Cognitive Customer Service

with IBM Watson

September 2017

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About Perficient

Perficient is the leading digital

transformation consulting firm serving

Global 2000 and enterprise customers

throughout North America.

With unparalleled information technology, management

consulting, and creative capabilities, Perficient and its

Perficient Digital agency deliver vision, execution, and

value with outstanding digital experience, business

optimization, and industry solutions.

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Perficient Profile• Founded in 1997

• Public, NASDAQ: PRFT

• 2016 revenue $487 million

• Major market locations:

Allentown, Atlanta, Ann Arbor, Boston, Charlotte,

Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit,

Fairfax, Houston, Indianapolis, Lafayette, Milwaukee,

Minneapolis, New York City, Northern California, Oxford (UK),

Southern California, St. Louis, Toronto

• Global delivery centers in China and India

• Nearly 3,000 colleagues

• ~95% repeat business rate

• IBM Watson Talent Partner

• 2017 Beacon Award Winner for an Outstanding

Watson Cognitive Solution

• Vast portfolio of Watson-based accelerators, quick

starts and assessment offerings

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Blueworx Profile• 100 years in combined experience in voice and

mobile applications

• Legacy of innovation since 1986 in IBM labs

• BVR is rock solid and massively scalable

• 100,000+ ports deployed

• Top telco’s in the world have run on BVR for 10+ years

• Cloud, on-premises or a combination of both

• Obsessed with delivering amazing customer

experiences

• Locations in Tulsa, LA, NY and the UK

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Speaker Introduction

CHRISTINE LIVINGSTONDirector, IBM Watson

Perficient

DEAN UPTONDirector, Product Management

Blueworx

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Deliver Cognitive

Customer Service

with IBM Watson

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• Introduction

• What is Watson?

⎼ Cognitive Computing

⎼ Structured vs. Unstructured Data

⎼ Customer Service Usage Patterns

• Case Studies

• Getting Started with Watson

Agenda

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Changing Consumer

Expectations

• Highly demanding of seamless and

frictionless experience

• Less loyal to singular brand

• Have omni-channel expectations

• Social media gives individual voices great

power

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Self-Service Channels are Key to

Winning the Future of Customer Service

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Customer Experience Gap

To drive

customer loyalty

you must invest in

customer experience.

What is Watson?

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What is Watson?

A tablet you talk to? A giant server? A robot?

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Understand

The ability to understand structured and unstructured

data, text-based or sensory in context and meaning, at astonishing speed and

volume.

Reason

The ability to formhypotheses, make considered

arguments and prioritize recommendations to help

humans make better decisions.

Learn

Ingest and accumulate data and insight from every interaction

continuously. Trained, not programmed, by experts to

enhance, scale and accelerate their expertise.

Watson: A Cognitive Platform

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The volume, variety and

veracity of data –

80% of it

unstructured – is

growing at a rate impossible

to keep up with.

Customers have a wider

range of choices than ever

before and are expecting

innovative, relevant and

personalized

engagement.

Why is Cognitive Important?

Companies must engage customers

on their terms in a consistent,

natural, and intuitive way.

Cognitive is the new

competitive advantage for

enterprises focused on

enhancing the customer

experience.

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Column Value

Patient Joe Brown

Date of Birth 02/13/1972

Date Admitted 02/05/2014

Structured DataHigh Degree of organization, such as a

relational database

“The patient came in complaining of chest pain,

shortness of breath, and lingering headaches

… smokes 2 packs a day … family history of

heart disease…has been experiencing similar

symptoms for the past 12 hours.”

Unstructured DataInformation that is difficult to organize using

traditional mechanisms

Structured vs. Unstructured Data

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explorer

India

In May

1898

India

In May

celebrated

anniversary

in Portugal

In May, Gary arrived in India after

he celebrated his anniversary in

Portugal

Portugal

400th

anniversary

celebrated

Gary

In May 1898, Portugal celebrated the

400th anniversary of this explorer’s

arrival in India

This evidence suggests “Gary” is the

answer BUT the system must learn that

keyword matching may be weak relative

to other types of evidence

arrived in

arrival in

Legend

Keyword “Hit”

Reference Text

Answer

Weak evidenceRed Text

Answering complex natural language questions requires more than keyword evidence

Analyzing Unstructured Content

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27th May

1498

Vasco da

Gama

landed in

arrival

in

explorer

India

Para-

phrases

Geo-

KB

Date

MatchStronger evidence can

be much harder to find

and score …

… and the evidence is still

not 100% certain

Search far and wide

Explore many hypotheses

Find judge evidence

Many inference algorithms

On the 27th of May 1498, Vasco da

Gama landed in Kappad Beach

400th anniversary

Portugal

May 1898

celebrated

In May 1898 Portugal celebrated the

400th anniversary of this explorer’s

arrival in India.

Kappad Beach

Legend

Temporal Reasoning

Reference Text

Answer

Statistical Paraphrasing

GeoSpatial Reasoning

Leverage Multiple Algorithms

The Watson Difference

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Customer Service and Engagement

Agent Assist

• Provide 360° views

• Deliver consistent and accurate answers

• Efficiently scale expertise to novice agent

• Personalize the customer experience

Virtual Agents

• Provide self-service options

• Guide customers through transactions

• Engage customers through several mediums

Integrated Voice Solutions

• IVR Replacement/Enhancement

• “Active Listening”

Customer Service Interaction Analysis

• Support Multiple Channels (social media,

call center, email exchanges)

• Understand customer tone and sentiment

• Uncover hidden trends and relationships

Agent Assist

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• Improve self-service options through natural language interfaces,

reducing the number of calls received

• Provide 360° insight into customer, product, tickets, etc.

• Personalize the client experience with deep insights into preferences

and interaction history

• Deliver consistent and accurate answers

• Efficiently scale expertise to novice agents

• Additional insights identified through analysis of all existing knowledge

and problem history

– Which problems / issue areas take long to solve?

– Trends and deviations? Peaks?

– Has the same or a similar problem already occurred?

– Any issues known with this entity / product / …?

– Who do I need to contact (Who solved it before?)

– Related cases / workarounds

Contact Center Agents

Watson Explorer

Applications and Data Sources

Watson Developer Cloud

Empower agents to better respond to requests and improve conversion rates

Watson Agent Assist

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Active Listening

Watson listens and

transcribes the

conversation between a

customer and an agent

Watson understands the

intent of the customers

questions and surfaces

relevant information to

the agent

Virtual Agents

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Schedules recurring

payment plan to ensure

that he’s always covered

Consistent, effective

relationship management is

essential in industries where

infrequent interactions have

substantial impact on customer

satisfaction.

Currently customers have limited

self-service options available to

them for servicing their accounts

but choose to navigate through

phone-based systems answered

by local agents or call centers

Watson Offers customers an

elevated, intuitive self service

experience that allows them to

easily achieve what they set out

to do.

The Cognitive Customer Experience

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From:

To:

SELF-SERVICE LEVEL 1 LIVE AGENTS

LEVEL 2 LIVE

AGENTSSELF-SERVICE LEVEL 1 LIVE AGENTS

LEVEL 2 LIVE

AGENTS

FIRST CALL RESOLUTION

- Self-service solutions unable to resolve calls

- Customers want to be passed to Live Agents quickly

FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION

- Watson offers better user experience

- Able to resolve calls through integrated actions

From First Call to First Contact Resolution

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Scripted vs. Cognitive Conversations

• Driven by a pre-defined conversation flow

• Expects key phrases or words

• Functions best on structured data

• Best for short and simple tasks

• Relatively quick to implement

Scripted Conversations

• Driven by conversational intents rather than expected flow

• Trained to understand natural language

• Operates on both structured and unstructured data

• Learns over time

• Capable of a wide range of tasks

• Training time varies by complexity

Cognitive Conversations

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Virtual Agent Knowledge Base Expansion

Cognitive Contact

Center

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Blueworx Delivers Watson’s

Capabilities to Your Contact Center

• Blend Watson’s fluid conversation

with traditional directed dialog

• Build a cognitive contact center at a

pace that suits your business

• Continuously improve the quality of

every customer interaction

• Transform calls into a more relevant

and relational experience

• …with the proven reliability of

Blueworx

Blueworx is the only IVR to certify IBM’s

MRCP connector for Watson.

Level 1

New speech engines

Example

Speech to text instead of grammars.

Level 2

FluidConversation

Example

Watson Conversation guides caller to an existing Directed Dialog application.

Level 3

Agent-assist

Example

Cognitive application attempts to provide resolution to a human agent.

Level 4Highly automated

Example

Cognitive application attempts to provide resolution directly to the caller. Agents are freed up for more challenging calls.

Level 5Fully autonomous

Example

Caller uses freeform speech to request information, continuously improved resolution derived from machine learning.

Directed DialogDirected Dialog

Directed Dialog

Directed Dialog

Levels of contact center autonomy

Cognitive

Conversation

Natural

Speech

Cognitive

Information

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Blueworx Gives Watson its Own Voice

Applications &

Data Sources

Watson

Developer Cloud

Contact Center

Agents

Watson Explorer

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Level 1 – New Speech Engines

Benefits:

• Better quality speech

• Cloud based; no hardware or software maintenance

• Pay-per-use pricing

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Level 2 – Fluid Conversation

Benefits:

• Fluid speech interaction

• Omnichannel

• Easy application development

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Watson + Blueworx

Step-1 Call arrives to SIP gateway. (SIP or TDM initiated calls)Step-2 Call is routed to the IVR.Step-3 Access VXML Application layer transformation to interface with Watson Cognitive. Step-4 (Optional) Access client systems (Web Services, Database, Legacy Systems)

Step-5+ Access Watson Services (i.e. WVA, Conversation, Natural Language Classifier, etc) and more. Establish and manage ongoing dialog with either Watson Virtual Agent, and / or Watson Conversation.

Step-6 Interact with the MRCP server to access Watson Speech-To-Text & Text-To-Speech.Step-7 MRCP server manages session, and transformation between MRCP-v2 Protocol and Watson

speech services <-> Speech-To-Text & Text-To-Speech. Step-8 User interfacing with WVA using Chat Bot Widget.

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Cognitive Contact Center

• A center that unlocks the customer

experience potential by leveraging

data from external, internal,

structured, unstructured, voice and

visual sources…making them work

together.

• Provides an interaction that delivers

on customer expectations based on

the cognitive ability to understand,

reason and learn from every

interaction.

• Communicates with fluid, natural

language through speech or text.

Case Studies

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360° Customer Perspective

Unification of structured and unstructured data

in a 360° dashboard

Consolidated data platform enhances search

and eliminates multiple system logins

Automated call notes summary and closure

process

Improved consistency and customer service

transcript analysis

43%reduced AHT

training period

and attrition

customer

satisfaction

Life Insurer

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A Watson Digital Concierge

Reshaped the user experience

Autonomously handles tier-1 requests

(60% Upon Initial Release)

Supports software activation and

maintenance tasks

300% increase in web traffic

90% 99%lower support

costs

shorter

resolution times

North American Software Company

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63%reduced AHT

Interactive Agent for Healthcare Providers

Cognitive agent converses with providers to

verify benefits

Seamlessly manages member information

inquiries

Transformed a tedious IVR system

Drastic reduction in live agent requests

Call time reduced from 8 to 3 minutes

live agent

requests

Healthcare Insurer

Getting Started

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Available Workshops

Rapidly iterate through Watson’s

application in your organization, define

measurable goals for your cognitive

analytics implementation, and begin your

cognitive journey.

Ideate on and discover the

possibilities of cognitive analytics

and industry applications for your

organization. Rapidly prototype and

illustrate the art of the possible.

IBM Watson

Workshop

IBM Watson

Innovation Lab

3-4 WeeksHalf-to-Full Day

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Workshop Format

OBJECTIVES,

GOALS & KPIS

APPLICATIONS

OF WATSON

EDUCATION

USE CASES

USER EXPERIENCE

& IDEATION

RAPID

PROTOTYPING

Watson Workshop

Watson Innovation Lab

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Questions?

Appendix

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Channel proliferation has consumers expecting

instantaneous personalized, high-quality

interactions regardless of the contact channel

the consumer chooses.

Watson Virtual Agent offers customers a

cognitive, conversational self-service engine

that can provide answers and take action

through a variety of channels at scale.

What is Watson Virtual Agent, and what can it do for you and your customers?

Watson Virtual Agent on IBM Marketplace

Watson Virtual Agent

Business Problem:

Solution:

Learn More:

• Personalized, contextual digital assistant that can take action on customer’s request

• Pre-trained natural language understanding conversations for customer service domain

• Customer service-focused dialog flows across a range of complexities

• Conversation tooling and dashboard for managing customer experiences

• Software-as-a-Service solution with continuous delivery of enhancements and new content

Quantitative Benefits

• Absorb deflected contacts from higher cost channels

• Increased first-contact resolution

• Increased revenue through re-tasking human reps

• Decreased agent-to-agent transfers

Qualitative Benefits

• Satisfy customer demand through the channel they choose

• Consistent omni-channel customer experience

• Increases in lifetime value, net promoter score

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Watson Virtual Agent Knowledge Base

Fre

quency

Question Intent Complexity

20% Of User Volume, much larger

number of singleton (unique) intents. High complexity, answer depends on a number of

variables (knowing the intent is not enough to

answer), requires deep QA search.

Body Long Tail

Pilo

t

Phase 1

Ph

ase

2

Phase 3

80% of User Question Volume

20% of unique intents. Low complexity, easy to answer derived

using context of the question itself