Jacada Mobile Agent

Jacada Mobile Agent simplifies and accelerates customer service to users of smart phones and mobile devices by providing visual self service flows (think "Visual IVR") that result in a substantially reduced number of calls to the call center.

Jacada Mobile Agent (JMA) bridges the gap between self service and traditional customer service contact channels. It does this by allowing the customer to conveniently connect to a live agent without having to repeat information such as their name, account number, the nature of the call, or any other details needed to resolve their question. This results in significantly reduced call handle times. Jacada Mobile Agent also allows the customer to see the current hold times or to schedule a call-back at a more convenient time.

Jacada Mobile Agent enables business users to quickly create and offer rich self-service capabilities to users of smart phones and mobile devices. Jacada Mobile Agent is the only mobile service platform that reduces in-bound call volume, reduces average handle time, and enables business agility through easy to use tools and rapid deployment processes.

The Pain – Siloed support channels

If you think your customers enjoy interacting with your company, think again.

One of the top sources of customer frustration is the lack of continuity and consistency experienced through different support channels.

Between lengthy and confusing call trees, and repeating of information (“May I have your account number, again?”), it is little wonder that the IVR has become synonymous with poor customer service. In fact, your customers see the IVR as a gatekeeper. 

Traditional self-service channels are not much better. When the customer service issue becomes complicated, the user experience breaks down, with no agent assistance. In other words, what you’re telling your customer is “We don’t want to talk to you”. And if you do allow connection to an agent, there is no context of the self service interaction and the call effectively starts from the beginning.

Now, there’s a better way. Jacada Mobile Agent is the natural merger of IVR, Self-Service and Smartphone. It’s about successfully servicing the customer yet at the same time reducing inbound call volume. And for the calls that do come in, it’s about more effective routing and no repeating of information.

You might think of it as a win-win-win: Reduced inbound call volume, shorter handle times and an improved customer experience.

What is it?

Mobile is rapidly becoming the new engagement channel.

With mobile, customers can engage in a self-service session through an “app” that visually maps out the steps of your customer service process, starting with your IVR. It allows customers to visually guide themselves through the self-serve interaction and interact directly with the system to solve their problem, without the annoyance and limitations of IVR systems.  The mobile self-service interaction, or Visual IVR, has full support for data entry and sophisticated self-service capabilities, including being able to proactively mine knowledge bases for information and retrieve/update customer information from underlying Line of Business applications. In short, mobile users now have access to everything they need to resolve a customer issue, without connecting to an agent.

For calls that do require agent assistance, however, the goal is to provide a seamless transition to the voice channel from the self-service channel. Creating this seamless transition requires connecting the mobile session with the agent session. This begins by giving customers information about current hold times and offering the option of scheduling a callback. Once the call is connected to the agent, all the steps traversed by the customer, as well as any data entered, is visible to the agent. By doing so, customers won’t have to repeat information. Even better, the underlying systems can be prepopulated (or data can be retrieved) with the customer information, adding a further benefit of reduced handle times.

Jacada Mobile Agent easily bridges the gap between Mobile, Self Service and Customer Care, with seamless transfer to voice channels at any place within a self service interaction. 

How does it Work?

JMA is a multi-tier customer experience software suite, consisting of the Smartphone application used by the end consumer, a Development Environment for quickly building customer interactions, and the Server for managing the interaction and automating routines on the Agent Desktop.

The Smartphone Client application and SDK

Available as a native application or SDK for both iOS and Android, the client application provides the functionality necessary to guide a customer through a self-service interaction, including the ability to walk through troubleshooting call trees and connecting to, or requesting a call back from, a call center Agent. The client application be thought of as a Visual IVR, guiding the customer through a self sevice interaction.

Enhances your existing Mobile Application

Recognizing that your organization most likely already has a mobile application, JMA is designed to easily fit “inside” your existing application to quickly enhance the capabilities you have already invested in. Jacada provides a SDK that enables your IT Department to easily extend and enhance your existing mobile application to take full advantage of the dynamic JMA self-service capabilities and voice channel integration. The API provides full control of all the major JMA functionality for fine grained control of the look and feel and functionality by your development group. The SDK is available for both iOS and Android platforms and comes complete with a reference application to quickly master the API.

The JMA Server

The JMA server can be thought of as the “brains” behind the operation. The server manages the customer interaction, knowing which page to send back to the mobile device based on business rules that you have defined. These rules can extend from simple “if-then-else” style rules, to highly sophisticated decision trees. The Server is also able to interact with your Line of Business applications, pulling data and presenting this to the customer or using it within the rules evaluation. And perhaps most importantly, changes made to your server can be instantly reflected on the smartphone, bypassing a lengthy “app store” approval process. But don’t worry, changes can be managed through an approval process, versioned and even rolled back!

The Server is also responsible for gathering detailed analytics – so that you can know exactly how your customers are faring in their self service interaction. Where are they dropping off? Where are they taking too much time? With these detailed analytical reports, you can continually refine your interactions.

The Development Environment

JMA’s Rapid development and deployment is core to the platform. The speed and ease with which interactions can be developed or modified far outpaces anything in the market today.  Customer service interactions are built using a graphical tool to build your interaction “through clicks, not code”. 

Making changes to existing interactions happens instantaneously, with the updated interaction being available to your end user the moment they engage in a new self service session. Compare this to lengthy submission processes for App approval on certain platforms, and you’ll appreciate the benefit of instant deployment.

Telephony Integration

Today, most self-service transactions break-down when the user is attempting to resolve a complicated issue. And when this happens, there is little to no continuity to your call center. With JMA, self-service interactions are seamlessly bridged into full-service voice interactions, with all the data available to the agent. And with integration to your telephony system, JMA can conveniently present options to your customer as to their preferred way of being reached to continue the transaction:

Benefits to your Business

• Significantly reduced inbound call volume through increased self-service resolution
• Far lower interaction abandonment as customers are guided through the process
• Shorter Average Handle Times as a result of the agent having all the information already entered by the customer, and by automatically populating the agent desktop applications with the customer data
• Breaks the siloed channels and bridges from self service to customer care
• Powerful analytics for continuous interaction improvement
• More efficient call routing with smart routing technology
• Increased customer satisfaction

Benefits to your Customers

• Ability to engage in a self service interaction when they want to and where they want to
• Providing agent assistance at any point within the self service interaction
• No repeating of information when connected to an agent

ROI

Jacada Mobile Agent will deliver a significant ROI based on:

1. Reduced Inbound Call Volume
2. Reduced Average Handle time for the calls that do come in
3. Increased agent efficiency through callback savings

Our confidence in our ROI model is reflected in our pricing approach.

Features

Call back and Call Scheduling

With integration to your telephony system, JMA can conveniently present options to your customer as to their preferred way of being reached to continue the transaction. By displaying the current anticipated hold times the customer can choose to hold, or select a convenient “call me back” option. In the event of a call back, all the interaction data is retrieved for a seamless continuation of the call.

Desktop Integration

JMA breaks down siloed communication channels by ensuring a seamless transition from the mobile to channel to a more traditional voice channel. All the data entered by the customer during the self service interaction is automatically displayed on the agent desktop, avoiding the need to “ask for the account number again”.  Even better, underlying line of business applications can be automatically populated or staged with the relevant call data, resulting in significantly lower Average Handle Times.

Graphical drag and drop Script Builder with Mobile testing App

Mobile Self Service interactions and Visual IVR transactions are created in an easy to use graphical tool, providing true drag and drop script building, allowing the Business to own and control script creation. Even complex back-end transactions can be invoked without knowledge of the underlying technical details. Your mobile self service interaction can be tested by running them directly on your mobile device using the reference App provided. The author can interactively walk through their script, modify logic and make changes, all before moving to production, and without the need to involve IT or have technical knowledge

Instant deployment

New JMA self service interactions can be "hot deployed" in real-time; There is no need to deploy a new application to the app store and no need for your customers to download a new version of the application. This means you can quickly make changes to business rules or interactions and get them to customers, in minutes, not weeks. Of course, a workflow approval system is in place to ensure quality in the published interaction.

Publishing and Versioning

JMA allows multiple authors to work on authoring self service interactions, with different permission levels for publishing, reviewing, and ultimately approving an interaction for “go live”. Utilizing a workflow system allows interactions to be tested in a production environment before being made available to your customers. Full versioning allows the system operator to quickly revert to a previous instance of an interaction. This well defined workflow process allows Business to work on call process design, but leaves IT with ultimate control of what gets pushed into production.

Auditing and Reporting

JMA provides detailed level auditing and reporting. Your customer’s self service sessions can be recorded down to an individual field level. Additionally, sophisticated audit trail reporting will show how interactions are performing, where bottlenecks are occurring and provide insight into where interactions may be further optimized.

Low Risk Pricing

Our confidence in our ability to reduce your customer services costs enables us to offer low risk pricing models that easily align with your business. Contact Jacada today for more details.