The internet and more recently the smart phone and social media revolution have dramatically changed the way we research, market, sell and talk about products and services. We have all very quickly added these to our communication repertoire and it’s easy to forget how ‘young’ some of our most established brands are. Amazon was founded back in 1994, Google started its commercial operation in 1998, in 2004 Mark Zuckerberg worked on The Facebook and only five years ago Apple presented its very first iPhone.

This fast acceptance and adaptation challenges organisations to provide the right communication channels and be innovative and effective in their application. One of Lexica’s clients is Cologne based ITyX, a specialist in digital communication solutions. A spin off from the University of Koblenz, they have focused on incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies, such as neural networks, to process incoming information and manage knowledge. 

If organisations receive hundreds of customer emails or social media feeds every day, the company’s Mediatrix RESPONSE is capable of analysing the content, routing it to the correct team, while providing a link to the customer’s details on the CRM and even suggesting potential responses. This benefits customers in that they receive a quick and comprehensive response to their enquiry, while the company achieves average handling time decreases by up to 55%.

Often it is possible to already find answers to queries on a company’s website in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section. Organisations provide, for example, a set of questions & answers from previous interactions with customers. Other solutions, such as ITyX’s Mediatrix, provide a dynamic Self-Service that draws on all incoming email communication and updates the FAQs accordingly without need for any administrative input.

Websites for products and services have evolved with new technologies becoming available all the time. Initially more like an online brochure, even the smallest company can now afford e-commerce facilities, blogging became a trend and today it’s all about Twitter, Facebook & Co. You can embed videos in your website and add chat windows for additional, live customer support online. Mediatrix WEBSCOUT from ITyX enables organisations to support their online customers with pro-active service by live chat, but also co-browsing. This means that when requested by a website visitor, the customer service representative can jointly visit certain pages, explain and also help fill in information online.

Amazon is a company that combines technology with great processes and as a result require little customer service. However, I’m sure you have visited websites with FAQ sections that don’t provide you with the answer you were looking for. Instead of continuing on the digital channel, you then have to revert to a traditional one such as the telephone. Or you may have found a blog from other users who seem more knowledgeable than the company itself. If emails don’t get answered by a company within a day or so, we switch back to other channels. And even worse, if a public sector organisation provides me with no email or telephone contact, but invites me to join them on Twitter, that’s a bit like waving a red flag to a bull!

Anyway, it would be interesting to hear from you about your multi-channel experiences, the highs and lows and maybe what you think the future will look like.

Further information about ITyX and its adaptive, multi-lingual Mediatrix module solutions are on http://www.ityx.co.uk/. You can also visit VERA, which is their entry email response solution for companies that deal with smaller volumes.