aheadCRM - Blog #Mobile

Salesreps still hate their CRM - Here's what to do about it!

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 04:31:20 -0400

Salesreps really love to feed data into their CRM system after a long day, or even during the week-end. They are truly looking forward to their weekly sales call with numbers that every single one of their colleague massaged themselves. They are obsessed with typing all sorts of entries into a quotation and know their product catalogue by heart, so that they can provide their customer with the best of all possible quotes to solve their business issue.

Salespeople really appreciate all the high quality leads that are funnelled to them by the system.

And, of course, they are truly altruistic and thrive on helping their customers for good.

Sounds like you?

No?

Well, then you are probably like most of us.

In brief: Salespeople hate their CRM!

This didn’t change almost 40 years after the first electronic CRM tools have been introduced. Users of CRM systems still often do not have the feeling that the systems are serving them, but that it is rather the opposite.

That is especially true for salespeople. But I repeat myself.

Salespeople face a two-pronged challenge. On one side, in an environment that is more and more data driven, they face an increasing reporting demand, which in turns requires an increasing amount of quality data being fed into the system.

They feel that all these administrative tasks keep them away what they are doing best and what they want to do most: Be with their customers, understand them, and offer – sell – them the right solutions for their challenges.

Thereby making them happy.

On the other hand, salespeople feel that they become more and more redundant.

A feeling that is backed by statistics and surveys showing that more than half of the buying journey is already done before a customer – b2c or b2b – contacts a salesperson.

One might get the idea that these two challenges are related to each other. So, how can this be overcome? How can salespeople become more relevant again?

The path to where we are now

In the beginning there were activity management tools, contact management tools, and account management tools, the latter as a kind of shared electronic rolodex. Goldmine, founded in 1989, successfully combined activity-, account- and contact management for teams, as a first of its kind. Amazingly, the software is still around.

Salespersons used some of these tools and hated the fact that they weren’t integrated. They had to use and live with many different tools, which improved some aspects of their lives – or not.

A consequence of this was the emergence of sales force automation (SFA) tools that targeted at two issues:

Integrating and streamlining sales processes from lead to order and
establishing a common repository of data that could get used by whole, distributed, teams.

This was the high time of boutique vendors like Kiefer und Veittinger (later acquired by SAP) or CAS, which originated in Germany, and later on of Rockstar Siebel. From here the thought of integrating marketing, sales, and service in one suite emerged and CRM, an integrated tool, that intended to cover all relevant customer side processes, was born.

Add some analytics (to create analytical CRM) and not only salespersons but also management were happy.

Only that especially salespersons weren’t.

They weren’t happy, because CRM software made them enter an increasing amount of data into the system, making ‘their’ personal assets and contacts corporate assets and contacts. On top of that, by entering ‘their’ data into the system, they feared to become transparent, without getting anything back. They felt like being controlled and like working for the system, instead of having a system that works for them.

Well, and then this whole data entry did and still does cost their time.

Salespeople are communicators. They live on the phone and in their email client. Sincerely, most CRM tools traditionally do not have a decent email editor. Also, email clients were needed then and continue to be needed now, anyways. So, the problem of switching apps was improved, but not yet really solved.

Social media emerged and quickly became mainstream. People started to publish lots of valuable information, information that is extremely helpful for building relationships. The ‘social animals’ that salespersons are, pounced on this chance to understand people, their interests, relationships, and affiliations.

Naturally, CRM software could not keep pace with the ever evolving social media, which quickly became one of the most important information sources and communications channels for salespersons.

Of course specialized vendors, that addressed this gap emerged quickly; from social media engagement platforms like Hubspot to more SFA-like tools: one of the latter being Nimble. The big vendors, being less agile, took a bit more time to jump on the wagon.

A new term was born: Social CRM.

But only few vendors truly realised – and acted upon this realisation – that CRM, especially sales, is and always was, social. And most of the solutions still distinguished between social media as channels and email as another channel. And, being point solutions, initially mostly with poor APIs, the solutions did not help in creating a consistent account and contact database, let alone achieving the holy grail of a 360 degree view of the customer. Even if the solutions had a decent API, IT departments often refused to invest the effort needed to integrate yet another point solution.

The obvious result was a decrease of data quality, making salespersons even more unhappy, as working off unreliable data is not effective, let alone efficient. XLS became important again.

This story continues with the still ongoing move into the CEM and CEX world.

What to do about it?

As said before, sales representatives are social animals who do not have time to spare.

For them a CRM system, to get value out of it, needs to exhibit three basic tenets:

it needs to be there where the sales representative is, physically or digitally
it needs to show the sales representative what is important in the current context and to make solid suggestions or even take actions.
it needs to speak with him

Be where I am

Their CRM system is but one of many applications they are using across devices, laptops, tablets, and smart phones. By their very nature, CRM systems are tools that ingest, aggregate and enrich data, so it can be used for a purpose. The result is actionable information that needs to be provided to its users. This way, e.g. interactions with contacts are logged without any explicit intervention or are pulled from various sources.

Furthering this thought, the system must offer is services across channels, be available within social media tools, productivity tools and especially within the used email client. The latter part being fairly easy as probably 90 per cent of all business users use either Outlook or GMail. Still, what this means is that the system must embed itself in the tool of choice, either by means of a chatbot or by offering a user interface that becomes a part of the social media tool or mail client and that from there, intelligently using the users context, provides relevant information.

Speak with me

The mobile aspect is a given, too. No CRM system that is worth a grain of salt comes without mobile capabilities, as an app or at least via responsive User Interfaces. What they are lacking, though, is the ability of being used in a hands off fashion, e.g. using voice as the interaction channel. How about getting a call from your friendly CRM system after a customer visit, asking for a visit summary while you are driving to your next appointment? After all, the system recognizes that the time for the meeting has passed and that you are on the move again.

Voice as an interaction channel will become an increasingly important interface to CRM systems, be it initiated by the user “hey CRM” or by the system itself as in the example above.

Show me what is important and make solid suggestions

Last, but not least, the system needs to be able to show the salesperson what is important for him at any given time. This includes AI-supported lead- and opportunity scoring based upon interaction quality, frequency, change thereof, deal size, and sentiment, to name a few criteria. This It also includes the ability to suggest next actions that provide the best chance to further nurture the opportunity. On top of this, the system might unearth opportunities for the sales representative, which provides tremendous value.

Next steps for Sales Leaders

There are few to no system that fulfils all this. Some solutions are closer than others, some of these might even fit into the chosen platform strategy.

In case you do not yet have a CRM system, or even an SFA system, choose wisely. Identify not only what is important for the company but also how you can best enable your sales representatives to contribute to this.

The easiest way is to make life simpler and more joyful for them, so that they have more time to do what they do best and like to do most: Selling your solutions to your customers.

If you already have a system that you are happy with, then your situation is slightly more difficult: Together with your vendor and your implementation partner you need to thoroughly analyse the short and midterm roadmap of your software. Will it fulfil the needs stated above? When? How reliable have the vendor’s roadmaps been?

If this exercise does not lead to a satisfactory result but you are still happy with the system, then it is time to work on systems in the vendor ecosystem that augment your system, so that it fulfils your needs. You could even go best-of-breed here, but always start within the ecosystem as this promises best possible interfaces and lower pain integrating the two systems.

If you are unhappy? Well, then it is time to look for a new system.

A good number of my customers is pursuing this strategy.

Are you?

This is a repost of my February 2020 CustomerThink column article

Ambient Computing and the Future of Mobile Apps

Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:34:17 -0400

A short while ago Craig Rentzke from Helpshift pointed me to a particular episode of CXOTalk, featuring Kevin Henrikson of Microsoft and professor Anindya Ghose from NYU. Henrikson is responsible for Microsoft’s Outlook for Mobile, a personal information manager (PIM) app, whereas prof. Ghose comes more from a B2C angle, with B2C being more concerned with convenience. This interesting episode deals with the future of mobile computing and given that, apparently about how mobile apps will (have to) look like and what it is that vendors should do and what they should not do with the apps.

The Now

Naturally, the discussion immediately zeroed in on two topics

the purpose of the app
and data

The purpose of the app mainly determines two things, which are first the way that users are presented with information and are engaging with the app and second the data that gets collected and used in order to (positively) influence the user experience while considering their privacy. The data that gets collected needs to be used to provide the users with timely and relevant information, which does not only benefit the vendor but also, and chiefly, the user. That the data collection ‘behaviors’ of especially B2C apps are not hitting that objective is probably the industry’s worst kept secret. The apps collect more than necessary and use it for a very wide range of purposes, mostly wider than the users are aware of. They basically strip the user of their personal data. This realization was also what led a friend of mine and me found Epikonic, with the clear intention of giving users a choice who they interact with instead of ‘being chosen’ by companies (sorry for this shameless plug, actually, well, not so). On the productivity app side the picture is far better. Users need to be able to do their job efficiently and easily. In the case of a PIM app this means that users are checking it frequently and need to be able to find and do what they need with minimal time spent, including getting support. Being a user of Outlook for Mobile I can say that the team of Microsoft and Helpshift are succeeding here. The app collects telemetry data and can suggest appropriate attachments and certainly provides very relevant information to the service center in case of a call for support. The proof is more than 100 million installations that are getting served only on Android. However!

The Then

I do think that both discussion partners did not look far enough into the future of what mobile apps will be. They remained on grounds within the current paradigm, which is a mobile app that serves a specific purpose and that resides on a mobile device- aka smartphone, competing for real estate on the phone’s main screen. Yes, that paradigm covers more use cases than currently deployed, including food and drink ordering from the airline app to the flight attendants without reaching out for the button on the ceiling or using the built-in screens – if they are there at all. And this describes only one possible user initiated use case in one particular industry. Still, this paradigm is challenged already now.

It is hard to make users use an app for a longer time, think of (re-) engagement campaigns
Mobile devices are powerful enough to not require specific - very limited - app functionalities that serve one purpose. Think of apps become multi-purpose again
The single 2D screen itself becomes less important, think of smart watches, wearable sensors, AR, VR, and holograms
Scalability becoming a main theme. Think automation and bots
Interaction metaphors, other than those limited to a 2d screen are emerging – think of voice, conversations, eye tracking
Apps are becoming intelligent. Think of artificial intelligence, in particular deep learning
And then there is the Internet of Things.

There is a short-term future and a long-term vision. Helpshift is perfectly positioned for the former. Knowing CEO Abinash Tripathy, he also has a good idea for the long-term play.

The Next Level

Which goes beyond the smartphone. The app will be mobile – more so than now. The smartphone will no more be THE frontend that it is now. It will stay the switchboard of our lives that it has become, but it will move into the background, like the PC and laptop did. It will become more of a personal server. With lots of little personal devices that serve specific purposes, and other personal servers, situationally connected to it to support the user’s wishes in the here and now. This will lead to more intelligence at all levels, the personal device, the personal server, and the (interconnected) back ends. And all these little devices will have different UI’s and interaction metaphors, like VR, AR using eytracking, holograms that can be manipulated, etc. But most of all with speech becoming more and more important. I am looking forward to Helpshift participating in shaping this future. Be prepared.

Salesforce brings Einstein to Field Service - A big Move?

Thu, 13 Jul 2017 10:41:45 -0400

On July 12, 2017 Salesforce announced its new, Einstein-enhanced version of Field Service. This release brings mainly three innovations to the already strong Service Cloud, which is the leading Customer Service solution according to Gartner Group. Here the complete wording of the press release, in case you did not want to follow the link but still are interested in it: Salesforce Delivers Einstein AI and Analytics For Field Service Lightning Built on the Service Cloud Platform, new innovations for Field Service Lightning arm the mobile workforce with image recognition technology, smart equipment management and deep analytics to bolster productivity and efficiency Companies including Atlantic Energy are harnessing the power of Field Service Lightning to deliver insight, onsite SAN FRANCISCO—July 12, 2017—Salesforce , the global leader in CRM, today introduced Einstein AI and Analytics for Field Service Lightning, empowering companies to deliver a smarter onsite customer experience that is built on the world’s #1 customer service platform. Field Service Lightning now brings together the insights and intelligence mobile workers need to increase productivity, boost onsite efficiency and drive revenue. The Salesforce Service Cloud has redefined customer service across every major technological shift—cloud, mobile, social, messaging and more. And last year with the introduction of Field Service Lightning, Salesforce extended the power of Service Cloud to create a full service platform for managers, dispatchers and mobile workers. However, as the multi-billion dollar field service market expands into new industries—including finance, healthcare, manufacturing and retail—there is even more demand to deliver onsite service. Field service technicians have to deal with complicated equipment, don’t always have the right parts and often lack insight into pre-existing customer issues. This leads to confused employees, frustrated customers, and in the end, multiple trips to resolve customer issues. Field Service Lightning Brings Insights, Onsite Now, Salesforce is taking field service a step further, arming mobile workers with the intelligence and insight they need to be more productive and improve first-time fix rates. With three new innovations, Field Service Lightning enables a service organization—managers, dispatchers and mobile workers—to move with speed and efficiency. New innovations include:

Einstein Vision for Field Service harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to bring image recognition to field service. Companies can leverage pre-trained image classifiers—or train their own custom classifiers—to handle a vast array of specialized image-recognition use cases. For example, with similar looking parts and serial numbers, dishwasher repairs are often complex. Now a dishwasher repairman who needs to replace a water inlet valve can simply snap a picture of the valve, and Einstein Vision for Field Service will quickly identify the exact product type—saving time for the customer, repairman and company.
Equipment and Inventory Management leverages scheduling automation to ensure the correct work crew, equipment and trucks are always where they should be. Managers and dispatchers are able to send technicians into the field with confidence, knowing they’re armed with the equipment and knowledge they need to complete any job during the first visit. For example, a cable company dispatcher is able to use Equipment and Inventory Management to automatically see which technician is closest to the customer and has the correct cable splitters necessary to get the customer’s television set up successfully.
Field Service Analytics provides actionable insights for managers to improve productivity throughout their mobile workforce. Service managers can now integrate all of their data into one easy-to-use application for a complete view of their mobile workforce. And then, they can take action right from their dashboards. For example, a service manager at a medical device company can quickly see that several of her technicians are struggling to install an EKG machine, enabling her to identify classes and set up times for them to shadow senior technicians to get on-the-job training.

Comments on the News:

"For nearly a decade, Salesforce has paved the way for innovation in the service industry," said Adam Blitzer, EVP and GM, Sales and Service Clouds, Salesforce. "Today, we're excited to bring our innovation a step further. With the introduction of Einstein and Analytics for Field Service Lightning, our customers will be able to deliver a smarter, more efficient onsite customer experience."
"At Atlantic Energy, our goal is to create a cleaner, more energy efficient world," said Noel Zammit, CIO, Atlantic Energy, LLC. "With Field Service Lightning, we're able to arm our technicians with the intelligence and insights they need to service our customers faster than ever -- reducing energy consumption and costs around the globe."
"While the direct customer experience has benefitted from digital transformation, field technicians still struggle to deliver a modern onsite experience. Customer expectations have escalated across the board, and so have expectations for in-the-field diagnostics and issue resolution," said Mary Wardley, Program Vice President, Customer Care and CRM, IDC. "With features including image recognition, automated equipment tracking and analytics baked into the field service process, digital transformation is reaching the field and will enable companies to run their field service organization faster and more efficiently."

About Service Cloud Service Cloud, the world’s #1 intelligent customer service platform, enables companies to transform the customer and agent experience with an AI-powered, agile platform built for the modern era. Whether engaging customers via messaging, video, communities, web chat, in-app, email, phone or even communicating directly with IoT-connected products, Service Cloud helps leading brands use service as a competitive advantage by delivering personalized, connected customer service experiences across every channel and adapting service operations to business needs quickly. Companies that have deployed Service Cloud have seen an average of 31 percent faster case resolution, an average of 28 percent increase in agent productivity, an average of 26 percent increase in customer retention, an average of 22 percent decrease in support costs, and an average of 35 percent increase in customer satisfaction, according to a third-party research report sponsored by Salesforce. Salesforce has been recognized as a leader for nine consecutive years in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Center. Pricing and Availability

Einstein Vision for Field Service is currently in pilot and is expected to be generally available in the first half of 2018.
Field Service Equipment and Inventory Management is generally available today with any Field Service Lightning license, which starts at $150 for organizations that have at least one Service Cloud license in Enterprise Edition or above.
Field Service Analytics is generally available today with any Service Analytics and Field Service Lightning license.

Additional Information

To learn more about Salesforce Field Service Lightning please visit: https://www.salesforce.com/products/service-cloud/features/field-service-lightning/
To learn more about Service Cloud, please visit: https://www.salesforce.com/service-cloud/overview/
Discover how Service Cloud can help companies deliver personalized service to their customers via Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trail/service_cloud

Connect with Salesforce

Like Salesforce on Facebook http://facebook.com/salesforce
Follow @salesforce and @servicecloud on Twitter

About Salesforce Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. Field Service Analytics - Source Salesforce These three innovations shall enable customers to drive revenue by increasing field service personnel effectiveness and efficiency plus giving managers actionable intelligence about field service operations and assets. This encompasses the following main features:

Einstein Vision helps techs identify a part that they do not quite recognize. Einstein responds with details, including the part number, a description and, importantly, a recognition confidence. Field technicians simply take a picture of the object in question and upload it to the Chatter feed. Einstein needs to be trained with around 100 – 150 images of an object from various angles and lighting conditions in order to identify an object.
The solution got additional ‘smarts’ to help with optimizing equipment and inventory management. This helps to optimize the scheduling of crews, equipment, and trucks.
Lastly, there are a number of new management dashboards that allow a drill down and analysis into the organization performance and KPI’s that are intended to give managers actionable insight into what is happening in their realm of responsibility.

The first two releases are supporting the field technicians by being part of the mobile apps that they use, while the third one is helping the managers. The mobile enhancements are available on iOS whereas Android is still in a beta phase. This release, according to Mark Bloom, Senior Director Strategy and Operations, Service Cloud, is the continuation of Service Cloud’s journey covering social, mobile, video, in-app messaging and, since March 2016 also Field Service.

My Take

This release seems like an incremental evolution of the existing functionality. For me the most relevant innovation is the improvement in the equipment and inventory management in combination with the new analytics capabilities that are exposed by the dashboard. Of course the image recognition capabilities are amazing, too, but I would put this more into the ‘sex sells’ bucket. It surely can help (junior) field service technicians identify a device but I see only limited value for it unless augmented by more functionality, e.g. an AR overlay rendered into some glasses that helps the technician to safely replace a broken element while keeping the hands free to actually do the work. The equipment and inventory management component has been mainly there before but now has some additional intelligence that helps in making sure that the right materials are available to the technician when (s)he needs it. This is some intelligence under the hood that should help in avoiding unnecessary roundtrips or in getting to the shortest way to resupply. The management dashboard shows a lot of interesting data and analytics, including travel time that will help a manager analyzing what is going on in the team. This is again something that was there earlier, too, and in my eyes is lacking an alerting component. Not every technician that has long drive times or takes long time to fix an issue is a problem. This may be the specialization and/or the locations of the jobs. I would have wished for an alerting component here that looks into anomalies and drives the managerial focus there. Lastly, I am missing a predictive maintenance component here. After all this is something where AI can excel. Unluckily this is something that is only on the roadmap, maybe because it also needs cooperation with the IoT team. Overall I’d say we see a solid round off with Einstein Vision being a nice eye catcher here, as opposed to a big leap. Having said that, the integration of AI technology into the business functionality is mandatory in order to enable a number of scenarios that are not yet possible to deliver. I am curiously looking into future releases of Service Cloud.

Customer Service in a World of Ambient Computing

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 07:48:23 -0400

Soon there will be an additional in-app customer service channel. So far we have a bunch of service channels, most of them requiring the user to leave the app to

Pick up the phone for a call
Browse for self support
Open up an additional chat window
Take on the social media channels
Move on to messenger applications
How about getting into your car to get to a store?
...

And then a customer may be moving back and forth between these channels with all the potential of losing track of the incident status and the friction that cross channel customer service still causes. There is no doubt that providing in-app support is the best possibility to offer fast issue resolution. It can provide telemetry information from within the app, identify the user and therefore provides a lot of relevant context that makes it easier for a service agent to help the customer without unnecessary delays. The customers’ shift to emphasize on the “Now” is also seen by Google research.

Not Every Device is a Smartphone

But what if the customer cannot pick up the phone to engage in a typed conversation? The customer might be engaged in a VR game, or driving a car, or in any number of situations without having a free hand. Maybe the customer simply doesn’t want to pick up a phone? What if the app doesn’t offer a user interface at all beyond a little light that indicates ‘I am available’? This would e.g. be the situation in an ambient environment that senses the presence of a person and acts accordingly. An environment like this would mainly be voice and gesture controlled via devices like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, Apple’s HomePod, or Microsoft’s upcoming Home Hub. Systems like these will offer a keyboard as a secondary means to access service and support at best. But there is no need to look that far out. Imagine a gaming situation. Neither an Xbox, nor a Playstation, nor any other major controller offers a keyboard. In case of these or a VR or AR game the user would hold the controller and doesn’t have the leeway to get to a keyboard. So why would they offer a keyboard to enable conversational (or other) in-app support? There is no reason. Instead users will interact with the service system and –agent via gesture-, view- and speech based interfaces.

The next In-App Support Channel is Voice

Voice recognition technologies are maturing rapidly and start to achieve human level accuracy in understanding at least English language. Human level of understanding lies at a word error rate (WER) of about 5 per cent, which means that a human on average gets five out of hundred words wrong due to misrecognition, missing a word, or falsely inserting one. Machines arrive at human level of language understanding; source 2017 Internet Trends Report Machines arrive at human level of language understanding; source 2017 Internet Trends Report While Amazon doesn’t give any numbers on Alexa’s capabilities, Microsoft announced it reached a word error rate (WER) of 5.9 per cent in October 2016; IBM beat them to the punch with a WER of 5.5 percent in March 2017. And Google announced in May 2017 that it reached a WER of 4.9 per cent. Using speech recognition techniques on a level like this, in combination with natural language processing (NLP) and perhaps natural language generation (NLG), in-app service conversations can get both, very personal, and very immersive. And very effective. Speaking is the form of communication that comes easiest to humans. Speaking and conversations are tightly linked. Last but not least it is also a very efficient way of providing customer service as the human ability to exchange information is highest when speaking.

Bringing Human Back To Customer Service

Right now customer service 2.0, the automation of customer service, seems to move from call deflection via self-service and then bots to customer service 3.0. Helped by increasing maturity of NLP- and intent detection technology this iteration will move the bots from the second row into the front row. They will become the primary customer support interface. Instead of using a search box on an FAQ, customers will ask a bot for help via a chat interface. The bot itself then will be able to answer the question using e.g. an FAQ or database, or escalate the question to a human operator. The distinction between self-service and aided customer service will first blur, then vanish. The machine takes care of the simpler problems, the human of the more difficult ones. With further refinement of Natural Language Processing, text to speech-, speech to text technologies and intent detection, typing will give way to speech again, then introducing customer service 4.0. Customer service will fully turn into a conversation and it will not matter anymore whether it is synchronous or asynchronous. It also will not matter anymore whether customer service is delivered by a bot or a human, but will appear human. And that might have an impact on the call center and its operation itself that we will look at in a separate post. The bottom line is: Customer service will be humanized again.

Zendesk - A Mobile CustServ Native?

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 09:56:30 -0400

Mid of April I published an article about the mobile in-app support landscape that, amongst other players, touched on Zendesk. In this article I stated: “Zendesk is not a mobile native. Their chat widget integrates into web pages and the company does not offer in-app chat. Instead the company offers solutions that hook into existing messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp.” This statement was based upon research that I did in the first half of the month with Zendesk publishing their Fabric based in-app support kit on April 19 of the same month. So, maybe I should have posted this article a little later, but good on Zendesk for getting on with mobile in app support. They had, as well as many other bigger vendors in the customer service and call center arena still have, a wide open flank here that gets covered by specialist vendors like Helpshift, Intercom, or LivePerson, or suite vendors like Freshworks.

Zendesk, a Mobile Native or Not?

I say that, although I maybe did them wrong by stating that they don’t do in-app FAQs – although I do not believe so, as the help center content seems to be delivered from the server and needs an online connection. Still I maintain that they are not a native player. I will explain my reasoning a little later, after summarizing what I got out of talks with Douglas Hanna and, more recently, Greg Dreyfus from Zendesk. As per now Zendesk offers two different SDKs for mobile. The support SDK and the Chat SDK (both links go to the iOS version, there are Android versions, too). The support SDK enables mainly three things:

The searching and showing of help center content
The opening and management of requests (support tickets)
And the prompting for app reviews

It is what I would call the essentials of customer service, extended to the mobile world. The chat SDK is what gives the (at least to me) interesting features:

Chat
Messaging
Attachments to chats and messages
Chat ratings
Emailing of chat transcripts

From a customer base, Greg tells me that between 4,000 and 7,000+ customers (4,000 using the Android SDK and 3,000 the iOs SDK) are using the support SDK and a tenth of that the chat SDK. This makes sense as, without further technology, the support SDK helps deflect calls via self-service and keeps requests asynchronous and therefore helps in keeping the service center small. This is in line with Gartner Group’s observation in their 2017 Magic Quadrant on Customer Engagement Centers that most Zendesk deployments are for 20 agents or less, although there are implementations with 100+ agents, too. On the other hand, the chat SDK is what enables a company to become more customer friendly. It enables the customer to initiate a chat and to leave a message (request, ticket) if no operator is available. I didn’t get any numbers of active devices that are equipped with either of the SDKs.

What does Zendesk think about AI and Bots?

To Zendesk, AI is an important tool in the shed. However, as per Greg, for the time being it needs to be confined to the back end and predictive analytics, as the intelligence is not reliable enough (yet) to handle customer requests unsupervised. So there are no bots on the immediate horizon, as they would need to be limited to overly narrow areas of knowledge. Having said this, Zendesk is looking into this topic and observing the progress, as also evidenced by their release of their Guide product.

My Take

Zendesk is admittedly one of the big kids on the block of customer service centers. Their software is covering all major channels and it offers rich functionality. There are good reasons for it appearing prominently in the G2 Quadrant for Helpdesk Software and in the Leader’s quadrant of Gartner Group’s Magic Quadrant for Customer Engagement Centers. Zendesk has a broad and satisfied customer base mainly in the SMB market. The thriving Zendesk apps marketplace is helping to get even more coverage, or to improve the solution where marketplace partners see opportunities. So, they are clearly doing a lot of things right and are probably even a good alternative for Salesforce, especially as they have a mobile offering, which is a distinct weakness of Salesforce, which on the other hand has a strong position for customers that do not only look into customer service functionality. I, however, do think that both, the mobile support SDK as well as the chat SDK can benefit of some improvement. I have the impression that the support SDK pulls help center content from a server. If that impression is true this should be changed to offering the content directly on the device. If I am right here, this is only a minor one, though. After all, cell coverage can be assumed to improve. Still, the search experience is far better in case of the FAQ being delivered directly into the app. Still, Zendesk is working on adding offline search capabilities in order to offer a better experience. Where I think Zendesk got it wrong is their approach of in-app chat. The way Greg presented the functionality to me it appears that a chat request waits until getting picked up by an agent – which could be any agent, if the customer does not choose to pick one of the offered categories. In case no agent picks up, the customer can convert it into a ticket herself, turning the chat into a message. This seems to come from a strict definition of chat being synchronous and is in my eyes rather service center oriented than customer oriented. It also seems that there is no use of meta information available through the SDK or the text of the request itself to attribute and then route a request into the appropriate queue. This concept appears to me as the extension of web chat into the app and is probably due to the way the back end is designed to work. Here also comes the advantage of a working bot framework. A bot, basing on a good knowledge base and a machine-learning framework will be able to automate a lot of requests in its domain. It can also support the agents by already providing relevant articles ordered by confidence in an assisting role. There are vendors that are capable of both. I think that it would be beneficial for Zendesk to become a leader on this way, as these functionalities will become key requirements in the upcoming world of customer service in an ambient computing environment.

Customer Service - How to Turn a Poor Experience into a Positive One

Sat, 17 Jun 2017 08:19:50 -0400

With mobile phones taking over our lives and conversational interfaces becoming ubiquitous there is certainly a new level of demand arriving at customer service centers. Customers do not accept a mediocre service experience anymore. With their smartphones they have the means to get to customer service with nearly no delay and they are certainly willing to use it. And they do it. In this situation customers are often already feeling some frustration or disappointment because they couldn’t achieve what they wanted to achieve in the first instance. They already had their taste of a suboptimal customer experience. Frustration, disappointment – customers’ negative emotions towards a brand have a corresponding negative impact on the business. Customers just might go buy somewhere else. After all, in times of smartphones this has become simpler than ever. The support center now has best chances to add the feeling of being disrespected and outright anger into the mix. Or it can create a feeling of relief, of being respected, valued, even some satisfaction; this in spite of having come into the need of asking for support. Here the service agents have the opportunity to create a positive customer experience out of a poor one – one that will overlay the negative one.

Use Customer Service To Create Positive Emotions

Source: Sitecore/Avanade Which one is better for the company – and the company’s bottom line? The answer to this question is pretty obvious. Inmoment Research recently released a study that clearly established links between positive experiences and positive outcomes for a company. And this was not the first study finding that investing into positive customer experiences results in positive outcomes for the company. A 2016 study by Sitecore and Avanade showed a number of tangible business benefits that can be related to this investment. The open secret is that there is an easy way to turn a customer who is on the edge into a satisfied and happy one. This way works around recognizing what the customer values:

Their time
Their channel
Getting their issue resolved

This way clearly involves the smartphone. After all this is the switchboard of their lives and in all likelihood also the device where the issue occurred.

Go Social? No Way!

You may say: “Go social! Twitter, Facebook! People go there all the time! And they are getting fast and efficient help there!” Do they? Most customers aren’t getting fast and efficient help on social networks. Only few do. Mainly those with loud voices, because of having large follower numbers. And why are people resorting to social media? They use them as a last resort after the traditional ways didn’t work. In other words, because they are disappointed, frustrated and likely even angry. So they act as derailers of the brand, instead of being brought on the way of becoming promoters or even ambassadors.

Resolve Issues Fast, The Customers’ Way

This is where conversational interfaces, messaging and mobile in-app support come into the picture. This combination allows a customer to directly cut through to efficient service instead of repeatedly iterating through information they have already given before. Via the app the customer and many of the interactions (s)he did before the incident are already known. An agent can get to work directly, maybe even supported by a bot as a copilot, or even an autonomous one. The emotional advantage starts right in the beginning. In most of the cases the customer is already known and can be addressed by name instead of being in the need of introducing him-/herself. And due to the information that is already available the issue has been routed to the right service agents who in turn can get right at work when the ticket arrives on their desk. And this may very well be before they even reply, thus giving themselves the chance to be equipped with relevant knowledge and perhaps already a solution suggestion. As a result the customer feels treated respectfully and with appreciation of his/her concerns and time. Now, it is an illusion that every call center has enough staff to be able to immediately react to every incident and inquiry customers may have – ideal but an illusion. There is nothing worse than the electronic equivalent of holding music and the repeated statement that “your call is important to us”! Its mere existence actually proves the contrary.

Use AI to Improve the Experience

This is where AI and machine learning, exposed by chatbots take center stage. In a supportive role the AI can already supply the agent with possible solutions to the incident at hand before the agent takes up the issue. These solutions can get derived from the FAQ, internal documentation, a community, or from previous incidents that dealt with a similar topic. The ranked listing of suggestions can then be presented to the agent by a chatbot as part of the conversational interface that is used in between customer, service agents, and the technology. This already has the potential of significantly speeding up the resolution process, thus addressing what the customer values. It is a better engagement model that likely creates a positive experience – maybe a little wow moment. When enough trust has been established to the AI, the chatbot can get into an autonomous role and engage with the customer before an agent takes over. The human agent then becomes the escalation point for issues that the system cannot resolve without human interaction. To get into this escalation the bot could offer and schedule a callback by a person or simply do a handover to the next service level after informing the customer about the necessity for this. In this model even an explicit FAQ can be made obsolete as the chatbot can serve as a front end to it.

The results?

Conversational interfaces, alone or supported by chatbots have a profoundly positive impact on the business. The main benefits are:

Customer service is addressed the customer way
Faster incident resolution
More satisfied customers who have a better customer experience

Satisfied customers have more positive emotions about a company. A positive base is more likely to perceive an engagement as positive, which means it turns into a positive customer experience. And positive customer experiences create positive business outcomes. It is that simple.

Helpshift to Salesforce Integration - Where Peanut Butter meets the Jelly

Fri, 26 May 2017 06:30:09 -0400

The leading in-app support company Helpshift just released a seamless integration with the Salesforce Service Cloud. This integration is now available on AppExchange. Here a copy of the press release for your convenience, followed by my analysis: Helpshift Announces New Integration Capabilities for Its Customers on the Salesforce AppExchange, the World's Leading Enterprise Apps Marketplace SAN FRANCISCO – (BUSINESS WIRE) – MAY 25, 2017 – Helpshift today announced an integration with new capabilities available on the Salesforce AppExchange. This integration is meant to improve the mobile user experience by enabling service agents to deliver support to app users directly from within their Salesforce Service Cloud Dashboard - In-app! When a customer contacts support from inside the Helpshift-enabled app, a Salesforce case is created that the agent responds to, creating an in-app conversation. Customers get notified via banners, notifications and badges, enabling them to continue at their pace. "Organizations are seeing an explosion in demand for mobile solutions from their customers," said Esteban Kolsky, president of thinkJar, a customer strategies advisory firm, "and they quickly realize they can't offer outdated and incomplete solutions without real time data. Direct integration with systems of record are at the core of their strategies to support this trend." Built on the Salesforce Platform, the Helpshift integration is now available on the Salesforce AppExchange. Enterprises can benefit in the following ways: In-app Messaging: Helpshift’s new integration capabilities allow existing Salesforce customers to provide support to mobile customers, which extends their ability to reach mobile customers where it matters: Directly in the app, and supported by the smartphones’ powerful notification mechanisms. Enhanced Knowledge Capabilities: Helpshift’s FAQs optimized for the native mobile app experience are combined with the Salesforce Knowledge Base. They appear inside the Salesforce Knowledge Base through a one-time mapping and can be maintained directly in Salesforce. Automatic synchronization ensures that the FAQs are always up-to-date in the mobile app. Agent Management: Support for mobile customers can be delivered from inside the Salesforce Dashboard. Cases are directly created in the Salesforce Service Cloud when a Helpshift customer initiates a conversation. There is no need to switch to Helpshift. No tab change, no context switch, no training is required; the process remains unchanged for the agents, ensuring zero disruption and high efficiency. Data Management: Customer data and metadata from Helpshift is available to Salesforce agents as part of the case in the Salesforce Service Cloud. “As mobile becomes the primary medium customers use to connect with brands, the ability to provide customer support through all touch points is vital to creating deeper engagement and brand loyalty,” said Abinash Tripathy, Founder and CEO at Helpshift. “The enterprise no longer has to choose between uprooting their entire customer support structure and meeting customers where they spend most of their time - on mobile devices. Now the enterprise can provide a support experience for mobile customers and support agents can meet their needs quickly while continuing to do what they were doing within the Salesforce Platform. Everyone wins.” “Everyone and everything is getting smarter and more connected than ever before, and companies are looking to transform the way they connect with customers, partners and employees,” said Kori O’Brien, SVP, ISV Sales, Salesforce. “By leveraging the power of the Salesforce Platform, Helpshift provides customers with an exciting new way to receive support experience across mobile touch points.” Salesforce, AppExchange and others are among the trademarks of Salesforce.com, inc. About Salesforce AppExchange Salesforce AppExchange is the world’s leading enterprise apps marketplace that empowers companies to sell, service, market and engage in entirely new ways. With 3,500 partner apps and more than 4 million customer installs, it is the most comprehensive source of cloud, mobile, social, IoT, analytics and artificial intelligence technologies for businesses. About Helpshift: Helpshift bridges the disconnect between conventional customer service channels like email and phone support, and a growing consumer base that lives in a mobile-first world. As consumers do more on their mobile phones and have a strong preference for messaging as their primary mode of communication, Helpshift’s customer service platform provides instant answers and messaging right within the mobile app. The Helpshift SDK also easily integrates with third party tools and allows for highly-personalized support and user segmentation. Through this highly-streamlined support system, companies can resolve issues more efficiently, boosting customer satisfaction in the process. Companies such as Viacom, Virgin Media, Microsoft, Western Union, Flipboard, WordPress, and thousands of other industry-leading brands, startups, and developers use the Helpshift platform to provide in-app support. Helpshift is installed on 2 Billion devices worldwide, and serves 400+ million mobile customers monthly. To date, Helpshift has raised more than $38.2 Million and is backed by Cisco Investments, Intel Capital, Microsoft Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, True Ventures, and Visionnaire Ventures. To learn more about Helpshift, visit https://www.helpshift.com/and follow @helpshift on Twitter. The integration enables Salesforce Service Cloud customers who run Helpshift to power their mobile in-app support to leverage the capabilities of Helpshift right from the Salesforce dashboard. The Helpshift FAQs get mapped to and managed from the Salesforce knowledge base and are deployed to the mobile devices, including changes that happen over time. Conversely, a Salesforce case is created for a mobile user who initiates a chat from within the Helpshift powered mobile app. This case contains all relevant data and meta data from the end user’s phone for efficient processing by the service agent through a configurable mapping between Helpshift data and the fields of the Salesforce case object. The service agents work on this case as they would on any other case, using the Salesforce screens and workflows they are used to. No additional training to deal with another system is required; nor is it necessary to do a context switch between the two service back ends. Replies sent from the Salesforce Service Cloud appear in the in-app chat, thus contributing to a high user experience.

My Take

This is an important step out of CustServ Hell towards CustServ Heaven. Beyond all hype and rave of bots the conversational UI, messaging, is the single most important development in current interaction design. This is especially true for mobile users who exhibit little patience with apps that do not work and then do not let them find help immediately. Mobile users, too, do not want to change from their application to the phone (application) in order to get support. They want to be able to efficiently search an FAQ – even without connectivity – and contact support from within the app if they do not get the answer they need from there. They want it now – and then at their pace. This is nothing short of a paradigm shift as it flips the support model from company defined to customer defined. The next step will be voice, in combination with speech-to-text capabilities, in addition to text. Not many companies can address this paradigm shift at the moment. For both, Salesforce and Helpshift the benefits are immediately visible. The Salesforce eco-system gets the solution to an issue that needs resolution. Helpshift is an early, if not the first, provider of this solution within the thriving eco-system of the leader. For both, Helpshift- and Salesforce customers this is very good news, as this integration allows them to run their customer engagement centers more efficiently by avoiding a second, independent, back end with its own user interface and own set of customer master data. Instead there is a seamless integration that allows for great and non-disruptive user experience as the service agents do not need to change their workflows nor are they forced to change from one application to another. This tremendously benefits joint Helpshift- and Salesforce customers, too. Additionally, these companies enjoy the security of their investments staying protected while they have their feet in the doorway to where future leads us: A mobile first world. Those who talk of AI-first are looking inside out instead of outside in. To me, combining best-of-breed capabilities like those of a leading provider of in-app support, that Helpshift is, with the undisputed leader of Customer Engagement Center solutions proverbially fits like peanut butter and jelly (or like bread and butter, as we Germans would say). What I am waiting for now, is getting this solution integrated into other leading customer service solutions, starting with Microsoft Dynamics, SAP CEC, Pegasystems, Oracle, but also looking at SugarCRM and Zoho, and possibly further competitors in the tier 1 and tier 2 race of solutions. As this is an API-based integration, I am confident, that this will happen, very confident actually.

Mobile In-App Support - A brief Overview

Fri, 21 Apr 2017 16:19:40 -0400

In a mobile world, where the smartphone has become the command center of our lives support needs to be offered from directly inside the app, using in-app messaging. This way the advantages of being able to send relevant contextual information about the state of the app to the service agent and the ability to engage in a service conversation via a conversational UI can get brought to full advantage. The user is identified, relevant information has been gathered, which the service agent can use right away. This leads to capabilities that a genuine mobile in-app support system needs to have on top of generic help center functionality:

In-App FAQ that gets pushed out to the phone and is available in an offline scenario
Collation of meta data about the phone, user and the incident that created the support call, along with the ability to send that to the customer service center
In-App messaging/conversational UI in combination with push notifications
Automation to properly route incoming issues and to increase the issue resolution efficiency
An ability to integrate into CRM- or other systems
An ability to selectively and proactively engage with users, to e.g. support onboarding or push notifications about special situations to relevant parts of the user community.

It is possible to find vendors that deliver parts or all of this in order to deliver a mobile service experience. Platforms like G2Crowd, but also traditional analyst companies like Forrester and Gartner give some leads. Gartner lists Salesforce, Pegasystems, Oracle, Microsoft, Zendesk as leaders in customer engagement centers, with SAP being the only Challenger and Lithium the only Visionary. None of these companies gets high marks for in-app support, though. So, we are apparently looking for specialist vendors. Concentrating on the bigger medium and enterprise end of the market I’ll briefly look over the following companies, which offer parts or all of the desired solution.

Salesforce and Zendesk are part of this list as in-app service specialists see them in sales opportunities as competitors.

Vendors

Apptentive

Apptentive focuses on mobile customer engagement to foster a better way to communicate. The solution offers in-app messaging, rating prompts, notifications and surveys. There are no FAQ’s, though. The company got founded in 2011. The solution integrates into Zendesk, Uservoice, and Desk.com, which can be used to build a more complete in-app customer service solution in combination with Apptentive. Further integrations should be possible using the company’s API. Apptentive gathers meta-data from the mobile apps and presents it via its reporting solution. This data then can be exported as CSV and imported into a CRM system to enrich it and to provide for segmentation. However, there does not seem to be a campaigning functionality inside Apptentive itself.

Freshdesk/Hotline

Hotline.io, the former Konotor, is the mobile in-app support platform of Freshdesk. Konotor got founded in 2012 and was acquired by Freshdesk in November 2015. It is a native in-app support platform that fully caters for the criteria mentioned above. Hotline positions itself more like an engagement platform than a customer service platform. Being a part of the Freshdesk group their focus is more on the upper end of the SMB arena. Their clients mainly consist of startups and bigger corporations (as the smaller ones often do not have mobile apps, according to Srikrishnan Ganesan who heads up Hotline). Freshdesk itself seems to be sales-driven (which is not a bad thing). The company recently won the 2017 CRM Watchlist award, which is an impact award given by Paul Greenberg, which gives high visibility. Hotline has built-in integrations e.g. with Zendesk, and Slack and, of course, with Freshdesk itself. Using APIs it is possible to integrate with other CRM- and customer service systems. With the help of the Freshdesk platform it turns into a multi channel support system. The campaign module that is built into the back end allows segmenting customers based upon meta-data, app usage, and other criteria and allows for simple campaign automation.

Helpshift

Helpshift seems to be the leading mobile in-app support platform with a base of about 1.3 billion installations. The company got founded in 2011 and pioneered the idea of in-app support, providing a native platform that fully caters for the criteria above. The company positions itself as revolutionizing the customer support experience on mobile – with a strong focus on customer service. The target of Helpshift is enterprises and bigger call centers, and their number of installations proves that they are up to it. In 2014 Helpshift won the CRM Idol competition and the company is probably a bit of a hidden gem, which may partly be attributed to their enterprise focus. Helpshift has a deep integration into the Salesforce Service Cloud and I personally expect integration into MS Dynamics looming, as Microsoft Outlook Mobile is a key customer and Microsoft itself a leading investor into the company. Being API-driven integrations into other CRM systems are easily possible. The backend itself is multi-channel capable. The Helpshift campaign module is geared for service rather than marketing and leverages meta-data for segmentation, easily allowing for the facilitation of onboarding or recovering abandoned baskets, and getting over the early retention barrier.

Intercom

Intercom positions itself as a platform with support for live chat, marketing and support, with all part solutions being seamlessly integrated via their platform. The company has a strong mobile focus. A lot of their customer base seems to deploy the solution as a customer service solution. As Helpshift, the company was founded in 2011. Their solutions cover the criteria above, with the exception seeming to be the in-app FAQ. FAQ’s seem to be published through the web, instead. Their analytics offer the nice feature of identifying candidates for improved or new knowledge base articles, based upon searches. The solution offers multi-channel support and integrates into a good number of communications channels, and into Salesforce, to have a strong support system. They have deliberate support for onboarding processes, helping customers to get over the early retention barrier. Using data collected from the devices a segmentation and hence a targeted communication with users is possible, for example the onboarding support.

LivePerson

LivePerson offers a mobile in-app support solution through its LiveEngage platform. The company sets out to drive conversations and loyalty through the platform, and does not position it as a support- but an engagement system. LiveEngage is an ‘upgrade’ from the company’s earlier LivePerson solution, which seems to have caused some grief for customers. This ‘upgrade’ seems to resemble a pivot into the mobile in-app business. They are targeting enterprises although they also have startup customers. LivePerson is in the chat business for around 20 years. Focusing on messaging they do offer a chat platform that can be integrated into apps and web sites. They do not offer knowledge base support of customers but rely on custom integrations into CRM systems. Their key asset is their long standing history along with a platform that can turn chat into action, albeit more with a focus on cross-selling. Their current challenge is their need to manage their pivot and some customers that lost functionality that was important for them.

Salesforce

Salesforce offers two customer service solutions, the Salesforce Service Cloud and Desk.com, addressing different customer sizes. Desk.com is geared towards smaller organizations where the Service Cloud is enterprise scale. Both solutions offer multi channel support capabilities. Gartner Group, in their 2016 Magic Quadrant for Customer Engagement Centers states that “mobile chat” (their term for in-app messaging) is best handled by partner solutions that are available via the AppExchange market place.

Desk.com

Desk.com is Salesforces “Out-of-the-Box helpdesk for small businesses”. Being a member of the Salesforce family the solution has considerable grunt and exposure behind it. Desk.com is not a native mobile in-app support platform but a general support platform that allows for embedding support functionality inside mobile apps via an SDK. The SDK allows for the creation of tickets from within the mobile app and for knowledge base search with the knowledge base not being inside the app itself. In contrast to other providers Desk.com does not cater for conversational in-app support. The main support experience is provided outside the app. Being a member of the Salesforce family integration into other family members is a given, since they share the same platform. This includes a connection to the Sales Cloud that facilitates the conversion of support cases to sales opportunities. But at its root Desk.com is a helpdesk solution that got extended to cover mobile apps.

Service Cloud

The Service Cloud is the Salesforce customer service offering for enterprises. As such it offers a full fledged service solution that also extends into mobile devices via e.g. ticketing live chat, knowledge bases and support of communities. All this takes advantage of the powerful Salesforce platform. There, however, is no direct in-app support, which makes a good case for the integration of Helpshift.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a leading cloud based customer service platform, offering multi channel support. Zendesk features as a leader in the Gartner 2016 Magic Quadrant for Customer Engagement Centers. Zendesk is not a mobile native. Their chat widget integrates into web pages and the company does not offer in-app chat. Instead the company offers solutions that hook into existing messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. They offer knowledge bases, support of communities, and portals. Zendesk has integrations into many other systems, including MS Dynamics and Salesforce. The support for messaging apps, besides Zendesk being competitively met by mobile in-app vendors, is the main reason for them appearing here.

What It Means

The in-app service market is a specialist market. If a strong support for mobile apps using a conversational interface and an in-app experience are required, not many players with the strength to support larger enterprises are left. This can be seen in the table below, which covers above solutions and is enriched by some generic help center functionality. Mobile In-App Support Provider Overview Zendesk and Salesforce both offer partner solutions to fulfill in-app service requirements. By themselves they are not in-app support players. Apptentive focuses on rating systems and surveys and is not a full-fledged player as well.. Intercom positions itself more as an engagement platform although customers seem to deploy it as a support platform, too. Without an own knowledge base capability it, however, misses an important capability. This leaves us with three vendors: Freshdesk, Helpshift, and LivePerson, with LviePerson currently pivoting from being a web based chat provider to an in-app service solution provider, which seems to cause existing customers some grief. The solution is also missing an in-app FAQ. Helpshift and Freshdesk as the front-runners are running very different strategies. For Freshdesk in-app support is one of their capabilities that they acquired over time and made part of their solution set. Helpshift totally focuses on in-app support, believing that mobile will be, if not already is, the dominant channel, which needs specialized support functionality to offer maximum service and experience.

A Love Affair - Nimble Smart Contacts for Outlook

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 14:18:26 -0500

Social Selling pioneer Nimble has an awesome start into 2017. First it got number 1 in CRM satisfaction by G2Crowd earlier in January, then friend and CRM godfather Paul Greenberg named Nimble a winner of the 2017 CRM Watchlist awards, and now Nimble announces the Smart Contacts add-in for Outlook, a deep integration into Outlook for iOS, with an integration into Outlook for Android coming soon. The Nimble Smart Contacts add-in brings the power of Nimble’s view on contacts to Outlook for mobile users, after the widget and Outlook add-on already offered this functionality for the web- and Outlook clients. The add-on follows the philosophy that for most companies the e-mail account is still their CRM system; given this, this is a straightforward enhancement. Nimble acknowledges that there are two main email systems used in businesses: Gmail and Office365, and now fully supports them both. This integration delivers the profiling data that the Nimble back end gathers practically at any place. The browser add-in already today allows to get profiling information about contacts in other CRM systems, e.g. Salesforce or MS Dynamics and works seamlessly in Google Apps and Office365. Nimble Side Panel “The biggest cause of communication failure is lack of knowledge of who someone is or what their business is about,” says Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble. This add-on is closing one missing link in the chain by making it part of Outlook and reducing the need for having yet another app. Relevant business insight about people in a mail conversation and their companies is now directly available in the email client. Nimble Smart Contact Manager The add-on, along with the above-mentioned Outlook Add-in, and the available Dynamcis integration, puts Nimble squarely between Microsofts Outlook Customer Manager and a full-scale Dynamics implementation – an interesting thought that I will continue below. Considering the fact that Jon was on an “intense visit to Redmond” last year, an add-on like this shouldn’t come as a major surprise. The major surprise would rather be if this would be the only piece that is going to come. And it isn’t. In a conversation today about things CRM Jon gave me some more snippets of information. What I can say is this: Nimble is a pilot partner for Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Partner program. With this it is likely that Microsoft Sales can go pitching Nimble to their customers. Microsoft is also funding Nimble to develop applications on Azure. This is an interesting move for Microsoft as it can potentially put quite some additional load on Azure.

My Take

Although on the outset it doesn’t look like it, this can be a big thing. If this partnership goes deeper than a mere add-in to Outlook, then there are quite some benefits for both parties, Microsoft and Nimble. Nimble gets better access to the huge Microsoft customer- and partner base with a corresponding reach, which should translate to a boost of customers and thus revenue. Microsoft on the other side gets access to a Social Sales solution that is placed at the lower end of the market, which is far from being saturated. And Microsoft gets access to a solution that is natural to people who do not yet use a CRM system, as it is built around the Inbox. Together with Nimble’s stickiness (very high user satisfaction according to G2Crowd), the existing integration into Dynamics and the above mentioned Azure development joint Nimble-Microsoft customers also get a clear upgrade path to MS Dynamics. As it is right now, Nimble is positioned between the Outlook Customer Manager and MS Dynamics. Surely there is a big gap between Nimble and Dynamics, but as it stands this is rather a good thing, as said above. Being Microsoft I would consider subsidizing the Nimble add-on instead of continuing to offer their own Outlook Customer Manager.

So why could this be a big thing, you ask?

Imagine the following: The Smart Contacts App, or rather Nimble becoming part of the Office365 fabric, working with the full Microsoft application stack, like Outlook, Skype, Team, Dynamics, Office365, LinkedIn, PowerBI. Add the fact that many smaller businesses are still working without a CRM system, but merely use their mail client – and MS Office. Continue the thought with: Salesforce, SugarCRM, SAP, Dynamics are too expensive and too ‘clumsy’, user-unfriendly. Add the idea of a deep integration into the Office Graph/LinkedIn graph, and all of the sudden there is a powerful and affordable social sales application. Mind you, there still would be gaps on the service and especially marketing side, but this is a story for another day. For now I do see huge potential in this partnership.

Why the Phone is Dead - And How to Accommodate for It

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 13:35:14 -0500

As our (digital) lives circle more and more around mobility, and consequently the mobile phone, the questions around communication-, and in particular around service- and support channels become more interesting by the day. Facebook triggered what can be dubbed a little revolution when opening its messaging platform for chatbots in 2016; meanwhile even Skype offers chatbot support. It is safe to say that chatbots have been one of the main technology trends in 2016. Slack, originally released only mid of 2013, has become one of the main collaboration- and communications platforms. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning in various flavors and strengths have become part of many business applications throughout business’s value chains. And the combination of conversational user interfaces and AI/machine learning has the potential of changing the way people interact with businesses (and data, for what it is worth in this context). Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, to name only the big players, offer voice driven digital assistants, which already now provide a hint of new engagement models between customers and companies. Intelligent, conversational systems are what we are about to see, first predominantly using chat-like user interfaces, then also merging voice into the mix, first to cover isolated situations, then increasingly for more complicated ones.

Some Data Points

Business Insider reported in September that the usage of chat apps has surpassed the usage of social media, measured in monthly active users. Messaging Apps Additionally, Google found already in 2014 that 59 per cent of smartphone owners globally install games within a week of getting the phones, which is a higher percentage than any other type of app. On the other hand, a quarter of app users install an app, open it once, and do not return ever. And a whopping 40 per cent of smartphone users will be less likely to return to a mobile site or app if it does not quickly satisfy their needs. Conversely, eConsultancy found already in 2013 that live chat has the highest satisfaction rating amongst all customer service channels, this although it wasn’t one of the mainly used channels at that time.

The Reality …

… is somewhat mundane. Customers increasingly rely on few channels, expect information about their requests and history being readily available at any time, and want to get service and support at their pace, not the company’s. And apps are increasingly at risk of not being one of these channels. Companies need to be able to provide customers with compelling reasons for downloading and continuing to use their app; they need to add value. I have covered these topics before, e.g. here and here. Mind you, many others have, too. The gist of it is that customers do not want to put up with yet another app, expensive support lines, automated phone systems, long waiting times and annoying music or – worse – statements on how important their call is to the company while being told that all agents are busy. Companies, on the other hand, are still thinking in terms of omnichannel and have many disparate entry points. Or probably I should say that they are, driven by the vendors, just now arriving at the notion of omnichannel. There are three significant problems with this – at least.

Apparently, there is a disconnect between what companies offer – which is what they perceive as important for their customers – and what customers expect.
Disparate entry points and data silos are inefficient and lead to frustrations of the employees who try to help their customers.
There is a poor customer experience as companies do not have a consolidated view on the issues their customers want to get resolved due to silo’ed systems, processes, organizations, etc. it is hardly possible to start a longer customer service conversation in one channel and to continue in another without friction.

My Take

As I have pointed out before these issues, in combination with technological advances will lead to drastic changes in the delivery of customer service. While, according to eConsultancy, in 2013 43 per cent of customers picked up the phone for a general inquiry, we can expect this to go down even further. The telephone, especially the landline, is a legacy system. Today, people start with Google, and then expect a chat window on the web site, if a quick search of the site or community doesn’t help. Similar, when being in-app. There simply is no point in changing from one app to another, to get an issue resolved. The telephone, as a technology, will be one of the next casualties of continuous improvements of customer service and customer experience improvements. You ask: Why? Telephony can, and thus will be replaced by the already existing ability to provide chat and voice communication directly through the used channels, e.g. using WebRTC or similar technologies. It does not make much sense to change from one app to another, be it the web browser, a vendor app, or – even worse – a messaging app, to another one, just to call for support. The issue of switching channels gets compounded when the customer is using a laptop/desktop computer or a tablet. In these situations, they even unnecessarily need to use another device. Instead, service and support will be offered directly in place, something that an increasing number of companies already start to adopt by offering chats directly from the web sites or in-app, or even voice calling services. One could say that chat has become nearly mandatory on the web site already. We can also see a convergence from the other side. Messaging services opened up to provide a platform for businesses to offer their services, so that customers do not need to leave this familiar environment. So, in summary, the future of customer service that I do see will converge technologies.

rich user interfaces, but less individual apps
search with ‘traditional and conversational interfaces, both text and voice.
Dialogues via text and voice.

The conversational support in dialogues and partly also in search interactions will be delivered by humans as well as machines. And it will happen without picking up a phone – in not too distant future. Apart, of course, from the obvious direct human to human contact that will continue to exist.