THREE-PART ACTION PLAN TO IMMUNIZE YOUR BUSINESS FROM COVID-19 USING AI KNOWLEDGE BOTS

What you can do now to ensure business continuity in the age of COVID-19

PROBLEM: BUSINESS CONTINUITY IS AT RISK IN THE AGE OF COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light how our dependency on human resources is a significant risk to business continuity. It is especially concerning to think of the impact on businesses when the workforce behind them could suddenly become disabled:

· As much as 60% of the population could be infected with COVID-19

· It is not known what percent of those infected will be symptomatic

· 7% of confirmed cases world-wide will have serious infections or die based on case infection and fatality rates

For B2C businesses, the impact of COVID-19 has been devastating for restaurants, sports, theaters and retail.

For B2B companies, the impact has been less immediate but the threat is imminent. Losing personnel can determine whether companies can close deals and book revenue. Even worse, many critical business processes or types of expertise are kept in the minds of just a few experts.

When one of these experts gets sick or is unable to work there are few if any replacements available due to long learning curves and lack of available talent. According to TechCrunch, hiring 12 engineers can take 990 hours!

COVID-19 AND OTHER PANDEMICS REQUIRE A SOUND DISASTER PREPAREDNESS PLAN

Companies have well-developed security and disaster preparedness plans for software security hacks, active shooters, physical security, environmental disasters (fire, flood) and more. But many are scrambling to prepare business continuity plans for pandemics like COVID-19, let alone implement them.

We believe any risk mitigation plan for a pandemic such as COVID-19 must include a scalable AI workforce as a business continuity best practice — in other words “BOTS.”

COVID-19 is going to accelerate technology adoption of Bots as companies realize it is their best strategy to mitigate the risk of losing human resources critical to their customer experience, sales or technical support. The advantage of Bots are clear:

• They work 24x7
• They never get sick
• They can self-replicate into an unlimited workforce on demand

THREE PART PANDEMIC AI BASED ACTION PLAN

Companies need to do more than plan. They need to put disaster plans into action now given COVID-19’s impact on the workforce.

Here is a three-part Pandemic Action plan that will modernize and scale your workforce while improving customer experience and accelerating business processes.

1. BOTSOURCE YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE: Too many B2B companies have an ecommerce presence comprised of simple web catalogs that do not advise on solutions or give advice. Because of these limitations they still primarily sell by phone or face-to-face visits. They justify this high-touch process because of the complexity of the solutions they sell. Unfortunately, they overlook opportunity to let BOTS qualify customers and advise customers where possible before handing off to valuable human resources.

What’s more, consumer preference for social distancing will reduce face-to-face business practices and accelerate adoption of AI. Companies that recognize this trend and place BOTS at the front lines of their customer experience will outgrow their competitors.

2. LET BOTS DYNAMICALLY LOAD-BALANCE WORKLOADS: After qualifying a customer, Bots can route requests to the right person at the right time — optimizing the workload of your hybrid human–bot workforce. Bots can dramatically improve the efficiency and scale of your sales organization by intelligently load balancing work. Bots can serve as a routing engine, routing tasks to the optimal resource for each inbound task or opportunity.

3. REMOVE NEEDLESS ADMIN WORK WITH CRM AND ERP SYSTEMS: Administrative bots take over the busy work for sales teams. They can automatically populate CRM and ERP systems. Even better, they can retrieve pricing, inventory, discount approvals while automatically generate quotes and documentation, etc. Bots can dramatically improve the efficiency and scale of your sales organization when they remove manual tasks that tax productivity.

AI KNOWLEDGE BOTS, UNLIKE SIMPLE CHAT BOTS, CAN BE MOBILIZED QUICKLY WITHOUT DELAY

eXalt’s AI Knowledge Bots have been helping companies Scale More Profitably. Leading Fortune 500 companies have used our Knowledge Bots to augment their human workforce to enhance customer experiences and automate business processes. Now these same companies view our Knowledge Bots as a primary defense mechanism for delivering business continuity. What is even better, you can mobilize Knowledge Bots quickly without delay.

Here are ways Knowledge Bots are different from Chatbots:

· Knowledge Bots are Codeless and can be Trained, Deployed and Maintained Without Delay: Knowledge Bots can be deployed in weeks not months. Even better, this fully integrated mindset is easy to train and is continuously learning. This means it can be maintained to change with your business requirements without delay.

· Adaptable Decision Making with Full Recommendation Engine: Knowledge Bots can make independent decisions, solve business problems and adapt with a variety of AI components.

· Intelligent Routing: Knowledge Bots can route actions to systems or people based on routing rules established by you. Simple chatbots do not offer rules-based workflow, tracking or collaboration.

· Multimode Engagement: Chatbots offer one interface — chat. Knowledge Bots can engage with People and Systems via Chat, Web Graphical Interfaces, EMAIL and API’s, supporting every step of the customer journey wherever they are needed.

SUMMARY: SEW A DIGITAL THREAD FROM YOUR CUSTOMERS TO YOUR EMPLOYEES AND PARTNERS TO SURVIVE COVID-19

COVID-19 has forced us to be as digitally enabled as possible if we are to prevail.

If you don’t offer Knowledge Bots and recommendation engines you are exposing your business to unnecessary risk of disruption from a pandemic. Knowledge Bots can be on the front lines of customer experience and offer a seamless transfer to the optimal resources once the sale is qualified. This ensures the lowest possible human touch and the highest probability of purchase.

Finally, if you have an administrative bot that takes over the admin work for the sale (pricing, discount approvals, generating quote documentation, etc.) you can continue to boost the efficiency and scale of your sales organization. This is especially critical in industries that cannot hire and train enough human experts to assist buyers in the solution sales process during the best of times.

Since you can scale the number of Knowledge Bots up or down based on business requirements you will have a Scalable AI Workforce on-demand to alleviate pressure on scarce human resources.

The business world will not return to the “old ways of doing things.” COVID-19 has become a catalyst for an immediate implementation of an SCALABLE AI WORKFORCE PLAN that changes how we engage with customers and how we automate communication and processes. Your business survival may require that you put in place new ways of working and specifically augmenting your staff with AI-based Knowledge Bots now.