The Purpose

Before the IVA, the service channels at Aon consisted of telephone, fax, email and an online web form for customers to directly communicate with a benefit representative.

Provide 132 active clients in over 190 countries a tool to reduce call center volume, increase service department efficiency, boost product enrollment, and react to employee issues/questions faster and more directly. By managing the content and messaging to participants, we can deflects low value questions from the benefits call center and provides immediate insights into what people are asking.

Support over 5 Million Users in reducing customer service waiting times and keeping participants in their channel of choice. By deflecting web chat, email and contact center traffic, we can provide immediate insights into conversations and concerns, immediately updating content to address gaps and manage observed issues and enjoy a simple, easy, supported, and informed experience.

Defining The Look

To create a clean and cohesive vision of the IVA tool, I started by defining a style guide for the various design elements that would be featured in presentations to clients.

Starting Point

We chose Userlike because of its intuitiveness, ability to skin, and analytical tools.  We could define everything in the code to reach an advanced level of customization and leverage the chat macros to dramatically cut down the response time for recurring questions.

For our trial, we supplied a beta version of the tool to United Parcel Service (UPS) on their benefit website “UPoint”. On each page we included a prominent launch point, with specific pages pro-actively opening the IVA during previously identified trouble areas.

User Initiated

A user may access the IVA by selecting the “need help” launch point located on the right side of the page. The launch point is pinned to the right of the browser and follows a user as they scroll. On hover the tab expands to provide further details.

Features

The IVA is available 24 Hours a Day, 365 Days a Year, when other service channels are unavailable . The IVA features a chat window that may be moved and resized for optimal viewing, Audio controls to protect a users privacy and sensitive information. and the ability to save or email the conversations, so the user can always revisit the chat session.

Human-Like Conversation

The IVA interprets a users natural language to answer, guide and help users navigate to information they need. Text recognition software allows for detection of slang terminology, misspelled words, and acronyms to better create a response. A human interaction and tone, sixth grade response level, and voice attributes, lead users to feel they are speaking with a live customer service representative.

Hands-Free Assistant

IVA responses are rich, including clarifying questions, read aloud, links and page navigation to assist users.

Navigation Example

In the flow below, the IVA is able to provide links to a requested page, read specific information from that page, automatically turn pages to illustrate the conversation, and provide beneficial recommendations, leading to a positive user outcome.

Recognizes Difficult Transactions and Opportunities

The IVA pro-actively opens to assist users during transactions previously identified as “trouble zones”. Research and analytics shows that no matter how easy a transaction is,  there are  sticking points, and missed opportunities for users. The IVA guides users with step by step instructions, assists and reveals overlooked or missed information, and advises users on choices.

Active Assist Example

In the page below, the IVA reveals itself during an annual enrollment session, where a users choice was made, but an opportunity was missed

The Seamless Hand-off

If the IVA is unable to answer it provides a seamless hand off to a live chat agent or call center specialist.

The conversation is shared with a live chat agent to enable faster support.

The Results

Our sales and service agents have frequently praised the direct link to the customer.  In the first month, an 8% increase was reported in the number of answered support inquiries per day, which is largely due to a decrease in support inquiries via email and phone. Live chat is a powerful tool for up-selling. The users that engage in a chat are more likely to end up with the higher-end benefit products. Via the chat, divisions are able to quickly outline the specific benefits of a product and connect it to the customers’ needs, making them feel like they’re getting a tailored product. The IVA has improved conversion rates by 10% and increased customer lifetime value by 6%.

The customers have given us very positive feedback on the reaction time the IVA enables. Users who chat stay on our website longer, are more likely to return, and do so sooner than those that don't chat. 63% of respondents who chatted said they were more likely to return to the site, and 62% reported being more likely to take advise from the IVA again. A user quote stated “seeing that someone is available instantly is a strong trust signal to me”.