challenge. A 2021 Forrester report commissioned by Microsoft, Boost Your CX With A Better Integrated Contact Center, CRM, And Collaboration Systems, found that 74 percent of contact centre agents in organisations typically use four or more applications to service customers. This gives a disconnected experience for agents. But by implementing an all-in-one contact centre solution such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, financial organisations can manage their operation through a single platform. From initial customer contact to automated self-service with AI virtual assistants, to agent-guided case management and back office collaboration with Microsoft Teams.

This allows live agents to interact with customers on any channel. They have a complete overview of all previous interactions to give a frictionless and effective customer journey. It also helps to free up their time. So they can focus on the most complex and sensitive requests that virtual assistants aren’t equipped to handle.

Find out more

Envisioning the Future of Customer Experience

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service

About the author

Chris leads the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio for Microsoft UK within the Dynamics 365 Business Group. Chris is responsible for developing and orchestrating the go-to-market strategy across this portfolio for the UK geography to generate awareness, create excitement and drive business development. The Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement portfolio is a suite of intelligent front office business applications designed to accelerate digital transformation across sales, marketing and customer service.

The post How data and AI will transform contact centres for financial services appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Following our simulated hospital event at UCLan in May 2020, I built a selection of chatbots using Power Apps. These were developed with the primary purpose of increasing fidelity within online simulation for our health and social care students. I wanted to explore how to automate and standardise parts of the simulation, to help with quality and control from the facilitator’s perspective.

Creating and developing a chatbot

To create a chatbot, I used Power Apps. I first selected Create under the left hand Chatbots heading, and then worked on developing the language behind the bot.

To get started I’d recommend using Microsoft Whiteboard or some paper to map out the language according to what you want the bot to ask and respond with. Try to draw on the direction of the conversation, and how you want it to start and end. Spend some time exploring existing tutorials found in Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, Azure, and LinkedIn Learning.

If you’re not sure where the bot will be deployed just yet, consider starting in Power Apps. This will make it possible to save it and then ‘sideload’ into a Team, or to embed the bot into another web site or resource. Follow the Microsoft Power Apps Community for Q&A and problem solving tips to help you along the way. 

Once created, you can proceed to Publish the chatbot, following any further instructions.

Taking a student-centric approach

It’s also important to consider the different types of chatbot that can be created when looking to develop your own. In our case, this helped shape how the bots would be used and where they would ultimately be deployed. Here are three different types of chatbots and examples of how we have used them at UCLan.

1- Repetitive prompter chatbot

Within one online OSCE for our MSc Occupational Therapy students, there are four tasks. The elements of each task became the most asked question, both across the module and leading up to the OSCE. Students understood the tasks but often couldn’t retain which order they were in, and whether these were live or recorded. I created a ‘repetitive prompter’ style chatbot for the module, and we have had real success embedding and deploying it within the assessment space. This is quite an exciting development for me, as it reinforces the benefits of investing in time in chatbots – particularly due to the potential of them being embedded within other Virtual Learning Environments. You can also lift this type of chatbot and place it within your Microsoft Teams space.

2- Reflective prompter chatbot

Our debrief chatbot for IPE online simulation was a collaboration between my colleague Abhi and I. Abhi came up with the language for the chatbot, and I then programmed and published it in Power Apps, using the demo link as a Website tab in Microsoft Teams. This was for a large-scale simulation, with 300+ people within three Teams environments on the one day. This was the first cross-faculty IPE event which had been run online whilst students were studying from home. Subsequent feedback from students and staff has since provided valuable insight into further development for future events. With growing interest in online simulation, we created a Team purely for staff to collaborate around simulation ideas. This has proved really useful, as the bots are now becoming shareable assets across our wider organisation.

3 – Role-specific chatbot

Development of role-specific chatbots started from reflections about how to part-automate online simulation, and also the possibility of deploying a series of chatbots within an online simulation to work as simulated characters within the Microsoft Teams environment. I created a couple of ‘patient’ chatbots, including ‘George’- who needs the toilet. If you don’t respond appropriately, he (understandably) becomes very angry, upset and intends on placing a complaint. I am currently developing another simulated hospital event for 2021 and intend for this to be an IPE activity.

Here is an example of a nurse chatbot which we deployed into a large-scale IPE simulation for a colleague.

Looking ahead

Having successfully deployed chatbots at a local level, we are now looking at the possibility of wider publishing to the organisations app catalogue in Microsoft Teams. Bots could then be selected by other users, and once deployed, would appear as 1:1 chats.

We have no doubt that 2021 and beyond will highlight an increased appetite in the part-automation of a number of day-to-day tasks undertaken by educators, and this is something we will continue to both explore and evaluate.

Find out more

Chatbots for TEL

Creating chatbots for online simulation

Power Apps

App Studio: Creating chatbots in Microsoft Teams

Power Virtual Agents

Learning Microsoft Power Apps

Read more education blogs 

About the author

Sam Pywell is a Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at the University of Central Lancashire, and an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Sam has recently led development of chatbots in online simulation for health and social care students using Microsoft Teams. She is an MIE Expert, DigiLearn Champion and Key Contributor to the DigiLearn Sector community. You can follow her on Twitter @smileyfacehalo.

The post How to develop a chatbot to support your educators and students appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

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The digital customer experience has never been more important. Consumers are more mindful about world problems such as global warming and others. All of this translates into expecting their banking provider to act as responsible corporate citizens while offering advanced digital experiences.

How technology can help drive innovation

 Before we take a look at the types of technology some financial organisations are using, remember that implementing technology isn’t ‘just because’. The real impact comes when you use technology to emphasise the following three areas:

• Customer insights: Produce correlations from dispensed internal data such as CRM, transactions, and investment stats.
• Intelligence: Merge customer insights with external data related to economic trends and behaviour.
• Customer engagement: Leverage data from customer insights and intelligence to deliver personalised customer experiences at the right time, through the right channel.

Here’s a teaser from our financial services whitepaper with three out of five ways organisations can use technology to drive innovation, build resilience, and be truly customer-focussed. Download the whitepaper to access the full guide.

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1. Public cloud infrastructure

If you’re looking to innovate into a digital-first model, you need strong cloud foundations. Public clouds can be deployed faster than on-premise infrastructures and there’s no extra cost of purchasing, managing, and maintaining on-premise infrastructures. Every employee can use the same application from any device, securely over the internet.

For finance organisations, compliance and security is very important. Microsoft Azure is built with a multi-layered security approach, with physical data centres, infrastructure and operations. There are 3,500 cyber security experts actively monitoring to protect your business assets and data. With over 90 compliance offerings, you can ensure valuable data is correctly safeguarded, and AI-driven security signals can also help modernise your security operations.

2. AI

Another way for organisations to empower employees is by using AI. AI-powered chatbots are ideal as a first point of contact, and can answer frequently asked questions. If customers need more help, they can move them onto customer service representatives.

AI can also be leveraged for knowledge mining and machine learning. This uncovers insights and analytics that can enable more informed business decisions. AI can test millions of ideas/scenarios per minute, uncovering insights and information such as credit risk scoring, identifying vulnerable customers, and interest rate changes. You can also test new business models rapidly. In the new normal, the ability to enrich existing data with external data will help build resilience within the organisation.

3. User experience

In the EY survey, 43 percent of respondents say the way they bank has changed. As customers are more used to digital ways of interacting, they expect financial institutions to adapt and innovate alongside them. Moving to mobile and web banking apps and leveraging new ways of delivering augmented experiences such as video conferencing, virtual reality, and augmented reality are key new business model enablers.

Citi traders, for example, is using the Microsoft HoloLens to see a virtual workstation that shows data as 3D images, making it easier to work and collaborate.

The new normal

In the new normal, competition will occur between business models rather than product and/or process innovations. Financial leaders should adjust their digital strategy to focus on supporting their customers with innovative ideas and empowering employees with new skills. When you think about how you’re planning on achieving your business goals in the new normal, make sure you build a skilling roadmap alongside. This will ensure there’s no skills gaps in your organisation.

Find out more

Download the report: Boosting the innovation of banking business models

Watch the on-demand webinar: How are traditional banks adapting their approach in a digital world?

About the authors

Tine Petric is a Specialist in the area of Applications and Infrastructure, advising organisations within the Financial Services Industry. He is passionate about the impact that technology can make in inclusive finance and ESG overall. Tine is also an avid tech blogger and guest lecturer at universities where he talks about Business Model Innovation and latest tech trends. Tine holds a Master Degree in Business Administration and Management from the HEC University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Christian Thier leads the Financial Services Account Team Organisation of Microsoft in Switzerland. He drives strategic and transformational partnerships with Banks and Financial Services firms across all segments, helping its clients to accelerate in digital business transformation. He has more than 20 years of working experience within the Banking, Insurance, Financial Services and IT industry in various roles. Before joining Microsoft, he was working at Interactive Data, serving as Managing Director and Board Member of Interactive Data in Switzerland, and Vice President Sales EMEA since 2005. Christian holds a Master Degree in Business Administration from the Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

The post 3 ways the banking sector can innovate in the new normal appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

As a digital agency, we specialise in voice and TV app development, but with a focus on research and development. During the hack, we learnt some valuable lessons. We wanted to share these to help other digital agencies and businesses who want to use their expertise for environmental good but aren’t sure where to start.

Identify the problem

It is no secret that the UK loves a takeaway. The delivery market has been booming in recent years, especially due to popular delivery services like Deliveroo, UberEats, and JustEat. Recently, these services have seen an even bigger surge, and have been providing a valuable service delivering groceries and essentials items to people across the country.

An often overlooked downside to takeaways and deliveries is the huge amounts of packaging waste generated by the industry. There’s often an array of cardboard boxes, polystyrene trays, and plastic containers leftover after ordering.

Government data shows that recycling figures are actually falling. One of the barriers to recycling is the confusion of what can and can’t be recycled. This is made more difficult as local councils and boroughs each have different rules and processes.

Finding the solution with AI

We wanted to use our tech expertise to benefit the environment. We also wanted to explore AI capabilities as a solution. As the increase of disposable takeaway containers continues to grow, our team thought about ways to engineer solution to help the public recycle.

That’s when we came up with Sort It Out. A chatbot that would tell users how to recycle their takeaway containers by analysing a photo. It would integrate an API with Azure AI services to make it easy and fun for people to access information on how best to get rid of their rubbish. In turn, it would encourage them to dispose of that waste responsibly and sustainably.

At the hack event, FX Digital set out to create a working API that would integrate with Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services. Here they discovered different ways to deploy Microsoft AI to create a sustainable solution to this environmental issue.

Deploying Microsoft AI effectively

First, the team built an API that retrieves the user’s coordinates. It then determines the area where the user is currently located using a popular map app and Postcode API.

Next, the team trawled the internet for as many different images of different takeaway packaging as they could find, from cardboard pizza boxes to polystyrene kebab trays. The team used these to train the AI model to recognise different packaging types.

They used Azure Blob storage services to temporarily store imagery submitted by users. Doing this reduces the size of the calls being done across multiple APIs. If these images were permanently stored, they could also be used to retrain the model and advance its machine learning. However, the team instead opted for a data dump of different container types. We did think about storing user images, but GDPR constraints may impact the storage of this data so opted out of that method.

The API was further developed to analyse a dataset and determine whether or not the container is recyclable in the user’s current borough, by pulling through information from local council websites. This presented a challenge, because the information on council websites is updated regularly. Unfortunately councils in the UK do not have an API that is easy to browse. Instead it is all consolidated in one csv file (our dataset) which the team pulled from the government database. Without the time to develop a more advanced solution, the csv file had to be added and updated manually.

Finally, we developed the function to analyse the picture sent by the user to the chatbot. Here, they used Azure’s Cognitive Services Custom Vision. Utilising AI to determine what type of container the object is (e.g. box, cup, bottle) and what material it is made of (e.g. cardboard, glass, plastic) and then tell the user how they can dispose of the rubbish.

Moving forward

We learned valuable lessons from experimenting with AI. We realised this technology could be deployed to create innovative solutions. With the growth of the takeaway industry showing no sign of abating, the environmental burden must be shared by the takeaway industry, the Government and ourselves, the consumer. We all have the responsibility to ensure that we dispose of our waste responsibly and recycle as much as possible.

During the Microsoft hack event, the FX Digital team was able to utilise AI to create an API which is now being used to develop the Sort It Out chatbot. Although environmental projects are not FX Digital’s core business, we realised through this experience that we can use our expertise and AI technology to provide a service that could make a real difference to the environment.

Since finishing the hackathon, the team have been inspired to use their Friday afternoon personal development time to see the project through to completion. The ultimate goal is to have a chatbot that gives the user a smooth and informative experience, leading to better information and an increase in recycling. This chatbot could be used by delivery services to promote recycling with their users.

Sort It Out has inspired our team to use AI to benefit society in a small way. We hope other businesses may be inspired to do the same.

Find out more

Learn more about FX Digital and follow updates about Sort It Out

4 skills organisations can embrace to use AI for social good

Discover more ways AI can be used for social good

Sign the Partner Pledge to drive a sustainable and ethical tech sector

Tools to empower your development team

Watch the on-demand session: The 8 principles of sustainable software engineering

Listen to the Environmental Variables podcast series 

About the author

Ramsey is the Marketing Manager at FX Digital, a digital agency specialising in TV and Voice App Development. Working in an agency obsessed with Research and Development, you will often find him writing articles about the latest and greatest developments in new and emerging tech, from Voice technology to Connected TV, AR and AI. Ramsey and the team at FX Digital are always seeking new ways to solve complex issues. He believes marketing is a powerful tool to educate and inform, as well as spark debate and discussion, hoping that it results in innovation.

The post How to use AI to promote environmental sustainability appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

91% of customers are more likely to shop with brands that recognise, remember and provide relevant offers and recommendations.

With the help of data-driven intelligence and modern business applications, it’s now easier than ever to create a personalised and differentiated shopping experience for your customers.

This is the future of retail and it is happening today.

Here are three ways you can use technology to get ahead of the competition and transform your customer experience:

1. Manage increasing customer expectations

Customer expectations are rising all the time but it’s not a case of customers just coming up with the expectations by themselves. As more and more brands deliver innovative solutions to improve their customer experience, the bar is raised for everyone.

Data is your secret weapon here. With the help of AI, you’ll be able to easily identify patterns in your customer data to help determine the next best action to drive personalised engagement at scale.

2. Transform your customer service

With the shopping experience now available 24/7, customers expect a quick resolution to any issues that they are facing regardless of the time. With the help of Dynamics 365, virtual agents are now easy to deploy and capable of engaging in personalised conversations with your customers without a single line of code. But to really transform your customer service, you need to learn from the consistent issue that arise and but measures in place to resolve them. A customer satisfaction dashboard, powered by AI, can give you a quick view of overall customer satisfaction and the bot topics that are driving the score. You can even see the hours that you’ve saved through the use of a virtual agent, making it easy to identify the ROI of deployment. An easy sell back into your business.

3. Create a connected customer experience

In retail, success relies on a consistent customer experience across web, mobile and physical storefronts. The challenge for retailers lies in ensuring the same level of service and convenience in physical locations as online – from stocking the same inventory, to offering personalised recommendations based on browsing and buying behaviour. Dynamics 365 Connected Store uses observational data generated as customers move through the store to create employee alerts and actionable insights that can improve store efficiency. Imaging being able to improve the checkout experience by triaging extra cashiers via instant notifications, based on sensor or camera data.

Any organisation—in any industry, from retailers to manufacturers— can effortlessly connect data from every source of interaction and arm employees with a single source of truth within the external business applications they use every day. Technology is making it easier to maximise customer lifetime value by surfacing a 360-degree view of the customer.

Historically, the customer interaction with a brand ended the moment they completed the purchase and walked out the door—limiting an organisation’s understanding of why or how its customers are using its products and services. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables you to gain the most comprehensive view of your customers by unifying data across diverse sources—be it transactional, behavioural, or observational data—as well as uniquely enriching profiles with market insights and real-time product usage.

From data analysts to marketing, sales, and service professionals, every employee in an organisation can leverage AI-driven insights. These include churn risk, customer LTV, and recommended next best action, to power business processes across the customer journey that help boost personalisation and build richer relationships.

Discover how you can deliver the future of retail, today.

Find out more

Watch the session from Future Decoded: Delivering a connected commerce experience 

Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform capabilities

7 steps to better customer engagement

The post Creating the future of retail: 3 ways to transform your customer experience appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Advances in technology such as AI and automation are opening up new possibilities in local government services. By looking beyond the management of simple administrative tasks, to more complex processes, it can be used to provide better citizen outcomes.

Automation, chatbots, and AI are creating immense potential, especially when applied within the extensive, integrated technology stack that’s been developed by Microsoft. The growing sophistication of AI tools, and the application of cognitive technology principles, won’t just deliver better outcomes for the citizens. It’ll also help local government avert the crisis situation as they attempt to make substantial savings.

The changing face of customer engagement

The public sector faces the perfect storm: the growing expectation of customer engagement and the pressures on social care alongside tightening budgets means it must look for radical, new technology-based solutions.

For customer engagement, there’s a need to respond to rising demands while dealing with the pressure on budgets. This comes with meeting customer expectations, which are being changed by the way people do business online with the commercial sector. Local government must be able to respond to rising demands for a personalised citizen experience.

Automation can make a big contribution to efficiency, but it’s made relatively slow progress in local government. Too many processes still rely on manual intervention, especially when handing over from one system to the next. This adds extra effort to the employee, filling up their time with mundane tasks.

There is a further challenge for social care. The ageing population and social deprivation is increasing the demand for services. An estimated 1.2 million people have an unmet need, and social care demand is projected to rise by around £12 billion by 2030/31, growing at an average rate of 3.7 per cent a year. Efforts to deal with this are often undermined by a lack of coordination and a duplication of effort between agencies. But, it’s an area where intelligent automation and cognitive technology can help professionals use their time more productively.

Creating a self-service citizen experience with virtual assistants while driving the employee productivity

These point to a need for more automation in government. Microsoft has laid the ground for this with the Dynamics 365 platform. This includes functions such as customer self-service, workflow and case management. But the automation can now go much further. Virtual assistants able to take on back-end processes to update information and manage transactions.

On a basic level they can take over from manual processing and mundane tasks. For example, imagine a citizen provides notice of a change of address for a service. The quasi-logic within a virtual assistant identifies them, recognises other services the person receives, and automatically updates their record – or, if necessary, create a new one.

The virtual assistant can also authorise a service, or identify key points in a request. This ensures it’s allocated to the right team with relevant instructions and the appropriate level of priority.

All this can reduce the amount of manual processing – identifying, validating, and re-keying information. In moving service requests from front- to back-end, processes overall will be much faster, with human error eradicated. An effective virtual assistant is process-agnostic. This means it can switch from managing one process to another, being deployed in a way that reflects changes in demand and organisational priorities.

As a result, employees can focus their time on more critical work that requires human intervention.

Delivering a personalised citizen experience

But the big prizes are in applying machine learning and AI to more complex processes in which they take on more detailed, nuanced interactions with citizens. Microsoft has contributed to the potential with the development of CitizenBot – a chatbot designed to manage the demands of local government in the UK, both internally and when dealing with citizens.

It can support interactions through a conversation over any device or platform. It then responds with questions that shape a more precise requirement, pulling together information from a range of sources. CitizenBot has been programmed to understand how requests from the public relate to the services provided by local authorities.

It also remembers people through an authenticated log-in function, giving it the ability to refer back to earlier requests and records provided to the individual. It also works with a selection of languages. Overall, it provides high-quality and personalised automated support, with a positive service experience, and significant reductions in operational costs.

The possibilities are expanding as other technologies – like natural language programming and optical character recognition (OCR) – become more mature. For example, OCR can recognise characters on a PDF document or image file, and natural language tech makes sense of a conversational or colloquial statement for a database. This gives virtual assistants and bots the ability to take in more detail and handle complexities in interactions.

Transforming social care

Intelligent automation can be deployed in the more routine administrative elements of social care. Meanwhile, AI helps create a more objective approach to care provision, compiling case information and making recommendations. The objective is to provide a more proactive and personalised service. At the same time, it needs to drive efficiencies via automation and self-service.

The use of predictive analytics and data insights can highlight crucial elements, relate them to other factors in a case history, and form predictions of what could follow from various choices.

It wouldn’t replace human judgement. As evidenced in medical practice, it could weigh up options and make recommendations, supporting staff in making sensitive decisions. If it raises the success rate of interventions, it eases future burdens on social care teams.

A 24/7 chatbot can guide citizens through the social care options available to improve their lives, answer most frequently asked questions, schedule appointments with named officers. An advanced application can support citizens who require home care services. Then, Bots can prompt for appointments, physical activities, meals, hydration or medication.

Council services can be transformed by emerging AI tools. These have the potential to sharply improve efficiency as social care teams – and others in local authorities – gain a stronger understanding of individual cases, and be better placed to make difficult decisions.

Public authorities are riding the first wave of intelligent automation in their services. However, they should be looking beyond this, to the much wider range of possibilities from cognitive technology.

Find out more

See how Wiltshire Council have transformed their citizen experience

Download the report: Maximising the AI opportunity 

About the author

Prajakt is a management consulting professional with more than 15 years of experience in serving large global clients from a variety of industries – from public sector and manufacturing to telecommunications. He’s passionate about helping customers exploit transformation opportunities, derive value from technology investment and accelerate success. Currently, Prajakt is Industry Sponsor for the Local and Regional Government sector in Microsoft Services.

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Microsoft’s goal is to empower every person on the planet to do more. But as our lives continue to get more and more hectic every day what technologies allow us to really achieve that? Bots may be the answer.

We’ve all been there. Sat on the end of a phone. On hold. Feeling ignored. Feeling frustrated. Time ticking away while we wait to solve a problem that should only take minutes. Some of us are even blocked further by language or accessibility barriers.

Meanwhile, it’s no picnic for the businesses we interact with. They are feeling the pain of customers dissatisfaction while they see their reputation drop and costs continue to rise.

Bots may seem like a step into our sci-fi future for many. Something for tomorrow, inaccessible or even unachievable. But the reality is they are here, and many are reaping the rewards already today.

What is a bot?

A bot is essentially a software program that can interact in a conversational way, using data, machine learning, and AI.

Bots let users navigate intelligent solutions and systems in a way that comes naturally. The user doesn’t need to decipher a complicated website or worry about what to do next in an application, they can simply chat as though they were talking to a human and be led to their goal.

Conversations such as

“I need to renew my parking permit”

“Where is my delivery?”

“I’d like to report a pothole”

Bots can take the complication out of what should be simple processes. They’re there 24/7. They speak in a natural way, when the user needs them.  No more waiting on the end of the phone!

What could it mean for me?

We are seeing more and more businesses and consumers reaping the benefit of bots.

As a customer, a bot could mean instead of waiting on hold to get a question answered or having to start at the beginning every time, you are provided with personalised, anticipatory services and instant access to information – anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

It could mean being empowered to have a conversation in the language most comfortable to you or in an accessible way. All of this means a better, and more personalised, customer experience.

For a business, a bot could drive efficiencies, reduce costs, and allow them to engage more effectively with their employees and customers alike.

The bot could filter the day-to-day repetitive tasks leaving more time for the organisation to focus on the important workloads that require more attention. This could mean customers becoming advocates, a competitive advantage in the marketplace, and no more costly call centre queues.

Is a bot the answer?

Bots aren’t a magic bullet. They are great at repetitive transactional problems but will struggle with complex subjective choices so choosing the right tasks for them is key. Success will come from creating seamless interactions between people and bots and tying together the unique values of both to get the best results.

How do you know when a bot is right?

Ask yourself this:

If the answer is yes, then a bot could be the right solution. You could be on the right track to better service. Better value. Better relationships. As a customer surely that’s better than being on hold?

Find out more

Learn how to create intelligent bots

Build a bot in under 3 minutes

Discover how Microsoft Services can help

About the author

Andrew Gooding advises leaders in the UK on digital transformation and how to utilise technology to get the best out of their businesses and people. His passion is sparking excitement in innovation and helping customers understand what the future could look like. As well as leading Microsoft Services delivery engagements, Andrew works with customers helping them turn ideas into transformational business results.

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If anyone understands the value of a great patient experience, it’s Alfonso Ferrandez. The Chief Technology Officer at Doctorlink is ruminating on the use of AI in healthcare.

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way people access care, and yet, as Alfonso explains, “a lot of people have distrust for AI in healthcare. There’s a reluctance to automate things for fear of making humans redundant.”

Hosted on Microsoft Azure, Doctorlink is an app developed by clinicians that provides a ‘digital front door’ to primary care services. Patients discuss their symptoms with the chatbot, then receive the care they need.

This Symptom Assessment tool is underpinned by a complex dataset of clinical algorithms developed in-house over 18 years. Over 2,000 unique outcomes are possible, and it provides a safety net for more urgent clinical conditions. All that produces the digital equivalent of that familiar face-to-face consultation, delivering convenient medical care for all, particularly people who struggle to attend physical appointments.

Refining the AI-enabled patient journey

The data-crunching app analyses the clinical accuracy of outcomes, but also patients’ behaviours throughout the assessment. Should enough patients pause at a particular question, for instance, it may indicate confusion – and a need to simplify the experience. By switching to more accessible, human language, such as changing ‘abdominal pain’ to ‘stomach ache’, Doctorlink saw far more patients complete their assessments.

Given its use in a heavily regulated environment, the Doctorlink chatbot doesn’t update through AI. It relies, instead, on Machine Assisted Learning, which helps clinicians improve the patient experience without removing their clinical expertise.

“We don’t believe AI could or should replace doctors,” Alfonso says. “We believe that AI and machine learning can help healthcare practitioners enhance their patient care and empower patients to find their right treatment path.”

The machine provides population and algorithmic improvement data, while clinicians evaluate and verify whether it’s safe to make those changes. As such, the human interface and clinical oversight is maintained.

Unlocking the digital front door with AI

As Alfonso knows only too well, a patient’s journey doesn’t end after their online assessment. It’s only just beginning.

Based on the analytics collected, the app personalises healthcare advice that’s right for the patient. This may be prompting users to book a face-to-face or video consultation with a GP or directing them to visit the appropriate health services in the local area.

In this way, Doctorlink helps create a framework for joined-up care that can evolve into Integrated Care Systems, where GP practices work alongside community-based providers. This allows the delivery of personalised patient care at scale. Beyond improvements to patients’ well-being, Doctorlink has also helped healthcare professionals save both time and money, leading to increased staff productivity and more efficient resource management.

Already, surgeries using the app are seeing 22% of people redirected away from primary care, which makes a huge impact on demand. In 10% of app assessments, patients were actually redirected to self-care, taking them out of the system altogether, meaning healthcare practitioners can better prioritise their time. People are also able to use the platform’s service finder – a tailored directory of services – to find precisely what they need, when they need it.

Overcoming the fear factor

It’s the analytics behind Doctorlink, though, that allows developers to evolve the patient-centric experience. Digging into the data, behavioural patterns showed a hold up during the online booking procedure. By changing how appointments were offered, bookings increased from 32% to 76%.

During another listening exercise, the business studied user funnels and feedback from patients. The results revealed a website that didn’t communicate what the app did, how it worked, or – a cardinal sin in healthcare – instill a sense of trust. A redesign significantly improved patient click-throughs.

Even simple data-driven tweaks such as these have a major impact on how people perceive their overall patient journey. Digital health tools are a radical change in the approach to care. It’s vital that patients are guided and supported by these new technologies – and that starts with an outstanding user experience.

But cutting-edge AI and machine-learning innovations like Doctorlink are nothing without company-wide buy-in. Solutions need to be simple to use, easy to implement and interoperable, allowing them to integrate with existing healthcare systems. It’s tough to convince professionals to use a system that only serves to make their life harder.

When Alfonso notes, “our research tells us that 94% of GPs think clinician involvement is important to the development of digital services used in primary care,” I’m reminded of Microsoft’s own vision for AI: a technology that doesn’t replace us, but empowers us all to be even better.

Find out more

Explore Microsoft’s vision for AI

[msce_cta layout=”image_center” align=”center” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-gb/industry/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2019/01/Interior-view-of-the-Gherkin-building-in-London-e1549465950152.png” linkurl=”https://info.microsoft.com/UK-DIGTRNS-CNTNT-FY19-10Oct-26-MaximisingtheAIOpportunity-AID-731692-MGC0003240_01Registration-ForminBody.html?wt.mc_id=AID731692_QSG_285213″ linkscreenreadertext=”Download the report: Discover how to maximise the AI opportunity” linktext=”Discover how to maximise the AI opportunity” imageid=”7354″ ][/msce_cta]

About the author

Paul has been working in the partner world for Microsoft for 5 years. In that time, he’s seen how AI and the cloud has transformed the way organisations get things done, and how products and services are used. The effect on the organisations that use these technologies and the partners that supply them has been profound. He champions modern technologies like artificial intelligence, believing in their ability to transform traditional processes for the better. In doing so, they add huge value to organisations and the people they serve. Healthcare organisations are particular beneficiaries of these technologies, due to their unique challenges and the critical nature of what they do.

The post Using AI to deliver a personalised and efficient patient journey appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Many organisations are excited about the potential of AI, but still treat it as part of their technology strategy. To succeed in the digital transformation race, leaders need to see AI as an integral part of their business. So we developed an AI Business School to help train this next generation of digital CEOs.

We already use AI most days without thinking twice. Whether it’s helping us plan a journey, identifying fraud across millions of bank transactions, or suggesting the next video to watch on YouTube: cognitive technology is making our lives easier and giving forward-thinking businesses the ability to differentiate.

We’re most familiar with AI in a digital context―on websites, apps, and smart devices―but it’s transforming other industries too. Robotic process automation is helping manufacturers streamline production. Machine translation is facilitating global communication and trade. And cities are analysing data from millions of car, train, and pedestrian journeys a day to make it easier to get around.

The AI ship hasn’t sailed yet

Businesses could be forgiven for thinking that they’ve missed the boat on AI, but that’s not the case. According to our Maximising the AI opportunity research paper, 51 percent of UK business leaders say that their organisation does not have an AI strategy. A similar number (49 percent) say that they use no AI at all in their day-to-day work. And more than a third (37 percent) say their organisation isn’t thinking about AI at all.

The AI opportunity for those who do make the leap is too significant to ignore. We found that organisations already on the AI journey are outperforming others by 5 percent. Those that have invested in establishing the right approach are 9 percent ahead.

However, as with any aspect of digital transformation, AI must be more than a technology add-on. It means taking numerous social and human aspects into consideration, building a strategy around a well-defined business need, and tying it to your overall organisational goals.

AI demands a new breed of business leader―digital CEOs, who combine technical expertise with business acumen. They must recognise the potential of AI to their business, as well as be aware of its broader impact. Businesses that don’t have this leadership will find it harder to turn AI to their advantage.

You can do this―but should you?

“How?” is the most tempting question to ask when considering AI, but digital CEOs know that asking “Why?” is just as important.

When it comes to AI, we found that companies that ask, “Should we do this?” outperformed companies that ask, “Can we do this?” by 9 percent on average. They are also 28 percent more likely to seek to improve the world.

Thanks to advances in technology, it’s never been quicker, easier, or cheaper to get an AI proof of concept up and running. But it must be led by clear guidelines that ensure fairness and transparency in how smart systems make decisions, responsibility about which processes are automated, and protection for people’s privacy and dignity. And given consumers’ increasing awareness about how their data is used, security and data protection must stay front and centre.

Developing an AI strategy for your business

While the destination is clear, the road may not be. Make no mistake: AI is not something you can switch on overnight.

But businesses can get quick value from their AI initiatives if they take the right approach. According to Clare Barclay, Chief Operating Officer at Microsoft UK, “The most important thing about AI for business isn’t the technology―it’s the problem that you’re trying to solve.”

Don’t try and bite off more than you can chew with your first AI project. The really big goals are too vast, too distant, and keep moving. Instead, focus on small projects to deliver a fast return. If the aim is building a smart, autonomous delivery vehicle, for example, start by finding a way to plot a route through a congested city.

Help your AI heroes lead by example

There are thousands of places to learn about the technical side of AI, but few resources to help business leaders develop the skills to become digital CEOs. Our AI Business School provides four learning paths to help current and future digital CEOs master the strategy, culture, ethics, and technology of AI. All modules are self-paced, available on demand, and free of charge.

The research cited in this article comes from Maximising the AI opportunity. In this paper, you’ll find deep analysis of the UK’s AI opportunity, advice for building a strategy, and interviews with UK business leaders who are already using AI to digitally transform their organisations.

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The post AI is ready to transform businesses. But are business leaders ready for AI? appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is altering financial services and disrupting the traditional ways of doing business and interacting with customers. Technology is opening the door to new operating models, while introducing competitive dynamics that will reward forward-thinking institutions and punish those that are not able to keep pace.

For the western economy, AI looks promising. The UK’s GDP will be 10 percent higher in 2030, at £232 billion. AI will be one of the main contributors to this uplift.

And yet, 40 percent of leading organisations in UK say their most senior personnel do not fully understand digital and 65 percent say that business stakeholders do not have the skills for managing AI. Furthermore, 86 percent believe AI will make business more effective but don’t yet know how to implement it, with more than 92 percent agreeing they need to evolve from their existing business models. Evidently, there appears to be a gap.

I have recently executed research with the London School of Economics regarding the potential AI may have on the customer in financial services. I interviewed 19 executives to get their views on their challenges and opportunities.

In the interviews, the top theme cited was automation adding value to their business, which is meant to aid processes that help the enhance the customer experience.

“The biggest opportunity with AI is reducing the number of operational decisions and processes. As soon as we can start to move away from there, we can start to minimise risks of errors being made. Minimise time, minimise costs and explicitly or implicitly affect the customer journey. Aim is to reduce time so we can reinvest more to enhance client services. It’s about taking out operational processes that are unnecessary today.”

– Consumer Insights Vice Presidents at an International Bank

Chatbots in the financial industry

Another theme that was top of mind among the financial services c-suite was chatbots. Today Microsoft’s Cortana already aids the customer experience changing path to purchase strategies, with banks also testing the early days with ‘automated attendants’.

However, the real future is in messaging, which has more monthly active users than social networking apps, with the top three―WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber―having nearly three billion users combined.

According to research conducted by Credence Research, chatbots have the potential to leapfrog mobile apps to become a major medium for digital communication. The global chatbot market is driven by technology developments such as natural language processing, customer intelligence, and integration with enterprise systems.

In the financial services sector, technology is proactively assisting financial advisors with investment bots used by banks to reduce costs and eliminate potential human errors. This means that purchasing decisions will increasingly be made by computers.

Some forecast that the introduction of robo-advisors almost eliminates financial advisors from the investment process. Predictions are that customer engagement with bots will only continue to increase given that people fell more comfortable to disclose financial information when speaking to a bot in confidentiality.

But is this correct route to take? According to some industry leaders, not necessarily. “Maybe the world doesn’t want robo-advisors. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should,” says a Strategy Lead at a European Bank.

Enhancing the customer experience

With increased connectivity, financial services are impacting client journeys from multiple touch points. Capitalising on these moments requires the shift from simply understanding which offer and which channel performs the best to understanding the context of a customer’s interaction.

This example below shows customer intent and the touch points at which data is collected:

There are numerous opportunities to enhance the customer experience. Personalised financial planning, fraud detection, anti-money laundering, and automation of customer operations presents opportunities to enhance the customer experience.

According to the Technology Vice President at a US Bank: “AI allows us to understand your money better – can we categorise your transactions, can we play back that to you in insightful way, can we predict what’s going to happen in the next few days for maximum long-term value?”

Fundamentally, this requires tailoring services, preferences and customisation of offers. This includes aspects such as the appropriate credit limit and interest rate for a given customer or purchase. The ultimate goal is to scale personalised offers with the use of technology, and although it’s early days, the results look promising.

“Even with small data sets, we’ve seen 20 percent uplift of the credit risk model when you overlay it with some constraints. Once we actually operationalise this, we’ll have:

1. Better fraud detection
2. Better ability to extend credit to people where traditional models would say no.

We need to scale this which will take some time. But it will mean better customer service, better lending decisions, and therefore better products.”

– Cloud Lead, International Bank

The more we adapt AI and technology in banking, the closer we are to self-drive finance, which automates much of customers’ financial lives and improves their financial outcomes.

As we move closer towards this era, banks are working on transforming their infrastructures to support this change with a seamless experience by migrating to the cloud. This allows institutions to treat their entire product portfolio as a single balance sheet and enabling dynamic customisation.

“The next level is hyper-personalised products. Right now, you can play with variables such as interest rates but we’re playing around with too few. Where it’s headed is multitude of variables and personalised products on an individual level. What variables are we allowed to change and what is the impact of these products on our credit risk profile?”

– Consumer Insights Vice President, International Bank

Although we are still in early days of fully experiencing benefits of AI, it will impact the customer in many positive ways. Benefits such as personal financial plan enhancements, easier payments transactions, improved credit loans, and fraud detection are just some of the many benefits we are yet to experience.

Find out more

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About the author

Marina Arnaout has been successfully helping businesses embrace innovative strategies that enhance digital investments. She’s previously held roles of Customer Success Director at Marin Software working with clients across EMEA, and Regional Head of Digital at SAS Software, spearheading the analytics leader’s global digital strategy, which won her recognition in Marketing Magazine’s annual 30 Under 30 in 2016. Currently she is part of UK Strategic Sales at Microsoft working with top tier clients in helping develop digital strategies across Microsoft advertising properties, and is a masters candidate at London School of Economics, focusing her academic research on the impact AI has on the customer within financial services.

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