However, maintaining high standards of customer service requires more than just setting lofty goals. It necessitates equipping your agents with the right tools and training to consistently deliver exceptional service without overwhelming them.

Driving Insights with AI-Powered CRM

Leading service organizations have discovered that the key to maximizing the value of their data lies in incorporating AI Artificial Intelligence into their Customer Relationship Management ( CRM ) systems. This strategic move not only enhances efficiency but also elevates customer satisfaction scores. Salesforce’s latest State of Service report delves into the insights you can gain from this approach.

Efficiency through AI-driven CRM

AI-powered CRM systems enable businesses to offer the empathetic and personalized service that today’s customers crave. With the right technology in place, achieving a superior customer experience becomes not just possible but also sustainable.

“AI in CRM can deliver personalized and empathetic service that customer desire today. Better technology means elevated customer experiences.”

Defining Your Service Standards

Customer service standards are the cornerstone of interactions between your business and its customers. Modern consumers expect seamless, personalized, and comprehensive service right from their initial engagement.

By implementing AI-ready CRM platforms, you can tangibly elevate your customer service standards. These platforms equip your team with the necessary tools and training to build customer trust through rapid response times, empathy, and agent efficiency.

Maintaining Excellence with Metrics

Improving your service while managing costs necessitates monitoring the right service metrics. Key Performance Indicators such as case deflection, cost per contact, and first-contact resolution guide your efforts and signal potential areas for improvement.

Uniting Your Customer Data

Managing customer information across service, sales, and marketing departments often results in fragmented data, leading to frustration for both employees and customers. The solution lies in consolidating data within a comprehensive CRM system.

Streamlining Your Channels

With customers engaging businesses through various channels, logging all interactions into a single platform becomes critical. This provides your agents with a complete view of each customer’s history, enhancing their ability to provide superior service.

Quick Service through Automation

To meet the rapidly rising expectations of customers, businesses must expedite their service efforts. Automation can be a game-changer, significantly reducing the workload of service agents and enabling them to focus on more complex issues.

Conclusion

By regularly reviewing your customer service standards and performance, you can effectively identify and address gaps. Over time, with consistent effort, your team’s performance will improve, resulting in an elevated service experience for your customers. Do you have any tricks up your sleeve for maintaining high customer service standards? Feel free to share your insights in the comments!

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AI’s influence extends beyond industry and consumer products; it holds the promise of ushering in a new era of government services. When implemented responsibly, with governance, privacy protection, and transparency at its core, AI has the power to revolutionize public sector operations. This transformation can empower citizens, restore trust in government entities, improve workforce efficiency, and reduce operational costs.

Yet, despite the myriad advantages, many government agencies worldwide grapple with the implementation of AI, particularly generative AI. They stand at a crossroads, faced with a choice: embrace AI’s potential to enhance the lives of the citizens they serve or remain on the sidelines, missing out on AI’s ability to achieve their objectives more effectively.

Early Success Stories

Government agencies that have embraced AI and automation provide valuable insights into the technology’s benefits. Examples abound, from modernizing the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s tax return processing to enhancing the efficiency of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Global Health Supply Chain Program through automation. Some deployments even reach citizens directly, such as the Ukrainian Embassy in the Czech Republic’s virtual assistant, which offers information to Ukrainian citizens.

Now, the new wave of AI, underpinned by generative AI’s foundational models, presents a significant opportunity to harness AI’s potential for the public good.

Three Key Focus Areas

To embark on this transformative journey, government agencies must focus on three key areas where AI use cases can make the most significant impact:

1. Workforce Transformation: AI offers the potential for digital labour, freeing public employees from repetitive tasks and enabling them to engage in high-value activities. Training existing staff in AI-related skills and technologies is crucial, as it can lead to increased productivity.

2. Citizen Support: Prioritizing use cases that directly benefit citizens is paramount. AI can provide real-time information, personalize services, and expedite traditionally sluggish processes, creating a more user-friendly government.

3. Digital Transformation: Legacy systems often hinder government agencies’ digital transformation efforts. AI can facilitate the migration of technology systems to the cloud, enhancing data utilization, cost optimization, cybersecurity, and talent acquisition.

Commitment to Responsible AI

Responsible AI deployment is non-negotiable. Governments must ensure ethical use throughout AI’s lifecycle, from design and development to use and maintenance. IBM advocates for the five fundamental properties of trustworthy AI: explainability, fairness, transparency, robustness, and privacy.

• Explainability: AI should provide human-interpretable explanations for its predictions.
• Fairness: AI must treat individuals or groups equitably, countering biases and discrimination.
• Transparency: Information on AI’s design, development, and data sources should be shared.
• Robustness: AI should effectively handle exceptional conditions.
• Privacy: AI must prioritize and safeguard consumers’ privacy and data rights.

With these principles in place, AI can empower governments of all sizes, even the smallest agencies. It can enhance state and local governmental projects, improving how employees and citizens access information about policies and government-issued benefits.

As we navigate the age of AI, equipped with knowledge, responsibility, and AI tools, the public sector can shape a brighter future for all. IBM is committed to unleashing the potential of foundation models and generative AI to address high-stakes challenges, offering responsible AI solutions for businesses and public sector institutions through IBM Watson. Together, let’s embrace the age of AI value creation and drive positive change.

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Your culinary adventure is interrupted by a food recall notice. It’s a terrifying reality for consumers and food businesses alike. To alleviate this growing concern, adherence to the FDA Food Traceability Rule FSMA 204 is crucial. A promising development in this sector is the collaboration between IBM and iFoodDS, intent on not only ensuring compliance but also accelerating the standards of food safety to new levels.

New Regulations Drive Innovation

The recent launch of the FSMA Rule 204(d) mandates that the industry meticulously record data around ingredients, processing, and distribution of products. This information aids in the creation of a traceability chain, enabling the prompt identification and removal of tainted products from the market, thus significantly reducing outbreak investigation periods.

Strategic Alliance Promises Compliance and Ease

In response to this intricate regulation, a cooperative venture between IBM and iFoodDS is shaping the way for businesses in the food industry to comfortably meet the looming compliance deadline. Their collaborated offering, ‘iFoodDS Trace Exchange with IBM Food Trust’, promises a comprehensive, scalable, and secure traceability solution suitable for FSMA Rule 204.

Key Benefits of the Joint Solution

The offering brings a number of benefits to the table:

• An all-encompassing system for FDA FSMA 204 compliance.
• iFoodDS’ insight into the food industry promises ease when onboarding, assisting companies in assessing their current traceability capabilities and formulating compliance plans.
• The solution includes built-in applications for capturing necessary data, enabling businesses to comply with regulations without the need to develop their own solutions.
• Compact IBM technology guarantees trusted data sharing, securing traceability solutions required even for the largest food companies.
• Possibly fast and efficient food recall, waste reduction, and improved transparency, thus boosting consumer confidence.

Stepping into the Era of Smarter Food Safety

The partnership between IBM and iFoodDS propels the food safety sector into a significant milestone. The combined solution aids the entire supply chain in achieving FSMA 204 compliance and elevating food safety for consumers worldwide. Let’s welcome the start of a revolutionary era – an era of smarter food safety.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. Your insights are valuable for the ever-evolving technology landscape.

The post The Remarkable Partnership of IBM and iFoodDS with IBM Food Trust first appeared on Tech Insight.

Video games are big business in 2023, and that’s only going to accelerate. As the Verge Reports, Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard Acquisition has been approved by EU regulators – one of tech’s biggest companies has been given the green light to strong-arm the rest of the industry, and it seems like the end user might be the one that pays. What does Microsoft acquiring Activision mean for you?

Microsoft’s macro bid

In the world of console-based, mainstream gaming, there are three key players: Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony; Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and S, and Sony’s PlayStation 5 mark the ninth generation of consumer-grade, home-based consoles. Since Microsoft entered the sandbox with the original Xbox in 2001, it has vied for supremacy with Sony’s PlayStation. Each generation is a new battleground – the Xbox 360, for the longest time, eclipsed its competitor. The Xbox One? Not so much – this time around, Microsoft seems to think that monopolising the industry is the way to go.

As reported by the Verge, the company’s $68.7 billion deal (that’s £54.9 billion in GBP) to acquire Activision Blizzard has been approved by regulators in the EU, just weeks after regulators in the UK blocked the same acquisition. The European Commission has concluded that Microsoft, “would have no incentive to refuse to distribute Activision’s games to Sony.”

“Even if Microsoft did decide to withdraw Activision’s games from the PlayStation, this would not significantly harm competition in the consoles market.” – The European Commission

The future, however, of gaming, doesn’t seem to be anchored wholly in home consoles found underneath your television, and EU regulators found that even if Microsoft’s big bid doesn’t affect where customers can play their games, it could disrupt the distribution of PC and video game through cloud gaming services.

Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard – beyond the box

For years, the Call of Duty series, one of Activision’s big earners, has dominated as a multi-platform behemoth, across both PlayStation and Xbox brands. In 2023, Sony has enjoyed a 44.1% market share, compared to Microsoft’s paltry 16% – many users feared that Microsoft might be attempting to simply close the door on Sony’s Call of Duty player base. Microsoft, however, seems to be setting its sights on a future fight.

The European Commission has identified a remedy in its judgement: decade-long licensing deals that Microsoft has offered to competitors in the space, to assuage concerns that Call of Duty might jump ship. What’s more, a free license to customers in the European Union would allow end-users to stream all current and future Activision Blizzard PC and console games via any cloud game streaming service of their choice.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), however, had a less optimistic view of Microsoft’s colossal offer, expecting that the acquisition could in fact lead to “reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers.” Nintendo and Sony have traditionally had recognisable mascots in their camps – think Mario and Zelda, and Crash Bandicoot and Lara Croft. Sony’s crop, however, due to deft deals between publishers, has found its way to other platforms. In the walled garden home console space, players have often baulked at these forced, timed exclusivities, with many opting to simply go without that shell out for another overpriced system.

With luck, Microsoft’s Xbox division will stay true to its word and not erect such roadblocks in the future.

The nature of the beast

Ultimately, this is a bid for supremacy in a burgeoning tech space, rather than the ninth console generation, and it’s here that the CMA’s worries lie. Activision is now known as Activision Blizzard because of a similar acquisition – just on a much smaller scale. In 2016, the company acquired King Digital, the mobile game developer responsible for the impossibly popular Candy Crush series.

The company’s chief executive Bobby Kotick castigated the CMA’s move against the acquisition last month, stating he believed it was evidence that the UK was “closed for business”. As Microsoft’s walled garden grows, however, it lends credence to the CMA’s foresight. At this rate, Microsoft could end up with all the toys in the toy box, and if that happens, gamers will be forced to get on board with the Xbox brand, or go find their fun elsewhere.

Source: The Verge

What do you think of this proposed new deal? Is it good news for the end-user? Have your say below!

Want to see what else Microsoft is up to? Click here: Microsoft’s CoPilot AI: A Game-Changer for Developers.

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