The Conversational Channel Roadmap
Are you in for the long run or a speedy hack? The journey any organization will take adopting conversational channels, won’t be quick, but will lead to cost savings and top line growth.
Use this roadmap as a guide for what you may expect when creating conversational services in existing organizations. The steps in the roadmap are growth steps. In each step, the organization learns something, creates a solid base and goes to the next step. The better each step is done, the stronger the capability is embedded within the organization. Inspiration is drawn from the TEAMDRIVER model and the Capability Maturity Model plus experience with rolling out the conversational channels.
What are Conversational Channels?
Conversational Channels enable direct interaction between user and “sender” in messaging or voice. This happens on smart speakers, mobile phones, TV’s, refrigerators, cars and more using Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Whatsapp, Messenger, Wechat, and others. In a world dominated by tech platforms, an owned conversation become vital.
Soon any smart device or company won’t make sense if not voice or chat enabled. The platforms like Amazon and Google are ready to help deep automation of Conversational Channels.
Users are getting onboard as well. Over 50 mln Google Home and Amazon Alexa devices have been sold in the last three years. Microsoft, Samsung, and Alibaba are gearing up too. At this rate, it may be faster than mobile or web adoption. On the backend, SAP and other enterprise platforms, are gearing up to start in this space as well. Gartner predicts over 30% of search will be done via voice in 2020.
Model overview
The vertical axis is the growth in share of the business. At first, there is no share of business. It’s an experiment outside the running operation. A small team is perusing the new channel and potential value. This will grow when the use-case is figured out, and more people get involved. The stronger the use-case, the more it will grow and business value will be generated.
The two lines through the roadmap are there to manage expectation on how the new conversational channel can save the organization money or add top line growth. Key here is that it won’t happen right away. Creating a new muscle within the organization takes time. The people working on it will need to persevere and defend against the natural immune system of the organization.
Step one: Hello world
This step is similar to your first email newsletter or first website for that matter. Do you remember this? The people involved were extremely proud and those not participating in the creation weren't that impressed. The “Hello world” step is the first voice service an organization creates and makes available to the public. It is built by a small team inside the organization or hired experts form outside. It has no impact on operations.
Tip for presenting internally: Don’t use slides but act out the dialog. This will convey the idea more realistically.
Most often the service is straight forward where it’s more about learning instead of becoming popular with users or that it generates business returns. PR is an often seen as adriver.
Challenge is that probably high expectations were triggered running up to the launch and once the service available it will not deliver. Focus on what does work, what is gained and what can be adjusted to become more efficient.
The Isobar skill on Alexa is a good Hello world example. The skill tells you what the company does, what locations they reside at and what clients they help. They copied their website.
Question is, who and in what context would someone ask Alexa about Isobar? The important thing though is that they took the step and from here on end will learn and grow.
Isobar recently upped their voice service game with the Bar skill for Diageo (Johnny Walker, Smirnoff and many others spirit brands).
Step two: The persona is established
At some point, after putting in the work and the iteration & learning cycles, the conversational service will get traction. With these services, it is crucial to establish and learn how to express the persona. The persona is the character of your bot or voice service.
Is it male or female? Is it kind like a mother or brisk like a man? There are many nuances which will determine how the service will converse with users.
This is successful once people to respond well to the persona and the conversation service.The latter is about the use case. Why and when do people use the service? A popular frame work to establish this is the Job-to-be-done framework.
Most popular Alexa Skills provide a daily value and update regularly. Once the skill is live, figure out what people want exactly and how to cater to them.
When visits start repeating, and users recommend the service to others this step is completed. The organization is learning to hold up its own in the new conversational channel.
The Jeopardy skill on Amazon Alexa is at this stage. The game is fun to play with others. Entertaining and of course familiar. It has almost two thousand reviews. Most are positive. Users even express fear of missing out when not playing for a day. The persona is established, and the use-case is clear.
In this step, the costs may still be high, yet the returns are growing. The team which takes care of the service does this as a temporary responsibility. More people are following the activities within the organization.
Step three: Tangible value
With the use-case & the persona established as well as users becoming fans promoting the service, the organization is ready to focus on growing tangible value. Which existing services can be scaled back to save costs or what returns can be fostered? This is the tangible value to pursue.
The focus is on growing outcomes with a dedicated team running continuous experiments. Positive learnings are repeated, and new ones are sought after. The results of the service are being followed by a growing group.
Tangible value is direct sales or indirect like brand value or usage. The first is very clear and easy to measure. It is about what revenue you can attribute to the voice service.
The latter two are harder to measure. The Jeopardy Alexa Skill may not bring in direct money yet lots of people use it. It’s up to the organization to determine what to measure and to what level it is worth it.
The Sleeping Sounds Skill on Amazon Alexa is a good example of tangible value.They are actively trying to convert their free user base to their premium offering. Almost 10.000 people have reviewed the skill.
Conversion is not easy for all users. In the comments, people complain about the pitch they need to listen to. They do not like that all of a sudden “their” content is behind a paywall. In the quest for tangible value and repeated results, the price is sometime that customers may not react positively. Yet it may not be possible to continue the service at no cost.
Cost savings and top-line growth are how the conversation service will ‘earn’ the integration into the organization and have a share of the business. The supporting team will move from temporary roles to set functions. Reporting of the conversational service is done in regular reporting cycles.
Step four: Scale agents
Agent is another word for the conversational service including the enabling technology and the supporting teams. Now that the tangible value is repeatable and the team set, the next step of growth across other business functions is undertaken.
More teams come into play. The team to find new services to expand to and the team to maintain output levels of the established conversational services. The original conversational service has quality to protect and targets to pursue as it is part of the main organization.
The Dutch airline KLM is at step four. They have been investing and working a lot on using AI in support of customer service conversations in traditional conversational channels like email, twitter, FB, messenger, WhatsApp and WeChat.
Across all these channels Artificial Intelligence (or automated suggestion and conversational bots) supports real live agents and takes over where it can.
They have been able to grow their business with millions of extra sales by upgrading tickets and booking flights while expanding their head count with a disproportionately smaller amount. The share of business of the conversational channels is 30% with many teams using and supporting it.
Expansion of their conversational muscle is, amongst others, in voice with their BB bot to help you pack. It looks like a Hello world step with a PR use-case which is not strong from a user point of view. Looking at their conversational experience this will be history fast.
Step five: Deepen, Augment & Virtualize
The conversational channels are set at this stage. New service lines were added to the original use-case. Costs are clearly saved and top-line growth is established. To grow even more the journey into conversational channels comes into new and possibly unproven grounds.
No examples or organizations have been found who are at this stage. Yet extrapolation will help explore what it may entail. At its core is new technology as well as automation and autonomy of conversations. The channels discussed in previous steps are all limited to audio and screens. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality channels will add the ability to bring the conversations and persona to life. Virtualization is more tangible this way.
A Zillow service would put and AR Agent at every listed house. A coffee brand would add the agent to the coffee packaging for guidance and reordering. The conversational experience will have a deeper effect.
This all sounds far off. What will the persona look like? Is it human shaped? Maybe for Zillow but not for the coffee brand. For sure the technology is not ubiquitous yet.
But with companies like Magic Leap, which raised over two billion to create the AR mass medium for all, it may be coming quicker then you think.
Hardly any movie doesn’t use digital enhancements. The green screen is starting to become the norm if not the virtualization of characters. We hardly notice it. And even more unnoticeable; most pack shots these days are not of actual packaging but a 3D rendering optimized for a specific context and campaign.
In short, the technological capabilities and the pursuit of top-line growth and bottomline savings will ensure nothing but the virtualization of all interaction.
It starts at step one. What is your hello world?
Maarten Lens-FitzGerald
Public speaker, entrepreneur, and consultant on the future of work, digital transformation and voice services.
Founder of Layar, Teamily and Open Voice. Associate Partner at Moore Amsterdam.
www.lens-fitzgerald.com
@dutchcowboy on twitter.
