It’s a known fact that online customer service, by and large, isn’t the most pleasant experience. Companies often have ambitious plans to improve it with automation and artificial intelligence (think chatbots). But such initiatives often lack the data-based fundamentals, specifically the right answers to common questions, to deliver a great customer experience. Inserting a vast pool of answers and answer-givers could radically alter web-based customer experience.

“Most of those companies are falling down out of the gates, because there are content gaps, data gaps, training gaps and empathy gaps in the systems,” according to Antony Brydon (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Directly Software Inc. 

Brydon spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the The Conference Board’s Innovation Master Class event in Palo Alto, California. They discussed why expert content-contributors are the missing ingredients in the digital customer experience, or CX for short.

Oh, the humanity

Very few companies have the structured data to feed a large-scale CX system, according to Brydon. They may have an enterprise knowledge base, but the content is often stale, dated and inaccurate. They also lack reliable signaling between the automated customer-service system and the customer. 

“When an automated answer’s delivered, they have to wait for a customer to rate it,” Brydon said. “That tends to be a really poor signal on whether that answer was good or not.”

Directly’s automation platform puts product and service experts at the heart of AI-driven CX. Users build external networks of interested, knowledgeable people and reward them for creating content, training the AI algorithms, and resolving customer issues.

“In the overwhelming majority of cases, the talent and the passion exists; you just have to have a simple platform to onboard and start tapping that talent,” Brydon stated.

Directly leverages Microsoft Corp.’s AI and cognitive services. In tandem with expert content generators, it can quickly build a vast, constantly renewing knowledge center for customers. Brydon likens an internal knowledge base to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. “By the time you ship it, it’s outdated, and you have to start all over again,” he said.

An external network is like Wikipedia. “The successful content is promoted,” he said. “The unsuccessful content is demoted, and it’s an evergreen cycle where it’s constantly refreshing.”

And don’t underestimate the empathy gap, according to Brydon. When an expert’s face is shown next to the answer and he or she is there to answer follow-up questions, customer satisfaction shoots up. 

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of The Conference Board’s Innovation Master Class event:

Photo: SiliconANGLE