Intelligent Assistance is about to put an end to the long-standing discussions surrounding the relative merits of “multichannel” versus “omnichannel” marketing and digital commerce strategies. In retrospect, it is a topic that never should have been called into question.

The term “multichannel” refers to largely un-integrated communications links in a digital world where “customer journeys” transpire in separate, well-delineated lanes. Like cars on a highway, people change lanes according to suit their own whim and convenience. This called for businesses to make separate, incremental investments in multiple, communications and computing infrastructures to support each channel. Phones were supported by interactive voice response units (IVRs), switching systems and contact center agents. Web servers supported multiple resources with product info, search boxes, chat and shopping carts.

When pressed to make mobile phones and tablets part of the multichannel mix, companies turned to 3^rd parties to develop new apps for the popular mobile operating systems and devices. At the same time many invested resources to make it possible to render their Web sites on mobile browsers with varying degrees of success. Each new approach called for the company to allocate resources for development, care and maintenance. It also gives rise to the risk of stranded investment in staff, hardware, software and services that are rendered irrelevant when the next “shiny object” comes along – be it a message bot, avatar or voice user interface.

The concept of “omnichannel” gained momentum as firms found that they needed ways to coordinate, choreograph or orchestrate the many multichannel experiences. Fortunately, they could combine the power of “The Cloud”, “Big Data” and “Predictive Analytics” to understand “context.” Armed with this context, they could apply business rules in real time to treat each customer as an individual and provide personalized services with full-knowledge of device profiles, location, transaction history and entitlements.

“Optichannel” Puts Customers In Control of Digital Commerce Via Intelligent Assistants

“Optichannel” is becoming a term of art in the electronic banking and Fintech world. I first heard it spoken by an executive from USAA, a globally recognized leader in quality of customer care and customer satisfaction. first heard the term It resonated with me immediately. It sounds like an elision of the phrase “optimal channel.” That literally means the channel that is best for the customer’s purpose at the time. But the word “optimal” also starts with “opt,” which means “choose”. Thus it simultaneously invokes the idea of each customer’s “channel of choice,” given their current location, situation and context.

By putting customers in control, “optichannel” establishes a higher bar for customer care and user experience than old-fashioned omnichannel approaches Intelligent Assistants are destined to be a big part of the experience because they will give individuals a way to use their own words to take command of both the devices and services they want to use through a comfortable, consistent and persistent presence. Whether they are rendered through mobile virtual assistant (Viv, Siri, GoogleNow), specialized message bot, Amazon’s Alexa or a company’s own virtual chat agent or voice-based agent, the optichannel approach will offer consistent, personalized responses to each individual’s questions.

Accelerated interest in IAs and Optichannel begs the question “Why now?” or “We’ve heard this before; what’s changed?” The underlying technologies have matured to the point where they work well and they perform at scale. Thanks to the introduction of deep neural networking, speech recognition is measurably more accurate than it was a year ago. Its support of spoken words as well as transcription makes natural language input rich fodder for both understanding and machine learning. In short, understanding is better than prior solutions and systems are able to “learn” and improve responses more quickly.

Confidence breeds confidence. Individuals are growing ever more comfortable using Alexa, virtual chat agents and purpose-driven message bots on Facebook. At the same time IVR, contact center and customer care professionals are finding it easier to incorporate the contents of their back end knowledge bases, CRM systems, transaction histories and the like into customer-to-business conversations. Collectively, we’re learning how to use Intelligent Assistants on the front-end, the ubiquitous resource for promoting customer-controlled, human-assisted self-service.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants

Tags: conversational commerce, customer experience, Customer service, Intelligent Assistance, digital commerce, Customer relationship management