A whole new way to engage with your customers.
I’m a texter, whether at work or with friends, you’d find me constantly messaging. It makes sense because I can ask what I want in short messages and the person on the other side replies in their own time. We lead busy lives now, so when it comes to communicating with companies, its the one thing I dread. Even in 2018 sometimes it would take me quite literally 20+ minutes to get a complete a phone call with my delivery company asking on why an item is late.
So when I read the news that Cisco Customer Journey Solutions for Contact Center now offers integration with Apple Business Chat Beta, I got super excited, because finally, I can deal with companies the same way I handle my communication with work and friends. In an Asynchronous way. Meaning I can send a message to the company such as the delivery company, they will receive it, they can do their investigations and then reply back to me when they find the result without me having to actually be on hold for 20 minutes, listening to that daunting on hold music.
This is one of the most revolutionary, game-changing integration that will quite literally change the landscape of how everyday people communicate with their companies.
Under the hood with Apple Business Chat
Apple is known for tightly integrating its application together, so with apple business chat, you can literally message an organization from any part of your phone, whether it’s from Siri, Searching for a company on Safari, or you just have the phone number of the company saved on your phone. You can text at anytime the company from anywhere within your phone that its integrated with Apple Messages. As this also integrated with Apple Pay, so imagine the conversation going even further. A customer is text within an agent in your contact center, likes a product advised by the agent, and with a click of a button can complete the purchase. (or using their face, in the case of Face ID).
The Cisco Integration. Get Real Agents.
Being able to reach a company is half the story, reaching a real human person within the company is what really makes the difference. This is where Cisco comes. Let’s say you message your Insurer via iMessage, if you opted to share your personal details with the Insurer before, then they would know who you are, which policy you took out. Your first message might be responded to by a chatbot, however, later on, you might need information which the chatbot cant provide, you want to know if a specific operation would be covered under your policy, something not routine. The chatbot, seamless will handover the conversation to an agent, you will text this agent with the information about the surgery, the agent looks up your policy and text you back, saying yes it is covered.
You see in this example, the customer truly experiences what is called a seamless customer experience. He messaged from his messaging app a company, he was handled first by a chatbot, then handed over to an agent, who then resolved their issues. The customer did not download any new application. The customer didn’t have to go a website and try chatting from their mobile website chat application, which in itself can be daunting with a lot “refreshes” when you need to switch windows, The customer chatted with a real agent, via his own messaging app. If this is not a game changer to CX, I don’t know what is.
This means that Cisco customers will be able to optimize the agent experience using:
- Communicate on the Customer’s own terms!
- Intelligent routing to help inbound communications go to the best available resource
- Context about a user’s preferences to provide relevant service
- Reporting for managers and analysts to measure and improve service.
- Integrate with high quality voice and video calling to provide seamless escalation to a different communications channel.
This would be the Future of CX
I’m going to out on a limb here and predict the Apple Business Chat integration with your contact center, will be the future of CX. It will redefine the way customers communicate with their companies. Will give a raise to new habits, because one of the key elements of texting it can be BOTH instant and asynchronous.