The Rise of the Web Robot (Bot)

In its simplest form, a bot is a software application that runs automated tasks via a script. As a software application has the ability to perform simple repetitive tasks much faster than humans, this makes it ideal for Customer Care environment. 

A large number of Customer Care integrations can be automated using bots. The bot with its automated script fetches, analyses and files information from web servers much faster than a human can, decreasing the need for Agent intervention and increasing overall productivity.  

Cisco’s next generation of Customer Care products will build on the Cisco Spark platform to offer sophisticated bots. These will complement the Connected Digital channels already provided by the Customer Care products.

Spark's care features enhance existing Cisco Spark capability sets. They enable businesses to provide both internal and external care to employees and customers. Over time, Cisco Spark will offer additional capabilities for both conventional Customer Care centres and new less-bounded care scenarios. It enables connected digital experiences by supporting customer care teams who want to deliver contextual, continuous and capability-rich customer journeys.

Cisco Spark Care and Spark Care Assistant facilitates human-assisted support via a Spark bot that pairs Spark Message users with experts based on their request or question. Simply ask a Care Assistant a question and it will either tell you which topics it knows about or will look to see if your question includes a match to a topic. 

Existing Customer Care centres can augment team collaboration within the contact centre and with knowledge workers in the extended organization by using Cisco Spark to discuss topics, share news, align on objectives, facilitate training, and collaborate in solving user/customer issue

Cisco Spark care is offered by Cisco as part of the Cisco Spark Collaboration platform, with integrated administration and enterprise class security. 

Key benefits are: 

• Very easy add-on to Cisco Spark (just takes a few clicks in the Cloud Collaboration Management interface).
• Web chat powered by Cisco Spark message.
• Call-back powered by Cisco Spark call.
• Customizable chat and call-back to embed in the customer web page.
• Real-time queue information on incoming contacts.
• Built-in access to customer identification, context and interaction history, giving agents the knowledge to deliver a better customer experience.
• No compromise, end-to-end encryption offered via the Cisco Spark cloud platform.

Integrated agent, team, and customer satisfaction reporting (with colour coding to identify excessive response times) viewable in Cloud Collaboration Management. 

This is not the beginning of the end but just the evolution of cloud based computing. Bots have been an instrumental part of the internet with over half of all web traffic made up of bots.

As bots and artificial intelligence advance, there will be a time where the Customer Care Agent will be replaced by a machine but I think we have a time to go.