{"id":40586,"date":"2020-10-31T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2020-10-31T03:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=40586"},"modified":"2020-10-31T11:00:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-31T03:00:55","slug":"ai-driven-virtual-agents-can-drive-customer-satisfaction-and-cost-savings-amid-covid-19-ibm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2020\/10\/31\/ai-driven-virtual-agents-can-drive-customer-satisfaction-and-cost-savings-amid-covid-19-ibm\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-driven virtual agents can drive customer satisfaction and cost savings amid COVID-19 &#8211; IBM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>As many organizations across the world look to digital tools to help address surges in customer inquiries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new\u00a0IBM study\u00a0revealed 99% of respondents report an increase in customer satisfaction as a result of using AI-driven virtual agent technology.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The research showed organizations that are early adopters of AI and cloud technology are reaping significant benefits from AI-driven virtual agents. 94 percent of respondents defined as &#8220;leaders&#8221; \u2013 those who implemented AI-driven virtual agents early, integrated them with backend systems and trained them with many contacts \u2013 have already achieved or exceeded their expected return on investment, compared to 49 percent of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are balancing the need to rapidly scale customer service to manage surges in inquiries, while still delivering a delightful customer experience \u2013 and doing it all for less,&#8221; said&nbsp;Glenn Finch, global managing partner, Cognitive Business Decision Support, IBM Services. &#8220;The study validates what we&#8217;re seeing from clients around the world: those who have adopted virtual agent technology are seeing both bottom-line and top-line results including reduced costs, higher customer and human agent satisfaction, and increased revenue as a result.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">IBM is working with many clients across industries to use AI to put critical data and information into the hands of their customers and employees with AI-driven virtual agent technology, including\u00a0Burger\u00a0King Brazil,\u00a0Medtronic\u00a0and\u00a0The Royal Marsden. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An IBM-commissioned Forrester Consulting TEI\u00a0study\u00a0found a large organization could achieve an average cost savings of\u00a0USD 5.50\u00a0per contained conversation using IBM Watson Assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\u00a0IBM Institute for Business Value study, titled &#8220;The value of virtual agent technology,&#8221;\u00a0surveyed more than 1,000 companies, spanning 12 industries and 33 countries, that have used virtual agents for just six months to over four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Additional study findings include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>44% of &#8220;leaders&#8221; reported having fully integrated cloud strategies for their service desk systems, compared to 19 percent of others<\/li><li>20% is the average contribution to human agent satisfaction attributed to virtual agent technology by responding organizations.<\/li><li>Organizations using virtual agents reported a 64% average containment rate \u2013 the portion of total contacts the virtual agent technology has been trained to handle that it resolves without human agent involvement.<\/li><li>For 46 percent of &#8220;leaders&#8221; in virtual agent technology, and 33 percent of other respondents, customer experience is the most important driver of virtual agent use.<\/li><li>Every respondent reported that virtual agent technology has contributed to an increase in organization revenue, the average increase being 3 percent.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are balancing the need to rapidly scale customer service to manage surges in inquiries, while still delivering a delightful customer experience \u2013 and doing it all for less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":39473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[214,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-40586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-ibm","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}