| | SEPTEMBER 20199CIOReviewthe evolution of the care industry. No longer at arm's length from the rest of an organization, customer experience now takes centre stage in most corporations and is a powerful voice alongside product and design. Much of this work doesn't feel like traditional care. Guidance within experiences leads the customer through thoughtful design. By utilizing predictive insights and behavioural analytics, technology can anticipate questions even before they occur and serve it up in a way that feels natural. AI and ML are deployed to rapidly resolve simple, repeatable interactions at scale and messaging, and bots serve to provide rapid help at the moment in a conversational way. QuickBooks Assistant offers both a chat and voice interface and can quickly answer questions like "who owes me the money" or how much money did I make this month? To date, the assistant has handled over 1.5 million interactions and got our small business customers back to work quickly, armed with the right insights. For our people, this means they are engaging in the most critical or most complex interactions. Our agents now need the support of rich data and insights combined with powerful CRM and knowledge base technologies. Speech and text analytics can deliver powerful ideas which generate that "know me to feel" in both digital and human interactions. A healthy tension exists between the desire for personal communication and customer fears around privacy and their data. It's a thin line between using insights to help and support customers and getting into the realm of creepy. This dimension is also highly personal, so companies need to listen and respond quickly, testing their way into what levels of personalization are genuinely comfortable and helpful. The rise of video-based support and screen share has been a game-changer in creating an instant personal connection and building customer confidence. Having the same visual perspective on a problem rapidly unlocks the answer. Intuit's TurboTax combines the on-demand help of an expert with real-time collaboration via co-browsing and agent video. This instant connection to expertise created a step-change in the experience for customers, with measures of satisfaction increasing by 18%. Similarly, in the training environment, a shift is occurring from weeks in a classroom to virtual environments, infused with video-based learning, simulations and gamified experiences to meet the needs of the modern learner. Forester research discovered employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than reading the text -- no surprise to parents. But what may be a surprise is the increase in learning effectiveness through these new technologies. Intuit's ProConnect Group have transformed the training experience, moving from up to 9 weeks in a classroom to modular-based learning, mixing instructor-led and self-paced mediums and infused with video and hands-on knowledge. This approach within the complex world of professional tax has enabled their experts to rapidly get their feet wet, taking simple questions within two weeks and building their knowledge over time. It has also been a critical factor in improving the customer experience by 10%.Our technology evolution in service is an exciting journey. Technology and automation haven't replaced our people, but it has taken care of the transactional, simple questions and augmented the work of our customer experience professionals. It's advancing at warp speed and at times struggling to meet customer expectations in a connected, always-on world. The future promises advances in emotion combined with AI and machine learning, delivering and responding in a more empathetic way and in bringing the real and virtual worlds together through augmented reality experiences. For those companies that embrace technology and put customer experience at the centre of decision making, the opportunity to differentiate and transform your brand is limitless. Pepper isn't taking over the world, but she will be having a place on the team. Technology and automation haven't replaced our people, but it has taken care of the transactional, simple questions and augmented the work of our customer experience professionals
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