Deploying Online Self

Deploying Online
Self-Service
The Definitive Guide
Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
Getting Online Self-Service Right
Customer service, contact center, and customer
experience professionals should always be on the lookout for ways to enhance the customer experience – and
more than ever, that customer experience begins online.
The time has come for organizations to get serious about
getting online self-service right – after all, it’s what
consumers want and deploying modern online self-service
technologies like Virtual Agents is a great place to start.
Since Virtual Agents can dramatically improve the online
experience for prospective and existing customers, an
increasingly growing number of organizations have turned
to these solutions in recent years. But how exactly do you
deploy a Virtual Agent in your organization? How will your
customers engage with it? What customer interaction
channels should you deploy it in? These and many more
topics will be explained in plain English throughout this
report to ensure you have a solid understanding of all
aspects of a successful Virtual Agent deployment in your
organization. But first, let’s review some of the basics of
Virtual Agents.
Quick Tips and
Recommendations
Look for these callouts inside
this guide for little-known tips
and recommendations based
on best practices in deploying
Virtual Agents online.
What are Virtual Agents?
Consumers are increasingly interacting with Virtual Agents (sometimes called virtual assistants) as a means to get problems
solved and questions answered. But what exactly is a Virtual Agent? At their core, Virtual Agents are software services that
engage in automated conversations with customers in self-service environments. They empower customers through their journey
for answers and task completion by simplifying the process of delivering information across multiple interaction channels, like
the corporate web, mobile, social and even the agent environment.
Virtual Agents are often the first point of contact between a customer and an organization, and are highly effective in guiding
customers toward the information they need, in a way that is fast, efficient and enjoyable.
Virtual Agents equip an organization’s customer interaction channels with the ability to answer your customers’ natural language
questions. Visitors simply ask their question and receive the one right answer, regardless of how the question was asked. Other
helpful resources such as top questions and related questions are instantly provided on the same screen.
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
Best Practices & Tips for
Deploying Virtual Agents
In this short guide, we’ve assembled 12 time-tested best practices and tips that work for hundreds of organizations
that have deployed a Virtual Agent to automatically answer millions of online customer questions each year.
1) Branding: Developing a brand for your Virtual Agent is important since it can enhance familiarity and
recognition, promote interaction and self-service, and increase consumer adoption and use. While your
options are virtually unlimited, two popular strategies are described below:
Recommendation
•Branding as a Persona: Choosing to brand your Virtual Agent as a persona
could be one of the best decisions you make when deploying your Virtual Agent
and it is a best practice that we highly recommend. This strategy involves building
a persona (either real or fictional) to deliver answers to your users. This could be a
virtual person, a fictional character or mascot, or an employee at your institution.
Branding as a persona encourages users to phrase their questions in natural
language rather than submitting keywords like they would do using traditional site
search.
Copa Airlines has created a virtual service counter for passengers and potential travelers to help answer
users’ questions. “Ana”, a fictional flight attendant with the airline, helps the user feel comfortable asking
questions and also encourages the user to form his or her question in natural language.
•Branding as an “Entity: This strategy generally involves using your existing organization or department
name to deliver answers. This may be explicit, or implied (via a slogan such as “Ask Us!”). Branding as an
entity is ideal if you wish to promote the name of your institution or company, or if you want a more formal
approach for your Virtual Agent deployment.
Quick Tip
Enhance Your Persona!
• Add a static picture or character.
• Add an Avatar. An avatar is simply an animated character that gestures and moves.
• Add Voice. Voice can be added as 2 options: a) Professionally recorded,
or b) Text-to-speech
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
2) Encouraging Natural Language Questions: Virtual Agents that encourage the user to enter natural language
questions should be preferred over more traditional site search solutions that simply rely on indexing technology
and request the user to enter keywords.
Including a “directional sentence” that instructs the user to type real questions, and ideally provides an example
as well inside the question box of the Virtual Agent solution is a simple yet highly effective technique that
increases the frequency of natural language questions being submitted.
Quick Tip
Make sure you differentiate the question box from a
keyword search.
• Ensure the question field is long enough to accommodate natural language questions
rather than one or two keywords.
• In your directional sentence, it also helps to use terms such as “real questions”,
3) Visibility and Placement: High-visibility placement of the Virtual Agent solution on your website is essential
to the success of your implementation. Why? The higher the visibility, the more questions you will receive. And
more questions will mean more satisfied end users, fewer emails/chats/ phone calls, and increased voice of the
customer insights for your organization. High visibility can be achieved by a “sticky” question box in a prominent
location, the incorporation of many different entry points, or a combination of the two together.
Quick Tip
If you have minimal web page real estate to work with,
try one of the following:
• Create a question box which is smaller than average.
• Create an image or text link instead.
• Use an icon in the shape of a button that uses your existing brand elements.
Then, link to your question box.
4) Strategic Placement to Reduce Email and Call Volumes: Virtual Agents can help answer the bulk of
those informational questions that would otherwise flood your higher cost contact center channel in the form
of phone calls, emails and chat. To achieve the greatest reduction in call and email volume, your Virtual Agent
should either replace your usual escalation points or it should be promoted with much higher visibility so that
users are inclined to use it.
The goal is for your users to become familiar and confident with the self-service solution as their first point
of contact. If you follow one of these two approaches, you should notice a significant reduction in your email
and/or call volume numbers.
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
5) Replace Static FAQs with Dynamic “Top Questions”: There are a few common issues with static FAQ
lists. They are cumbersome to maintain, information can become outdated quickly and they do not always
provide a satisfying customer experience. A good Virtual Agent vendor will advise against static FAQs and
suggest the use of dynamic, built-in “Top 10 by Category” functionality. This enables your visitors to access
questions which truly are the most “frequently asked”.
The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) has implemented “Top 10 by Category” seamlessly within their FAQ page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions?
We’ve got answers. Type in a question below or select a topic to learn more.
Have a question?
Type your complete question here
Enter your question in sentence form, for example: What is an RRSP?
View the top 10 questions
CIBC Bank Machines
Investing and Retirement
Careers
Loans and Lines of Credit
Corporate Information
Mortgages
Credit Cards
Online Banking
Bank Accounts
Type your complete question here
Loans and Lines of Credit FAQ
The following are the most frequently asked Loans and Lines of Credit related questions:
1. What are your rates?
2. How do I access my Personal Line of Credit?
3. What are the eligibility requirements for a CIBC Personal Loan and how do I apply?
4. How do I repay my CIBC Personal Loan?
5. What are the eligibility requirements for a CIBC Personal Line of Credit and how do I apply?
6. How can I finance my education with CIBC?
7. How do I repay my CIBC Personal Line of Credit?
8. How do I apply for CIBC Overdraft Protection Service?
9. How do I contact the Student Loan Centre?
10. What are the fees for CIBC Overdraft Protection Service?
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
6) Virtual Agents, Site Search, or Both - Choose Wisely: If you currently have a site search function
embedded within your website, you will need to consider if, or how, the introduction of a Virtual Agent will change
your search strategy. Simply presenting both site search alongside the Virtual Agent question box without a clear
strategy can lead to confusion for your customers. Below we’ve indicated four deployment options along with our
recommendations:
Recommended
•Virtual Agent Replaces Site Search: If you feel that your organization’s site search tool is not
providing accurate or useful results, you may choose to replace your search with a
Virtual Agent question box. Note that for this option, it is important for your Virtual Agent
implementation to cover the same scope as your site search tool. Otherwise, you could end
up with numerous out-of-scope questions asked which do not have corresponding answers in
your Virtual Agent knowledge base.
•Site Search as a Secondary Option: If you don’t want to eliminate site search altogether but
you do want to promote the Virtual Agent first, you can also offer site search as a secondary
option.
•Virtual Agent Complements Search: If you wish to leave your site search tool as is, you can incorporate
most Virtual Agents as a complementary option. This can be appropriate when the scope of your Virtual
Agent deployment does not match the scope of your site search. However, it is important to provide
adequate visual differentiation between both options, or you may end up confusing or frustrating your users.
7) Direct Answer Links: As an additional bridge into your Virtual Agent solution, you can embed direct links to
actual answers in your knowledge base within your website.
TD Canada Trust leverages Direct Answer links on their website as shown here with their online banking “help” links.
Help is here
Get simple answers to your questions.
You asked: What are Secure Messages?
We found multiple responses that may answer your question. Please choose the
response below that best suits your needs:
• Are Email transmissions secure?
• What are Secure Messages?
• Can I send account information via email?
• + The following are the most frequently asked EasyWeb related questions:
• + Related Questions:
• + Suggested Questions:
Still not finding the answers you need?
• Email us
• Call us
Ask another question:
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
8) Multiple Interface Considerations: You might also wish to deploy multiple interfaces (i.e. separate Virtual
Agent knowledge bases). If you decide to place each Virtual Agent box (or link) exclusively within its own area
(for example, a Prospective Student box within the Prospective area of a university website, or a Credit Cards box
within the Credit Cards area of a financial institution’s website) then you can simply place the box and your Virtual
Agent vendor can help provide you with the details to map to the correct area of the knowledge base. However, if
you would like to place the box/link further up on your page hierarchy (for example, your home page) you will then
need a way to narrow the scope so that questions are asked in the correct areas.
An alternative technique is to provide a single question box, but implement a form control which is used to narrow down
the scope. The New Jersey Institute of Technology has implemented radial buttons which their prospective students use
to indicate whether they are interested in graduate or undergraduate studies.
9) Multi-Channel Possibilities: Modern Virtual Agent technology can be deployed across a variety of web-based
channels as well as across mobile platforms, social media platforms, and on contact center agent desktops.
•Web Channel: While customers have increasingly been turning to emerging interaction channels such as
social media and mobile, the corporate website is still the most popular interaction channel for customers
who wish to self-serve online. Website visitors simply enter their natural language question and receive the
one right answer, regardless of how the question was asked, and because it’s so widely used, the web
channel can be a major contributor to the overall improvement in customer experience and reduction in
phone, email, and chat volumes for your organization.
•Mobile Channel: Mobile is one of the fastest growing customer interaction channels. When your organization
is ready to roll-out a Virtual Agent on the mobile channel, you will need to give special consideration to the
overall user experience since real-estate is at a premium when self-serving on mobile devices. So ensure
your Virtual Agent solution can deliver answers on an easy-to-read, mobile-optimized screen. Excessive
scrolling is cumbersome on smaller screens and will lead to a poor online self-service experience.
•Social Channel: Many organizations struggle to track customer queries and provide approved information
through social media channels. Deploying a Virtual Agent on your organization’s social media sites such as
Facebook, allows you to deliver official, approved information to customers in the same way your other online
channels do.
•Agent Channel: Virtual Agents can also be deployed directly on your contact center agent’s desktop. When
your customer service reps (CSRs) have access to their own on-screen personal assistant, they no longer
have to remember where information is stored in your knowledgebase, nor do they need to memorize a click
path to the content they need. Instead, when customers escalate to your organization’s contact center
through phone, email, or chat, CSRs simply type in their question using the Virtual Agent solution and get a
single correct answer with a single click.
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
10) Answer Page Considerations: Your Virtual Agent solution’s answer page is where answers will be displayed
to your users’ questions, along with additional components such as a Top 10 list, an answer rating mechanism,
related questions and escalation options. There are two high-level options your organization can choose for its
answer page.
The first approach is to integrate the answer page seamlessly within your web environment. A second approach
is to launch the Answer Page within its own window or console. This is the approach used for Virtual Agent
implementations and many other instances when a separate, scaled down look and feel is desired.
11) Highly Relevant Offers that Drive Conversion: Today’s leading Virtual Agent solutions are highly effective at
not only answering questions, but also delivering real-time, customized offer management that increases online
conversion from daily web visitors and campaign responders.
By leveraging intent-recognition technology, the best Virtual Agents intelligently recognize the intent of a
customer’s question, enabling marketers to deliver relevant offers to the customer right alongside the provided
answer.
When the offer delivered is highly relevant to the customer’s interest, the customer is far more likely to click on
the offer. This seamlessly and automatically guides your customers down the purchase path at a moment in time
when their satisfaction is running high, having just received the correct answer to their question.
An example of a highly-relevant offer served directly below the answer to the customer’s original question.
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
12) Escalation Management: Let’s face it, the world is a complex, messy place, so the need for complex messy
customer interactions still remains. While modern Virtual Agents are extremely well suited to answering commonly
asked ‘informational’ questions (think questions with a single correct answer), you’ll still need live contact center
agents to answer those questions that are more personal in nature.
As a best practice, your Virtual Agent should be deployed using a layered approach to delivering customer selfservice. In this situation, customers will first attempt to receive the one right answer by entering their question in
the Virtual Agent question box. But in those circumstances where the answer is not readily apparent or accessible,
the ability to escalate their question should be readily apparent and intuitive to the user.
While you’d ideally like the Virtual Agent to accurately answer the majority of the questions, the need to provide
these escalation options (such as click to call, email, chat, or even search) is still important for maintaining a
positive customer experience and should not be intentionally hidden to keep contact center costs down.
Escalation options are easy to see, alongside the answer.
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Deploying Online Self-Service: The Definitive Guide
Get Started Today
Are you thinking of deploying a Virtual Agent solution in your organization? This guide will equip you with the same tips and best
practices we’ve used to roll out the IntelliResponse Virtual Agent solution for over 450 client implementations.
If you’re still not sure if a Virtual Agent is right for your organization, start with an evaluation of your own website. IntelliResponse has
worked with Forrester to design a vendor-agnostic analysis tool that evaluates the efficiency of your existing online customer service
experience. The outcome of this analysis is an objective diagnosis of opportunities for improvement, and an action plan on next steps.
Contact IntelliResponse to schedule a no-obligation 30-minute
assessment of your website’s self-service capabilities.
info@intelliresponse.com
1-866-454-0084
About IntelliResponse
IntelliResponse is the world’s leading provider of virtual agent technology solutions for the enterprise. We create profitable online
conversations for our private and public sector customers around the world.
With our Enterprise Virtual Agent (EVA) solutions, corporate websites, mobile applications, social media channels and agent desktops
can all be transformed by an engaging virtual concierge, empowering customers to ask questions using natural, conversational
language and delivering an effective and engaging online experience.
Some of the world’s most recognized corporate brands and public institutions trust their customer experience management needs
to IntelliResponse – including CIBC Bank, Harris Bank, ING Direct, Charter Communications, Progress Energy, Copa Airlines, Kobo
Books, Penn State University, Yale University and Harvard University Extension School. With more than 450 live customer-facing
implementations answering 100 million+ questions annually, IntelliResponse is the gold standard in first line customer experience
management.
To learn more about taking online self service
to the next level for your customers, visit
www.IntelliResponse.com.
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