“Giving Machines a Voice” Seen as Critical Step in Delivering Exceptional Customer Service

A new report by global business communications leader Mitel uncovers that 97% of financial services enterprises in the UK have plans to “give machines a voice” within the next 1-4 years, enabling machines to interact with staff and customers. Forty-seven percent already have such projects in place and 36% have plans for the next 1-2 years.

NNinety-two percent of financial services professionals believe that machine to people interactions will positively transform the customer experience – the highest percentage amongst all other industries including hospitality (60%), healthcare (75%), retail (88%).

Despite this, barriers remain – 65% of financial services professionals claim that integrating siloed applications and data is a key barrier to improving customer experience as part of a digital transformation strategy, while 47% reveal that budget and resources allocation remains a problem.

“Customer experience is an active, strategic discussion across industries as organisations look to leverage new technologies associated with the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning,” said Gary Gould, Marketing Director UKI, Mitel. “Giving machines a voice in machine-to-people interactions can be a powerful differentiator as the relationship between businesses and consumers shifts from transactional to more experiential, and customer experience becomes just as important as the product or service a company provides.”

“Every day, new types of digital communication are being launched – from social networks to bots to augmented reality – and consumers are adopting them in their daily lives. The days when a great customer experience was based solely on face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions are long gone,” said Kate Jalie, Partner, Opinium Research. “Now, exceptional customer service is multi-channel, bringing together voice, video, mobile and online in a seamless and highly personalized experience. Businesses that successfully implement new technologies for transforming the customer experience today, will be tomorrow’s winners.”

The findings are the result of a survey administered by Opinium Research in August 2017 to over 2,500 senior IT decision makers across the UK, North America, France, Germany and Australia. Respondents represented businesses ranging in size from 250 to 10,000+ employees and a broad range of industries including finance, hospitality, healthcare, professional services, government, education, retail, and manufacturing.