Success or failure with virtual assistants?

Three best practices that make the difference

There should be many parallels between a human employee and a virtual assistant. One of the most important attributes is the virtual assistant's ability to engage in a human-like conversation with your customers. This capability of interacting through the use of natural language is what makes a virtual assistant alluring; it offers the possibility of delivering a more human experience within self-service channels such as a website or a mobile app. Deploying a virtual assistant is like hiring a dedicated employee for each and every one of your customers, a personal 24/7 assistant to address all of your customers' questions and requests thoroughly and instantaneously.

With such an alluring promise, why have some virtual assistant deployments yielded phenomenal results while others have failed to achieve on their basic promise of delivering human-like self-service? The answer is quite simple, select a virtual assistant using the same criteria as when hiring a human employee; make the right choice during the hiring process (selection of the technology), deliver adequate training (design an effective system) and monitor performance (have solid analytics and management tools) to ensure objectives are being met. Treating your virtual assistant more like an employee than a software purchase will put your organization on the path to a successful virtual assistant deployment.

1. HIRING PROCESS (select the right technology):

Just like the human members of your organization, the virtual assistant can be many things, a sales representative, a customer support agent, a technician, a brand ambassador and beyond. However, it's unlikely that it can be all of these things, at once, on the first day on the job. By clearly defining business requirements and objectives for the virtual assistant, you will not only ensure you select the right virtual assistant solution, but also ensure you have a baseline set of goals that your project team can refer to when making design decisions during the deployment process.

2. TRAINING (design well, update often to ensure an effective virtual assistant):

Even though you may be hiring a super star employee, training is required to ensure the employees skills and experience can be put to good use within your organization. A virtual assistant is no different, and the more training delivered prior to its first day on the job the better it can serve your customers with the highest quality standard. Training in the virtual assistant space consists not only of integrating to existing knowledge databases and transaction systems, but also creating interaction dialogs that effectively guide your customers to answers and the transactions they request, no matter how they express their request. Training however is not a one-time event, it needs to be continuous as your organization's products, services, policies and customer expectations evolve. Training also includes knowing what to do when the answer is unknown. In such cases, seamless integration to other self-serve systems and/or agent-assisted channels will provide customers with the service they deserve.

3. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION (analytics and management tools):

As with any employee, monitoring performance is the key to ascertaining how well the virtual assistant is meeting its objectives. Even with a well thought out design and thorough training to respond to expected questions and requests, how your customers interact with the virtual agent may differ than expected, and even if you get it right at launch, customer interactions usually evolve over time. As such, keeping track of performance will enable you to quickly adapt and implement improvements that will deliver the experience that your customers expect

By following these three core best practices, your virtual assistant initiative will be on the right path for success. As a leader in the virtual assistant marketplace, Nuance is uniquely positioned to guide you on this path. Nuance has a proven track record of successfully deploying virtual assistants with customer experience leaders such as USAA, Geico and CocaCola. In addition to this unparalleled experience, Nuance also sets the standard in natural language technology. Nuance's Nina virtual assistant solution annually processes over 500 million natural language interactions alone, in addition to the billions of interactions processed annually through other natural language solutions. The outcome is a more human like experience for your customers and more compelling results for the enterprise. *

Visit Nuance's Web site at www.nuance.com/go/CEX to learn more about how:

* USAA members can now ask their iPhone how much they spent on groceries last month or tell it to pay the mortgage on Thursday.

* Insurance giant Geico has launched an update to its mobile app which now features Lily, an interactive voice assistant that can assist policyholders.

* You can meet Nina, the intelligent multichannel virtual assistant who delivers personalized, effortless customer services via a human-like conversational interface.

About Nuance

Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses consumers around the world. Nuance is transforming the way people interact with information.

For more information, please email [email protected].