The labor market problem for the field of customer contact is not limited to agents and supervisors. There is also a glaring shortage of technicians. Although business managers who use modern (cloud) applications can do a lot about functional management, you often need software specialists for complex processes. To reduce that problem, Sabio – actually a system integrator – develops smart solutions that allow the business to make adjustments more independently.

 

"Wise is primarily a service provider as a system integrator. Within the Sabio team, there are several experts with technical knowledge about products from technology partners we work with,” said Tom Mullen, chief product officer at Sabio. “But we also have an engineering team that develops its own solutions. Those solutions are intended to fill gaps in third-party offerings.”

That needs some explanation. According to Walter Baker, Sabio's country manager for the Netherlands, the range of different cloud solutions for customer contact is increasing rapidly. Bakker: “There is a misconception in the market that if you transfer something to the cloud, you are completely relieved of your technical management. As contact centers move more and more applications to the cloud, contact centers are faced with more interdependencies between applications. Just think of a chain of, for example, five interdependent cloud solutions, each with its own SLA. Such a combination means that it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain overall performance, especially when you want to scale up. For this we have developed Sabio Monitoring, a CX-assurance solution. This enables contact centers to proactively monitor their cloud suite.”

Labor market shortages also play a role in the use of technology

Managing application landscapes in larger customer contact environments may be a growing challenge, but more visible is the phenomenon that contact centers are increasingly applying automation and conversational self-service. Bakker explains: “Although the Dutch contact center market is open to the use of technology. But the success of interventions is not always the same. One of the biggest challenges we see from our customers in this area is the difficult access to resources. The labor market problem of contact centers is not limited to agents. This also applies to technology experts who can solve contact center problems.”

Sabio Console

To support companies that are increasingly working with tools for deploying conversational self-service such as Google Dialogue Flow and Microsoft Bot Framework, Sabio has also developed another application: Sabio Console.

Mullen explains the gap that Console fills: “The solutions like Google Dialogue Flow and Microsoft Bot Framework are extremely powerful, but more focused on R&D projects for engineers. They lack good facilities for business users. The problem with Google is that simple chatbots are easy to configure via the no-code approach, but for more advanced applications, the end user will really need to get into programming. For example, presenting the video with a certain answer – something that cannot simply be set up without the involvement of engineers.”

Another problem is that the solutions developed by the business itself – for example using low code or no code – cause integration problems when scaling up is required. Bakker gives an example: “We work for a large Dutch bank, for whom we supply the core applications of the contact center. This bank has been using a point solution for live chat and chatbot for a relatively long time. It was first used on a small scale, but when it came time to deploy the application more widely, integration problems arose.”

Expanding the use of low code

At its core, Console allows for flexible integration of customer engagement channels (voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and web chat) into AI platforms that work with natural language, such as Google CCAI. Console allows users to easily assign channels to relevant bots. Console also helps manage both sessions and media being exchanged. This makes it possible for customers to be provided with omnichannel customer contact, whereby switching between channels is no longer a problem.

For developing conversational applications with, for example, Google Dialog Flow, Console also contains a module that provides pre-developed functionality. In addition, Console allows you to monitor real-time how processes in conversational self-service are progressing. And finally, knowledge management – ​​a challenge for companies that need to keep knowledge or content up to date across multiple channels – can also be managed from Console.

Smart solutions

Bakker says that Sabio is the last to come up with new point solutions. “Sabio Console should contribute to making it easier to apply this new technology without being dependent on programmers. And it must fit in with an agile way of working, because that increases the speed and the chance of success. And finally, it must also be of significance for employee satisfaction – think of useful agent assist functions that you can set up with this and that fit well with a tense labor market.”

Get started with data

Mullen: “In addition to the challenges in the labor market, contact centers also have to deal with data issues. Organizations understand very well that they can use that data, for example for AI or as part of the digital transformation, but the data is often locked up in silos. The technology is now mature and not an obstacle like five years ago. Software for AI applications is now accessible and cheap: a few years ago you had to pay millions before you could start with the major providers of speech recognition. You can now start very cheaply on a small scale, so that you can show a PoC or a demo to stakeholders in a few minutes. The challenges are now mainly operational: think of building new software where data comes from silos, which hinders scalability. In such a case, the loss of speed causes frustration within organizations.”

Healthy data management?

How many companies have their data management in order? Mullen responds: “The question is rather: how many have it NOT ALLOWED okay? There are a handful of companies that have data collection, data storage, processing and analysis somewhat in order. These are often born-in-the-cloud organizations. They have a strong focus on data and have all the tools. But these types of companies also experience problems when scaling up to, for example, the contact center. Our customers also know that they have to become data-driven or are working on it, but it is a long way to really make effective use of data in your business processes.”

Data driven? Start small

Bakker: “Ultimately you have to start somewhere and a structured approach can help. We use 'inform, transform, perform' according to an agile model. Make sure your question is clear, implement a change or intervention and check the result so that you can make adjustments during your next sprint. In AI projects in customer contact, we usually start with getting a grip on the customer's intent, the 'intent capture analysis'. We usually allocate about eight weeks for this preliminary phase.”

Mullen: “As with any complex problem, the best way to approach it is to break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks that are easier to reason with and show progress. In customer contact, the question of why people contact us often remains underexposed. Most, if not all, contact centers record contact reasons or codes; sometimes they had historical speech analyses. These are derived datasets that provide relatively little information. That's why we created Intent Capture and Analysis, an approach that collects, analyzes and unravels contact reasons. You can get started with this in less than an hour, so it goes very quickly, but as a rule we will run the program for eight weeks. This results in a high degree of accuracy of the intent matching, but measuring and analyzing for a longer period of time also contributes to the confidence of the operational teams. The analysis provides a lot of detailed information about the possibilities of implementing fully automated, transactional flows.”

Overcome other obstacles

Bakker: “Although it is quite possible to speed up, many companies need a run-up to take action. GDPR requires the necessary attention and procurement procedures naturally precede a project. In the past, a fixed scope and fixed price made everything quite clear and the trust needed to do business was mainly based on the reputation of a supplier. Today, project teams are composed of members from both customer and service provider, and trust must be built in that team. That is a pressure cooker: you usually have to decide in the second or third team meeting whether there is enough confidence to get started. Then you build trust.”

Finally, Sabio's view on cloud solutions. Bakker: “If you take customer journeys seriously, you also take integration seriously. Facilitating diverse journeys in an all-in-one platform is impossible. On the other hand, the cloud is based on ecosystems: solutions that you integrate with each other. There is no solution that is good in all areas.” (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

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