Never has there been such a battle cry toward digital acceleration than now. The pandemic has accelerated the pivotal role that digital associates play and the business outcomes they deliver. The “HFS Top 10: Digital Associates Services” report (January 2021) by Melissa O’Brien, VP Research, ranked CSS Corp ahead of service providers such as HCL, Genpact, Concentrix, and EXL for using advanced conversational tools toward attaining business outcomes. The report defines these advanced conversational tools in the enterprise as “digital associates” that create better experiences by working for people and with people; digital associates have an eye on enterprise-level outcomes as they work across stakeholder ecosystems.
Why Digital Associates Matter?
Phil Fersht, Founder and CEO of HFS Research, stated that digital associates augment the human experience for customers and employees. The report clarifies the update to the previous nomenclature of using “cognitive assistants” in the 2018 Top 10 Cognitive Assistant Services report. The author mentioned that the last term was overused and not always required for effective business outcomes. Here are points from the report that clarifies what Digital associates are and why they matter.
- Digital associates feature right at the top of conversational tools that focus on clients. They leverage various aspects of the ecosystem.
- They’re developed with a view on the broader business or IT services relationship unlike other platforms and products that offer less customization.
- Digital associates offer a range of sophistication of conversational design and the ability to incorporate AI and analytics.
- These associates are crucial to sharing information, insight, and, most importantly, communication between the organization’s stakeholders. HFS OneOfficeTM relies heavily upon digital associates for augmenting CX and EX. The more sophisticated they become, the more value they add to a OneOfficeTM experience, according to Phil Fersht.
- Ideally, they offer exponential value when they’re in the intersection of the Triple-A Trifecta comprising Analytics, Automation, AI. In other words, associates who use all three become power-packed tools that are better poised to solve business problems.
The report profiled how CSS Corp performed across a defined series of execution, innovation, and voice of the customer criteria. Among 17 service providers, the report showcased the overall leaders and top 10 performers by sub-category.
The Spotlight on Digital Associates
Digital initiatives witness an unprecedented acceleration unlike the pre-pandemic era. The pandemic has cast the spotlight on the significant role of digital associates at a time of high customer support volumes, negligible or unavailable staff, and shift to remote work. When cost-cutting initiatives are priority #1 for enterprise leaders, digital associates have risen to the occasion to meet decision-makers and customers' demands.
Empowering Support Agents & Engineers
Automatic creation and routing of cases to support agents and engineers is a prime use case of how an associate can drastically improve resolution times, first-touch resolution, and productivity. The digital associate liaises between various systems. The associate is smart enough to route the case to the best support agent who can resolve the problem. Whenever a self-service request or an email drops in, the associate immediately populates the support agent’s application with the case and customer's details. The exhaustive details cover account info, entitlement, customer health score, customer sentiment, and previous interactions. Using text analysis, the associate recommends relevant knowledge articles and next-best-action. With every bit of detail at fingertips, support agents need not switch between different applications to get information when they’re resolving the problem. Ask any support agent what it feels like, and they’ll describe the feeling of being empowered. Automatic case creation & routing is one such use case; digital associates have versatile use cases across various domains.
Consider CSS Corp’s Digital Associates
HFS Research highlighted CSS Corp for its steadily expanding acumen of services utilizing digital coworkers. The report highlights partnerships and proprietary IP solutions. Key strengths of a digital coworker or enterprise digital assistant include—
- Augmenting the human workforce across HR, IT, CX, sales, supply chain, and other functions.
- Offering AR and VR via digital associates; read use case on KYRA.
- Delivering on SLAs, productivity levels, cost savings, and tangible business outcomes.
- Driving integrated automation across enterprise functions and processes.
In addition to these strengths, CSS Corp received customer praise for the platforms' continuous maturation and their ability to integrate enterprise systems with digital associates.
Garnering the 6th rank beside the list of IT stalwarts who have revenues ticking in the billions is a testament to CSS Corp’s digital acceleration capabilities across enterprise functions and processes. Contact us to know more about our IP solutions and platforms.
Additional Reading
- Infographic: Unleash the power of digital associates
- White Paper: Technology-driven enterprise support in 2020 & beyond
- Video: Gadet+ - A mobile-based customer engagement platform
- Blog: The acceleration toward digitally-led tech support
- PR: CSS Corp ranks 6th Globally in HFS Research for top digital associates services
