We live in a constantly changing world and the customer experience is a key business differentiator for every organization, which is why delivering a Transcendent Customer Experience is one of the tenets of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE). It’s all about putting customers first—both internal and external. By giving customers what they need, when and where they want it, you can create experiences that exceed their expectations and foster real connections that make technology feel more human.
One way to do this is through a judicious blend of human and technology engagement, with tools that deliver preference-based interactions, self-service tools, and a secure, consistent experience across every channel. That was the goal when the BMC Sales Enablement team deployed BMC technology to build a better customer experience for our internal customers in BMC Sales.
The challenges
BMC has a Sales team of 1000+ personnel who help drive value for our customers. Our Sales Enablement program supports the Sales team with content, tools, knowledge, and information to help them effectively sell our products and services to our customers, and often fields extensive queries about those resources. For example, new Sales hires often have questions about registration, logistics, cancellations, prework, and payments, etc. for BMC IGNITE which is a two-week interactive onboarding program.
A team in India was one of the major points of contact for queries from around the world. While the team worked hard to achieve positive results, it was siloed from the rest of the business and didn’t have the technology it needed to properly support a global internal customer base. Both issues created delays in real-time responses, repeat queries, and a subpar customer experience for the Sales team, along with low morale for the Sales Enablement team. It was also a poor first impression for new hires.
Enter BMC Helix Virtual Agent
To address these challenges, the Sales Enablement team joined forces with BMC Innovation Labs (as well as BMC’s internal IT organization) to develop a solution that would deliver a Transcendent Customer Experience with:
- Zero lead time for users
- Location-agnostic real-time responses
- Mobile-friendly usability
Figure 1: Multi-bot Architecture BMC Helix Virtual
Sales Enablement chose to build the Enablement Virtual Agent (EVA) leveraging our BMC Helix Virtual Agent, which won the 2020 AI Breakthrough Award for being the “Best Chatbot Solution.”
One major challenge during the implementation was avoiding use case conflicts since the Sales Enablement programs and platforms are interlinked and have common keywords and phrases. This was solved by employing a sophisticated multi-bot architectural model. In this model, a universal or master bot manages and is linked to multiple child bots based on the program topics. As you can see in Figure 1, each child bot is linked to every other child bot as well as the universal bot.
The adoption of this model helped Sales Enablement avoid conflicts between similar use cases across different programs and reduce maintenance. It also allowed parallel development since each child bot has a separate workspace instance. Moreover, it is now much easier to troubleshoot or modify use cases. The EVA is built to respond to user queries and address the need for transactional support. Users can send emails to the Sales Enablement team through the EVA if they have a specific question that the EVA cannot answer. The AI-enhanced EVA can also directly raise a helpdesk ticket in cases where a human agent needs to be involved.
The results
It has been only two quarters since Sales Enablement launched the EVA to support two programs—the aforementioned BMC IGNITE as well as the Fast Start Management by Objectives (MBO) program (an incentivized MBO program for new Sales hires)—and it’s already making a positive impact on BMC Sales.
Figure 2: Enablement Virtual Assistant (EVA) Results
The number of unique visitors continues to grow at an exponential rate as more programs and tools are added to the EVA. In addition, the EVA’s accuracy grew from 94 percent to 99 percent, even with an increase in the number of users and queries. This is a testament to the robustness of the EVA.
With a marked reduction in the number of queries handled directly by the Sales Enablement team—a drop that is expected to grow significantly as the EVA’s scope expands to include additional programs and platforms—team members can now devote more time to the business for other value-added work.
If you have similar customer experience requirements, the BMC Helix Virtual Agent can help you create a Transcendent Customer Experience for your internal and external customers, and help your organization evolve to become an Autonomous Digital Enterprise. For more information on building a better customer experience, see our white paper, Superior Customer Experiences Start with Digitalization and Advanced Technologies.
