Technology is changing the way we approach the world; how we live and work. Of all the technological innovations that emerged over the past decade, a significant and rapidly evolving one is Big Data and Analytics (BDA).

Businesses that had been collecting data for decades can now use BDA solutions to tap into their data and discover insights that were previously unattainable.

However, what if industries such as hospitality, telecommunications and other service sectors could extract the information from their data by using BDA and utilise this information in ways not envisioned of before?

Mobile Virtual Assistants

Customer service has come a long way from the days where one would be explaining themselves to the person on the other end only to get rerouted from department to department just to find yourself repeating the same questions over and over.

Since those days, more and more service industries have been leveraging on BDA and chatbots as part of their customer service initiatives. Chatbots, in particular, have seen an exponential increase in their application as mobile devices have become the preferred choice of communication device.

Chatbots are based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology and was designed primarily as a service that took questions from customers and the general public in the form of text, and then responding with information and advice.

In the case of the telco industry, Fusionex was engaged to deploy AI technology for the telco’s customer service unit. Fusionex discovered a number of things, one of which was that a majority of calls were found to be standard and rote. In these cases, AI could be used to help out where possible.

In order to effectively answer questions their customers were posing, the team created a data repository of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) along with corresponding answers for the chatbot to use.

Because the chatbot did not require any rest, it could run 24 hours a day, answering customer queries using Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, no matter what time zone the customer was in.

As an FAQ-based chatbot, it could answer any query about the company-related products and services, and even help guide customers through activities such as mobile top-ups, and roaming activation. If they were unable to answer more complex queries, the call would be routed to a human agent.

This way, a large amount  of calls were sent to the automated chatbot, reducing call durations by almost 35 percent and lowering the cost of customer service by 20 percent.

Personalised

Layer an already powerful chatbot technology with a Knowledge Base Management System, and the virtual assistant will be able do more things like answer inquiries about product offerings, conduct service registrations and provide recommendations.

All this is possible through the use of data analytics which mines data regarding usage habits, then feeds it to the virtual assistant, enabling it to offer more personalised and targeted recommendations. These recommendations can also be based upon the time of day, increasing the chances that a particular promotion is taken up as well as reducing the chances of being intrusive.

Such initiatives have been known to decrease customer service costs by up to 70 percent.

With the addition of sentiment analysis – data analysis of keywords, tone and inflection – to the chatbot technology, this makes the whole experience almost non-intrusive and provides a more accurate way to gauge customer satisfaction.

Mobile Concierges

Mobile virtual assistants can also shine in other service sectors, especially when brands want to establish brand stickiness and loyalty.

In their never-ending quest to enhance customer service, service industries use a myriad of ways to interact with their customers. Thanks to BDA, they can also anticipate to a certain degree what their customers might be wanting and proactively act upon it before the customer has to ask.

In the hospitality industry, for example, concierges are hotel staff whose task is to engage arriving guests at the very start of the hotel check-in process through various proactive methods to make the guest feel welcome and appreciated.  The aim is to create a delightful experience for the guest so they keep on returning, and this concierge-like feel can be replicated in other industries as well.

Fusionex mobile concierge solution is just one way in which analytics can be combined with a mobile concierge platform to boost brand loyalty for different sectors.